I want to play this game again, but without cloud saves this game is far too difficult for me to find time for. Enabling basic cloud sync functionality is exceptionally easy, and there's no excuse to not have them. I can only assume Mason wasn't aware of them at launch and never bothered adding them in after, even though doing so would still be incredibly simple. More direct information on how Steam Cloud works can be found at this website. This will be a step-by-step on how Mason is to implement cloud saves properly within Hylics 2, including how to allow them to sync between the Windows and Mac versions of the game.

In your Steamworks App Admin panel, you should see an option for "Steam Cloud Settings". This page asks you for "Byte quota per user" and "Number of files allowed per user options" variables; looking at the save files for Hylics 2, they don't appear very large.

Most developers set the byte quota to 10000000 (around 10 MB), but you can change this if you feel. I'm not 100% sure how many save files Hylics allows you to have, but that should be what you put in for the number of files, though it can be larger if you so wish. There's also an option for dev-only cloud saves, though this should really only be toggled on when you're testing them out.

Now's for the good part. According to Steamworks' documentation, a section titled "Steam Auto-Cloud configuration" should appear in the Steam Cloud settings. We'll be using this to sync files; there is an API for more complex behaviors, but that's unnecessary for what we're doing. Add a root path; only one, we'll worry about Mac saves in the next section.

The parameters for each section should be set to the following:

WinAppDataLocalLow

Mason Lindroth/Hylics 2

*.save

[All OSes]

Set "Recursive" to FALSE (or true, that option really won't do anything for this game)

You've come this far, and now all you have to do is ensure Mac saves work, too. Great job! Keep in mind if you ever make a Linux build, setting up cloud saves for it will work more or less the same as it does for Mac, only with different directories.

Importantly, you DO NOT ADD IT AS ANOTHER ROOT PATH. Doing that means it will NOT save between Mac and Windows!! SO many developers make that mistake, believe me, and it nearly defeats the purpose of having cloud saves to begin with. Instead, you will want to make use of Root Overrides. Instead of setting up another "area" for save files, overrides will instead treat a different directory as if it was the same directory on Windows.

Within the new Root Override, parameters for each section should be set to the following:

WinAppDataLocalLow

Mac OS X

MacAppSupport

unity.Mason Lindroth.Hylics 2

You're done. Once all that is finished, you have officially added fully-featured, cross-platform cloud saves to your game. Hooray! This same method can also be performed on the original Hylics to allow cloud saves on that, though with different directories. I trust that you can figure it out, you're a grown man, you don't need no internet jackass telling you how it's done.

I have no idea if Mason will see this, but if you do, I BEG of you. Cloud saves improve ease of playing not just for me, but for so many people, even those who don't own a Steam Deck. It really, truly is not that big of a hassle; all it takes is a few minutes of your spare time, maybe a bit of testing, and you add a very important feature for a lot of people out there. Please, man. Please