GUIDE: How to save games without compression (post-RoI)

[Emre Yigit]

I am still seeing posts about the fact that savegames now use compression or something similar, as well as cumbersome ways to open those savegames using winzip or whatever.

There really is no need for this.

1. Call up the game menu. Click "Save Game" (The tooltip appears a little lower down, don't be confused.)

2. Enter a name, or use the one the program suggests.

3. Hover over the new, always-ticked box on the right. A tooltip will appear, stating "Compress game data".

4. Uncheck the box, and save. Your savegame will now be in the old format, and editable by a good text editor.

Note: you need to uncheck the box every time you save a game. And this does not impact autosaves; you can set those for compression or not via "Game Options" (picture 1 above).

 

[Zireael]

This ought to be stickied.

 

[Emre Yigit]

Bumped, because there are still masochists around who would rather unzip files than click a box.

 

[salamanderrake]

But there is no way to set weather or not ironman mode will compress the save

 

[Ithvan]

But there is no way to set weather or not ironman mode will compress the save

No, because that's the point of Ironman.

 

[liamgamer55]

No, because that's the point of Ironman.

I thought ironman encrypts it?

 

[Tuerai]

No, because that's the point of Ironman.

The point of Ironman is to remove the ability to use cheats, to save frequently to reduce the effectiveness of scumming, and to obfuscate the savegame files so they are not easily editable.
Compression is not now, nor was it ever the point of Ironman, and the option to toggle the compression of the saves could alleviate some of the horrible performance issues that the mode suffers.