Ludusavi

Ludusavi is a tool for backing up your PC video game save data, written in Rust. It is cross-platform and supports multiple game stores.

Features

• Ability to back up data from more than 7,000 games plus your own custom entries.
• Backup and restore for Steam as well as other game libraries.
• Preview of the backup/restore before actually performing it.
• Both a graphical interface and command line interface for scripting.
• Support for:
  • Saves that are stored as files and in the Windows registry.
  • Proton saves with Steam.
  • Steam screenshots.
• Available as a Playnite extension: https://github.com/mtkennerly/ludusavi-playnite

This tool uses the Ludusavi Manifest for info on what to back up, and it will automatically download the latest version of the primary manifest. The data is ultimately sourced from PCGamingWiki, so please contribute any new or fixed data back to the wiki itself, and your improvements will be incorporated into Ludusavi's data as well.

Demo

GUI

CLI

Installation

Requirements

Ludusavi is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac. However, your computer must support one of these graphics systems: Vulkan, DirectX (11 or 12), or Metal. (Experimental builds with OpenGL support are also available - give them a try if the standard builds don't work on your system.)

Methods

You can install Ludusavi one of these ways:

• Download the executable for your operating system from the releases page. It's portable, so you can simply download it and put it anywhere on your system. If you're unsure, choose this option.

• On Windows, you can use Scoop. To install, run:

  scoop bucket add extras scoop install ludusavi

  To update, run:

  scoop update scoop update ludusavi

• If you have Rust, you can use Cargo. To install or update, run:

  cargo install ludusavi

  On Linux, this requires the following system packages, or their equivalents for your distribution:

  • Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install -y gcc cmake libx11-dev libxcb-composite0-dev libfreetype6-dev libexpat1-dev libfontconfig1-dev

Notes

If you are on Windows:

• When you first run Ludusavi, you may see a popup that says "Windows protected your PC", because Windows does not recognize the program's publisher. Click "more info" and then "run anyway" to start the program.

If you are on Mac:

• When you first run Ludusavi, you may see a popup that says "Ludusavi can't be opened because it is from an unidentified developer". To allow Ludusavi to run, please refer to this article, specifically the section on How to open an app [...] from an unidentified developer.

Usage

GUI

Backup mode

• This is the default mode when you open the program.
• You can press preview to see what the backup will include, without actually performing it.
• You can press back up to perform the backup for real.
  • If the target folder already exists, it will be deleted first and recreated, unless you've enabled the merge option.
  • Within the target folder, for every game with data to back up, a subfolder will be created based on the game's name, where some invalid characters are replaced by _. In rare cases, if the whole name is invalid characters, then it will be renamed to ludusavi-renamed-<ENCODED_NAME>.
  • Within each game's subfolder, there will be a mapping.yaml file that Ludusavi needs to identify the game. There will be some drive folders (e.g., drive-C on Windows or drive-0 on Linux and Mac) containing the backup files, matching the normal file locations on your computer.
  • If the game has save data in the registry and you are using Windows, then the game's subfolder will also contain a registry.yaml file. If you are using Steam and Proton instead of Windows, then the Proton *.reg files will be backed up along with the other game files instead.
• Roots are folders that Ludusavi can check for additional game data. When you first run Ludusavi, it will try to find some common roots on your system, but you may end up without any configured. You can click add root to configure as many as you need, along with the root's type:
  • For a Steam root, this should be the folder containing the steamapps and userdata subdirectories. Here are some common/standard locations:
  • Windows: C:/Program Files (x86)/Steam
  • Linux: ~/.steam/steam
  • For the "other" root type, it should be a folder whose direct children are individual games. For example, in the Epic Games store, this would be what you choose as the "install location" for your games (e.g., if you choose D:/Epic and it creates a subfolder for D:/Epic/Celeste, then the root would be D:/Epic).
• To select/deselect specific games, you can run a preview, then click the checkboxes by each game. You can also press the deselect all button (when all games are selected) or the select all button (when at least one game is deselected) to quickly toggle all of them at once. Ludusavi will remember your most recent checkbox settings.

Restore mode

• Switch to restore mode by clicking the restore mode button.
• You can press preview to see what the restore will include, without actually performing it.
• You can press restore to perform the restore for real.
  • For each subfolder in the source directory, Ludusavi looks for a mapping.yaml file in order to identify each game. Subfolders without that file, or with an invalid one, are ignored.
  • All files from the drive folders are copied back to their original locations on the respective drive. Any necessary parent directories will be created as well before the copy, but if the directories already exist, then their current files will be left alone (other than overwriting the ones that are being restored from the backup).
  • If the game subfolder includes a registry.yaml file, then the Windows registry data will be restored as well.

• You can use redirects to restore to a different location than the original file. Click add redirect, and then enter both the old and new location. For example, if you backed up some saves from C:/Games, but then you moved it to D:/Games, then you would put C:/Games as the source and D:/Games as the target.

  Tip: As you're editing your redirects, try running a preview and expanding some games' file lists. This will show you in real time what effect your redirects will have when you perform the restore for real.

• You can select/deselect specific games in restore mode just like you can in backup mode. The checkbox settings are remembered separately for both modes.

Custom games

• Switch to this mode by clicking the custom games button.
• You can click add game to add entries for as many games as you like. Within each game's entry, you can click the plus icons to add paths (files or directories) and registry keys.
  • For paths, you can click the browse button to quickly select a folder. The path can be a file too, but the browse button only lets you choose folders at this time. You can just type in the file name afterwards.
  • In addition to regular paths, you can also use globs (e.g., C:/example/*.txt selects all TXT files in that folder) and the placeholders defined in the Ludusavi Manifest format.

