Backing up your save directory

Your game's save directory is very self-contained. Backing it up is as simple as making a copy!

To find your save directory, open the main menu (☰) and select Options. You will see a text box displaying your save location (Windows example):

Copy the location and navigate to it in your OS' file system (eg: Explorer in Windows, Finder in MacOS). You can now copy the entire directory, zip it, or otherwise store it in a different location.

Do not share your backups in public forums (including the TC Discord server), or with anyone you don't completely trust. In particular, the `settings.txt` file contains a personalized token that can be used to mess with your Steam profile. If you wish to share your designs, make sure you are only sending the `schematics` directory (or better yet, only the specific schematics you're trying to show off).

Restoring a previous backup

Likewise, this is as simply as just locating the copy you made and overwriting the current `Turing Complete` save folder with your backed up copy.

While not strictly required, it is best practice to shut down the game before restoring a backup. The game is fairly good at picking up file system changes (and will not pick up changes for the currently loaded schematic at all), but it's still safest to just restart.

It's generally best to delete the existing `Turing Complete` folder before restoring a backup, to avoid leaving unexpected files behind. Make sure to back it up first if you might decide to switch back in the future!

Steam's cloud sync system will interfere and attempt to revert back to the data it last knew about. It is recommended that you turn the cloud sync off, restore your save, and then (if desired) turn cloud sync back on. Steam with show a `Cloud conflict` when you try to start the game again. Select "Local Save" to update Steam's storage with the data from your newly-restored save directory. This can take a while and you may need to attempt synchronization a few times if you have a lot of schematics. Steam will eventually get all of them though, and you'll be back to normal syncing of smaller changes after that.

Starting fresh

If you wish to completely erase your progress and start a fresh game, all that's needed is to delete your `Turing Complete` save directory and restart the game. All of the warnings under the Restoring a previous backup section apply.