How can I back up my game I am making and have put considerable time into (e.g. in case my computer hard drive crashes). I would like to save something off to an external drive. I would also like to know how to restore it.
If you don’t have some kind of version control software (Perforce, Subversion, Git, etc.) then the quickest way to make a backup is go to the menu bar at the top of the editor and select File > Package Project > Zip Up Project. This will generate a ZIP archive of your project, minus things like temporary files and derived data that you don’t really need for backup purposes.
To restore it, simply unpack the ZIP into a folder and double-click the project file.
I’ve had the worst experience with this.
If you have any plugins, make sure to back them up also.
Otherwise, just copy the project directory.