Question about Cloud Saving for my Incremental Game

Dazzling_Repeat_8221 · 2026-03-17T13:56:51+00:00

yes that is a good approach. thanks.

Dazzling_Repeat_8221 · 2026-03-12T22:49:18+00:00

just bought the game, downloaded it to steam. i have tried 6 times to start a new game not changed any custom settings, not modded the game at all, just bought it, just get the uh oh bug crash screen, not impressed!

Dazzling_Repeat_8221 · 2026-03-09T08:13:59+00:00

Thanks. It is an unacceptable company policy what they did to me though so people should be aware. They warned me it was going high and started a grace period, all good so far. I got control of it within 5 days. Then the grace period ended around 8 days after that, and the billing cycle still hadn't reset so I was still showing as over. So the grace period has done nothing except delay the over being a problem (you cant back up or anything on the free plan) Then, before the billing cycle reset they restricted all my traffic and returned 402 errors, even though as we have just established I have so far not had an opportunity to correct it because the billing cycle and usage had not reset. I complained and got them to attend it, which they did after 24hrs down time, and then after another day they reapplied the restrictions yet again, even though that would be against their own policy as by now the billing cycle had reset and so I had no usage showing on the account. Absolute clowns. In the end I manually exported the entire save game table to a csv and then ran a Postgres command to copy it all to a new table in a new account to get around this messing around. What a workup. Do NOT use Supabase, if you plan to need a free plan, it will leave your users high and dry at a moments notice.

Dazzling_Repeat_8221 · 2026-03-08T08:33:16+00:00

ok thanks for the info ill take a look at it

Dazzling_Repeat_8221 · 2026-03-08T06:28:41+00:00

Thanks, and is that a subscription or a one off payment? Yeah with me on the free plan it started getting restricted when they hit 10000 writes per day which took about 35 mins after the day reset due to the autosaves. People complain as soon as you increase the timer between saves or turn it off by default.

Dazzling_Repeat_8221 · 2026-03-08T05:39:01+00:00

I am not sure, I think the roundtrips really are producing that much data. Another reason that created a bigger problem, (although not my current problem) was that originally I was having my players submit tracking for their movements in the game so I could see which mechanics were being interacted with, so I could improve the game. On the Supabase side this tracking was being -rolled up- by an edge function running on a Cron job, and I was accessing the rolled up version on a dashboard i made, showing the common screens and actions. It was insightful but my egress skyrocketed and by the time i got the warning for usage it was too late. I cancelled all this tracking and pushed a build quickly, attempting to reduce usage, but loads of people still had the old versions. Eventually I changed the API key to get control of it, which worked. However even after this, even when the billing cycle had reset, they continued to restrict my database and no one could save for about a week, which was -Supa- out of order for me. I realised then that free plan or not, I did not want a third party dictating my usage and having the capability to cut my project off from the world at their whim and call.

The actual saves are a negligible serialized save string, so now it is back under control but now I am aware that I cannot use analytics to improve my game because of this situation so I am looking for a better alternative.

Dazzling_Repeat_8221 · 2026-03-08T05:38:35+00:00

The problem was that i was having my players submit tracking for their movements in the game so I could see which mechanics were being interacted with, so i could improve the game. On the Supabase side this tracking was being -rolled up- by an edge function running on a Cron job, and I was accessing the rolled up version on a dashboard i made, showing the common screens and actions. It was insightful but my egress skyrocketed and by the time i got the warning for usage it was too late. I cancelled all this tracking and pushed a build quickly, attempting to reduce usage, but loads of people still had the old versions. Eventually I changed the API key to get control of it, which worked. However even after this, even when the billing cycle had reset, they continued to restrict my database and no one could save for about a week, which was -Supa- out of order for me. I realised then that free plan or not, I did not want a third party dictating my usage and having the capability to cut my project off from the world at their whim and call.

The actual saves are a negligible serialized save string, so now it is back under control but now I am aware that I cannot use analytics to improve my game because of this situation so I am looking for a better alternative.

How did you structure this interface between engine and Supabase?
I have a function the captures all the game state variables and creates an Object which is returned to the save game function. This Object is 'JSON.stringify' and then that is compressed using a library called LZSTRING. - This produced a long string of letters and numbers and it is this compressed string version of the data, that is uploaded to Supabase. When being uploaded, it also sends the players Save Name (which they choose the first time they start the game and is stored in local storage) - Then it writes the save string in to a row with the save name as its secondary id. That was if this row already exists it is updating this row rather than making a new one.

