Savegame Objects not functioned once packaged?

So I’m developing a widget-based character sheet, which is using 3 Savegame Objects. The first is just the game instance. At the moment it only holds the current selections for the second two: User Account and Player Character. When you enter your Username and log in, that gets saved as “Current User” in the game instance. Each user has a list of characters, which loads the saved Player Character when selected.

It has been working just fine during testing so far, but after packaging it for a group playtest I noticed that none of these functions have been working in the packaged build. When you attempt to create a user account or create a character, the Save button does nothing. It doesn’t appear to be creating anything in the folders so I don’t think anything is being saved at all.

The filepath is supposed to be directed toward [Game]/Content/Saves/SavedCharacter, but the packaged build doesn’t have a Saves folder at all.

Has anyone experienced this before? Any solutions? Again it’s working perfectly fine in the viewport and PIE, just not running on Windows when I’ve packaged it. I’m a beginner, so I might be missing something incredibly simple, but I haven’t been able to find any solutions searching online.

Is it just that the location of the save game is different for a packaged build? Typically it’s

C:\Users\“user”\AppData\Local\“Gamename”\Saved\SaveGames

What do you mean by 3 Savegame Objects? do you mean 3 different USaveGame classes?

I don’t think the path is being changed, but the folders that it’s supposed to be creating don’t exist. I do have “Gamename”\Saved\ but that only contains Config and Logs. It’s also not in AppData, and there’s no entry at all for the game in AppData. I’ve only got a folder on desktop with all the files in it.

I’m honestly not sure about the terminology, but I believe so? I’ve been working exclusively in Blueprints, and I have 1 object with the “GameInstance” parent class, and 2 objects with the “SaveGame” parent class. I believe the GameInstance is actually working, but it can’t do anything because the SavedCharacter and SavedPlayer blueprints aren’t creating save files.

You have to turn on ‘show hidden files’ to find the appdata folder.

Even if you package to the desktop, a distribution build will write to the users profile on the C drive.

I’m in the AppData folder: C:\Users[Me]\AppData\Local, but the game isn’t listed here at all. I even checked the Epic Games folder, Programs folder, and searched for several different titles, first being the name on the Application itself. It just doesn’t seem to be here? Could that be an issue with how I packaged the game?

It might have a name like ‘windows’ or ‘windowseditor’ or…

Also, is it actually packaged for distribution? If you can open the console, then not.

To build it I went to Platforms → Windows, set Binary Configuration to Shipping, and hit Package Project. I changed a few settings in Project Settings according to a guide I was following, but that was all. I don’t know how I would open the console, so I’m not really sure beyond the steps I followed.

If you hit ` ( the key underneath ESC ) and a command line opens up, then it’s not a shipping package.

To be sure, you can package from the launcher on the Tools menu.

So both the application saved to desktop and the package from launcher are letting me open command line. So I’m guessing that means it’s not actually packaged for distribution, but also doesn’t have access to the same file structure as the PIE? If I can package it properly do you think the save feature will work?

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I don’t think it will, but it’s worth having a go :slight_smile: