Moving a Save File to Another PC

[absentimental]

I'm going out of town this weekend, to a friend's who has the game. I want to play a bit, maybe, and would rather not start over. I was wondering if anybody has had any experience and success by simply copying save files and pasting them into the save folder on another PC?

It seems like it should work, but you never know with these things.

[vironix]

it works...

[Nano]

yep it works

you can share your characters with your friends, hell you can even play there characters

[absentimental]

Originally Posted by Nano

yep it works

you can share your characters with your friends, hell you can even play there characters

Good to know, thanks.

Is it just the Save00xx.sav file or whatever that you need? Also does re-naming the file cause problems?

[Corion]

Moving/renaming save files can cause problems.

There is a byte of code within the save file that tells it which slot to save to.

E.g.:
You have 2 characters you play as. Your friend has 3 characters on his computer. You copy your first character, "YourCharOne" to your friend's computer (the file is Save0001.sav), but you rename it to "Sav0004.sav" so you don't replace one of your friends' characters.

When you save your character, since the save file has "01" in it as the location to save to, you will overwrite your friend's first character save.

There are a couple of workarounds:

• Backup your friend's saves to a different folder, and then put your Save0001.sav in the folder as the only file. When you're done playing at your friend's house, you can move his saves back to the save folder.
• Edit the save file with a hex editor.
  THIS METHOD IS NOT RECOMMENDED UNLESS YOU ARE 100% CERTAIN YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR ACTIONS IF YOU MESS THIS UP. (And neither is gearbox.)
  1. Download a hex editing program to use. (I picked HxD from download.com)
  2. Backup your save file so you don't wreck it.
  3. Rename the save file to the save number you want (i.e. duplicate "Save0001" as "Save0005")
  4. Open your save file and look for the following hex value "D6 8E 02".
  5. DO NOT SAVE THE FILE UNTIL THIS TUTORIAL TELLS YOU TO.
  6. The byte immediately after this corresponds to the save slot the file should save to.
  7. Change the value to the save slot you want the file to occupy. 01 = Save0001, 02 = Save0002, etc.
     Keep in mind that this value is in hex, so save slot Sav0010 is "0A" in hex. If you need help, go look up a decimal to hex converter online.
  8. The next part is a little tricky - there's a timestamp within your save file that needs to be altered or your game will crash when it tries to load the save data.
     Search for the date the file was saved in this format (in the text string portion of the file): YYYYMMDDhhmmss. If you don't know the exact date, the year will probably suffice. For example, today's date is Oct 30, 2009, and it's approximately 12:36:01 PM. The string for this would be 20091030123601. If you don't know it exactly, you can just search for "200910" and it should find it. Additionally, you can check the file's "Date Modified" to find out when it was saved.
     Keep in mind that the hour is stored in 24-hour format, so 3:22 PM = 1522
  9. Open your computer's clock and look at the current time. Pick a time that is 10 or so seconds into the future and type that value into the file at the timestamp location in YYYYMMDDhhmmss format.
  10. When the computer's time hits the time you picked, save the file.
  11. Do not save the file again unless you save it on the corresponding time or re-edit it first. Then exit the program.
  12. The "modified" time of the file must correspond to the value you entered, or the game will crash.
  13. If the game crashes when it tries to load the saves, just restore the back-up file and give up.

[jujubean]

Thankyou for posting that Corion, I was almost there, but this saved me a headache. On the first day, I made 1 of each char, promptly copied 2-3x and renamed the save files. Talk about fun... thankfully, only 1 character was in jeopardy. And now, is not.

[absentimental]

Originally Posted by Corion

Moving/renaming save files can cause problems.

Thanks for that. Saved the possibility of a headache!

[polarity]

You should be able to find utilities that can change the modified time for the file, so you just have to reset it to what it was before you saved, instead of having to work out a new code to put inside the file.

Alternatively, I'm sure some clever person can write a utility to take a save game file, and make all the codes in it match the name you've given it, and update the time then save it. I'd do it myself, but I code in Python, and use py2exe, so the programs are a bit bloated from needing a whole set of python .dlls included with them. If someone knows Visual Basic or C, they can probably get the program well under the couple of megabytes it would be if I was to do it.