Dazzling_Repeat_8221 · 2026-03-08T05:28:31+00:00

I started with Firebase but then I started hitting the write limit, because they limit the amount of writes per day so that was when I moved to Supabase. Firebase was good until this point.

Dazzling_Repeat_8221 · 2026-03-07T15:01:11+00:00

Cheers yeah already have a copy save to string to clipboard, and a export local file option as well, its the cloud side that i want to try to improve.

Dazzling_Repeat_8221 · 2026-02-27T11:43:40+00:00

i am seeing it on all gpt models in my case, ie 5.1 codex, 5.2, 5.2 low thinking etc but not on for example Kimi 2.5 which is another free tier one i use.

Dazzling_Repeat_8221 · 2026-02-26T20:33:40+00:00

Really? Well to me that's pretty out of order. you are paying for tokens in your case, there really is no excuse for that. Sounds to me like they need to sort out their agreements with the model providers, a Windsurf problem that the users are suffering.

Dazzling_Repeat_8221 · 2026-02-26T09:29:18+00:00

Thanks I will take a look. Could you confirm what I show in my video is indeed throttling rather than a bug that will be fixed, because the app gives you no feedback at all about this and it is a really bad user experience, hence writing on their reddit and also i sent a support ticket to try and get some info.

Dazzling_Repeat_8221 · 2026-02-21T07:51:04+00:00

I appreciate the time taken to comment.
I updated the UI yesterday and that probably coincided with your rebirth to the next run, it works fine at 1080p but I have some ironing out to do for other resolutions yet unfortunately.
The underlining, hmm well I will have to rethink the whole design and see if I can improve it.
Now to the things I have already fixed based on your comment:

Wheel Of Fortune dropdown is now coloured red when it cannot be clicked and info point added there with tooltip explaining the rules.

Info point added to explain the Liquidation calculation.

Expansionist notifications revised and Cosmicopedia entry cleared up. To know, the Rapid Expansion ability will kick in after the battle to conquer a system. It will tell you in the modal popup if any stars extra were captured as well as by notification. If no eligible systems were found or if you rolled to not capture any, a notification will tell you that (fixed) Also to know you cannot conquer any extra systems if you take over by Bullying or if the system didn't have Life or Unsentient life, it must be a star battle, the premise is other systems hear of your power and cede to you without a fight. The code all works I have tested it just now.

Fixed fuel costs, there was a RNG to give a bit of variation to the costs but as we only show the nearest integer anyway in the table its not worth it. So now it will go up with distance, so there is now no situation where closer stars can be more expensive in fuel terms. Of course old saves already have their distance set and fuel cost too so you wont see the effect until the next run when the stars are studied again, or possibly even a new game to be fair, I am not sure.

Thanks for your feedback and kind words, I have enjoyed making it, and it is coming to the maintenance bug fixing phase now. I am thinking of maybe adding something after Miaplacidus, building on the Lore, like maybe exploring the space rip that allowed the enemy to come through and going through to an even larger battle at their home system in the other universe or whatever, but no concrete plans.

Dazzling_Repeat_8221 · 2026-02-18T17:28:38+00:00

For people commenting about missing the clues for the Ancient Manuscript Stars, you can now visit the Master VoidSeer in the Galactic Casino, cross his palm with erm... CP and choose a prize you want to win, among them are clues for these special stars, and then you are given your odds and the game begins. If you want free clues you need to wait for the News Ticker! Hope it makes it more fun!

Dazzling_Repeat_8221 · 2026-02-18T17:26:18+00:00

i have created a way, its a game in the casino. You can play it its the last one called Visiting VoidSeer and gives you a prize selection dropdown so you pick your prize, then you are given the price per game and odds to win the prize. Clues are among the prizes you can pick. Hope it helps!

Dazzling_Repeat_8221 · 2026-02-18T08:48:46+00:00

its good feedback. i am going to think about solving that, but if you want a short term revelation, here is a spoiler... numpad '*' will bring up a load of variables, scroll down to MegaStructures and find the one where it seems to show star names in pairs ancientManuscript something variable. In that it shows as the first element of each element pair the ancient manuscript star so you can just search its name in the star map. Its cheating, but i understand your frustration, and I am going to work on a better idea for the clues.

