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The data about which building I've unlocked is stored locally and thus all the those buildings are locked with a new install on a new computer. I'd like to know what file I need to copy from the old computer to get my unlock status back to where it was.
I'm fairly certain I've seen the necessary info somewhere at some point, but sadly my google-fu (and forum search) failed me and I couldn't find it anymore.
I had a hard drive failure last year, and with the new drive and fresh install of the game (and OS and everything else!), I have been unlocking buildings again. Can be pretty time consuming, especially since you can't do it all in one city.
I had been wondering about posting asking about the possibility of adding some way to save this "achievement" progress other than locally. Either with the Steam account, or Paradox Account. That way any "fresh install" can immediately have your previous progress.
Having those unlocks tied to Steam account (or something similar) would of course be nice. However, I'm currently mainly interested in the immediate solution of just copying the relevant file over (and probably backing it up somewhere) and for that I'd like to know what (and where) that aforementioned relevant file is.
Torakka is talking about the unique buildings, where you have to meet a specific criteria to unlock them. Once unlocked they are free to use in any city.
save game and game files are located in C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Local\Colossal Order\Cities_Skylines can't remember if this transfers unique building unlock information across too, it's been a while since i reformatted. However, i always backup my entire app data folder before reformatting. it's where nearly all local content for apps and games is stored. you will need to turn on show hidden folders.
Torakka is talking about the unique buildings, where you have to meet a specific criteria to unlock them. Once unlocked they are free to use in any city.
save game and game files are located in C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Local\Colossal Order\Cities_Skylines can't remember if this transfers unique building unlock information across too, it's been a while since i reformatted. However, i always backup my entire app data folder before reformatting. it's where nearly all local content for apps and games is stored. you will need to turn on show hidden folders.
Yes, those are indeed what I meant.
The information is not stored within individual save games and I've tried to check both that folder and the main C:S folder (inside .../steamapps/common) for files that would look like they contained that information. However, I checked that C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Local\Colossal Order\Cities_Skylines folder again now that you mentioned that just copying it all has worked for you and apparently I've checked only the sub-folders there and missed this rather promising file userGameState.cgs that seem to contain some unlocking related information (when opened with Notepad++).
Okay, I can confirm that the unlocked Unique Buildings are stored in C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Local\Colossal Order\Cities_Skylines\userGameState.cgs.
(It seems to also contain some information about non-unique buildings, including interchange assets that I haven't had for a while now.)
EDIT: That file seems to also store Paradox account details (the login e-mail, not password), so take that into account if you ever wish to distribute your file to other people for any reason.
That is strange, I've never noticed this behavior. although I thought it did in the beginning. I just checked my game and all of my buildings are greyed out. I know I've unlocked them all before as I have a city with them all unique buildings and all monuments. my tourist city.
But all of my other cities have all of those buildings reset.
Maybe it was bugged to remember for other cities and CO fixed it? Or maybe it's a bug now? Or maybe it is just using a poor way to save this information. I constantly have a new computer. I maintain my family's computers as well s my friends' computers, and even all of thier friends' as well. lol So I usually sell my rig to someone when they need an upgrade and hen build myself a new computer.
I'll test my cities and other computers to see if I can replicate this. Even a new city. I sadly demolished my tourism city as they fixed toirism a while back and it killed my city. So I can't load my old city and see if it reactivated the buildings or not.
The data about which unique buildings you have unlocked has always been saved locally on the computer you play and it is not stored in the saves. If you transfer a save with, let's say, Observatory build to another computer where you have not unlocked Observatory, the city in that save will still have the Observatory built. However, if you then delete that Observatory, you can't build a new one until you unlock it again by having at least 1000 abandoned buildings for at least five weeks (in some save, not necessarily that same one).
If you want to transfer the data about those unlocks to a new computer (like I did), you can copy userGameState.cgs from C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Local\Colossal Order\Cities_Skylines in your old computer to the same folder in you new computer.