• Make sure to give the game entry a name. Entries without names are ignored, as are empty paths and empty registry keys.

  If the game name matches one from Ludusavi's primary data set, then your custom entry will override it.

Other settings

• Switch to this screen by clicking the other button.
• This screen contains some additional settings that are less commonly used.

CLI

Run ludusavi --help for the full usage information.

CLI mode defaults to a human-readable format, but you can switch to a machine-readable JSON format with the --api flag. In that case, the output will have the following structure:

• errors (optional, map):
  • someGamesFailed (optional, boolean): Whether any games failed.
  • unknownGames (optional, list of strings): Names of unknown games, if any.
• overall (map):
  • totalGames (number): How many games were found.
  • totalBytes (number): How many bytes are used by files associated with found games.
  • processedGames (number): How many games were processed. This excludes ignored, failed, and cancelled games.
  • processedBytes (number): How many bytes were processed. This excludes ignored, failed, and cancelled games.

• games (map):

  • Each key is the name of a game, and the value is a map with these fields:

  • decision (string): How Ludusavi decided to handle this game.

    Possible values:

    • Processed
    • Ignored
    • Cancelled
  • files (map):
    • Each key is a file path, and each value is a map with these fields:
    • failed (optional, boolean): Whether this entry failed to process.
    • bytes (number): Size of the file.
    • originalPath (optional, string): If the file was restored to a redirected location, then this is its original path.
  • registry (map):
    • Each key is a registry path, and each value is a map with these fields:
    • failed (optional, boolean): Whether this entry failed to process.

Note that, in some error conditions, there may not be any JSON output, so you should check if stdout was blank before trying to parse it.

Example:

json { "errors": { "someGamesFailed": true, }, "overall": { "totalGames": 2, "totalBytes": 150, "processedGames": 1, "processedBytes": 100, }, "games": { "Game 1": { "decision": "Processed", "files": { "/games/game1/save.json": { "bytes": 100 } }, "registry": { "HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Game1": { "failed": true } } }, "Game 2": { "decision": "Ignored", "files": { "/games/game2/save.json": { "bytes": 50 } }, "registry": {} } } }

Configuration

Ludusavi stores its configuration in ~/.config/ludusavi (Windows: C:/Users/<your-name>/.config/ludusavi). If you're using the GUI, you don't need to worry about this at all, since the GUI will automatically update the config file as needed. However, if you're using the CLI exclusively, you'll need to edit config.yaml. Here are the available settings (all are required unless otherwise noted):

• manifest (map):
  • url (string): Where to download the primary manifest.
  • etag (string or null): An identifier for the current version of the manifest. This is generated automatically when the manifest is updated.
• roots (list):
  • Each entry in the list should be a map with these fields:
  • path (string): Where the root is located on your system.
  • store (string): Game store associated with the root. Valid options: steam, other
• backup (map):
  • path (string): Full path to a directory in which to save backups. This can be overridden in the CLI with --path.
  • ignoredGames (optional, array of strings): Names of games to skip when backing up. This can be overridden in the CLI by passing a list of games.
  • merge (optional, boolean): Whether to merge save data into the target directory rather than deleting the directory first. Default: false.
  • filter (optional, map):
  • excludeOtherOsData (optional, boolean): If true, then the backup should exclude any files that have only been confirmed for a different operating system than the one you're using. On Linux, Proton saves will still be backed up regardless of this setting. Default: false.
  • excludeStoreScreenshots (optional, boolean): If true, then the backup should exclude screenshots from stores like Steam. Default: false.
• restore (map):
  • path (string): Full path to a directory from which to restore data. This can be overridden in the CLI with --path.
  • ignoredGames (optional, list of strings): Names of games to skip when restoring. This can be overridden in the CLI by passing a list of games.
  • redirects (optional, list):
  • Each entry in the list should be a map with these fields:
    • source (string): The original location when the backup was performed.
    • target (string): The new location.
• customGames (optional, list):
  • Each entry in the list should be a map with these fields:
  • name (string): Name of the game.
  • files (optional, list of strings): Any files or directories you want to back up.
  • registry (optional, list of strings): Any registry keys you want to back up.

Example:

yaml manifest: url: "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mtkennerly/ludusavi-manifest/master/data/manifest.yaml" etag: null roots: - path: "D:/Steam" store: steam backup: path: ~/ludusavi-backup restore: path: ~/ludusavi-backup

Ludusavi also stores manifest.yaml (info on what to back up) here. You should not modify that file, because Ludusavi will overwrite your changes whenever it downloads a new copy.

Comparison with other tools

There are other excellent backup tools available, but not a singular cross-platform and cross-store solution:

• GameSave Manager (as of v3.1.471.0):
  • Only supports Windows.
  • Closed source, so the community cannot contribute improvements.
  • Interface can be slow or unresponsive; e.g., when (de)selecting all checkboxes, it takes half a second per checkbox for them all to toggle.
  • No command line interface.
• Gaming Backup Multitool for Linux (as of v1.4.0.0):
  • Only supports Linux and Steam.
  • Database is not actively updated (as of 2020-06-20, the last update was 2018-06-05).
  • No command line interface.

Development

Please refer to CONTRIBUTING.md.