Posts

SK's Super Slick and Stealthy Save Saver: my first program for someone else

The problem. Subnautica had a bug: at a certain point in the game it could freeze catastrophically and corrupt your save. The game overwrote a single save file, so if that file was corrupted, that was it. You started a new game.

What I built. I was still teaching myself Python, with the earliest LLMs, and I asked for a problem to solve. My sister had a real one. So I wrote a tray app that runs a simple watchdog. It watches the save folder, and whenever the save changes, it copies the file, adds a timestamp, and keeps the copy in a folder you choose. From the tray, a GUI window lets you restore any copy. I typed a large part of the code myself.

What happened. It worked, and it's public: it backs up saves for Subnautica and Subnautica: Below Zero.

What I learned. It was one of the first programs I wrote for someone else. Asking for someone else's problem is a good way to find a real one to solve.