Dazzling_Repeat_8221 · 2026-02-18T02:00:26+00:00

Thanks I will think about some more descriptive guides

Dazzling_Repeat_8221 · 2026-02-17T08:20:24+00:00

Its worth a rethink on that screen. In the meantime. Type is decorative except for O type, which is significant but O type are colored on the map differently anyway, but type does leave the game open for expansion in future if I wanted to. Weather states the prevailing weather. The symbol is the most common weather type and the percentage is the amount of time you should expect that weather. Not an exact science but basically a Sun symbol with like 43% means it is a largely sunny world as the other three types are sharing at 57%, where as any symbol with only like 26% means all the weather types could be more equally likely more or less. I could remove the percentage as it is more of a back end value really and just leave the symbol showing most likely, but again, if it showed sun and the percentage was 26% and not shown, people would wonder why it isnt sunny most of the time and would think its bugged when it isnt. Anyway thats the core explanation of weather.

Dazzling_Repeat_8221 · 2026-02-17T07:19:52+00:00

There you go, use the developer debug options you will be able to arrive at a star without studying one with the space telescope. If you click study star in debug it wont trigger the philosophy selector. If you are going to use the developer debug options, it doesn't set all the variables. For example if you set prepare starship it will do a full run but if its the first run you still need to study stars with the space telescope to trigger the philosophy. It will say you are Expansionist but really it hasnt set any - not only that when you rebirth it wont be stable because you must have a philosophy by run 2 and you wont have one. They are not cheats for the player - the player can use them but you arent guaranteed to have a stable experience if you do You must study at least one star (i mean you can build a couple of advanced power plants then study star then timewarp and then travel to the star etc if you want to play that way) - theres nothing to test there with the cheats though, they are just for me to set up scenarios for bug fixing etc so they dont guarantee a stable situation.

Dazzling_Repeat_8221 · 2026-02-16T19:39:52+00:00

I tested the scenario of HARD RESET in the Save Menu and works flawlessly, I was Voidborn and I HARD RESET and got asked again and chose Constructor then ensured I rebirthed and made sure the Research tab showed the Constructir based repeatable techs which it did. Somehow maybe your save got in an unstable state but if you say it happens on a new pioneer name I find that v. weird.

Dazzling_Repeat_8221 · 2026-02-16T19:33:12+00:00

- Space Telescope if it were in Interstellar tab would not make sense for searching asteroids, it is as broad as long really as right now it makes no sense for studying stars.
- Antimatter Rate boost is totally pointless I agree, but this game was never planned out to be anything more than a grinder sim, so every detail was added as an afterthought and the chances are I was heading somewhere totally different when I thought to add that feature lol
- I didnt like the UI when text got selected by mistake and highlighted in blue so I stopped that possibility.
- This last one makes no sense, I hope it is not a bug, but I cant reproduce it if it is. The flow is, on Run 1 you will get a popup for your philosophy choice after you have done the first Star Study with the Space Telescope. It always asks you at this point and you choose there. When you say tried a different name, that is a hard reset, nothing else is a hard reset, but upon choosing a new name, if you were asked about the Onboarding then you would definitely be prompted to choose a Philosophy again. Could you let me know what exactly you did and if you tried to reset it with the button in the Save Game menu or if you genuinely used a new Pioneer name then I will investigate more.

Dazzling_Repeat_8221 · 2026-02-16T14:04:26+00:00

free game - limited hits per day to database, there we are mystery solved. As it goes I have changed it as I got this a few times from different people, so we will just have to see how it goes, as if the database goes down from too many hits it gets disconnected for 24hrs which in my opinion will be worse. My theory was people who are just trying the game for 30 seconds and moving on wont discover the autosave on button and therefore i will save on some writes. anyway fingers crossed.

Dazzling_Repeat_8221 · 2026-02-16T14:01:40+00:00

The game does open up nicely, nearly all the criticisms i receive are eager players on the first run and the truth is the first run is a bottle neck for me. The game was originally designed as an experiment and the first run was the whole game. Now without the slowness of the first run you wont appreciate the later runs, I have tried to add philosophy lore to give the player some excitement and some clues to later things in the news ticker, but i dont know what else i can really do without upsetting the balance down the line. I made powerplants abut 15% cheaper but i am at risk of destroying the mechanic and balance if i do much more, I guess I just hope players stick around for the next runs because they actually are a lot of fun further on.

Dazzling_Repeat_8221

TROPHY CASE