Tentaculo

How many times have you been in a situation in which you have lost your game saves after formatting your system? Or just trying to make copies of you save files but without knowing where to look for those files?

The objective of Tentaculo is to provide a common format to describe where save files are located and a tool to copy those files to a central location with a simple command.

Please note that although the main objective of Tentaculo is to work with game saves it can also serve to centralize any other kind of files on the system so might as well be used to backup other kind of information. Disclaimer: I'm releasing this tool and have tested it to some extend but use it on your own risk.

Right now Tentaculo will only work on Windows Vista and 7. In the future it should be simple to add support for other operative system (OS) but since the majority of the games are available on Windows that is my first objective.

Descriptors

To backup save files the first thing you will need is to get or create a descriptor file indicating where to find the save files for the game in a system. Descriptors are creating in YAML the format used is:

## Machinarium Tentaculo descriptor.
---

# Name for the folder in the target path.
Target folder name: Machinarium

# Directories and files where the save files for the game are store in MS Windows systems.
# The order of the paths determine both the backup and the restoration order.
Windows source paths:
 - '[APPDATA]\Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects\[ANY_DIRECTORY]\localhost\program files (x86)\steam\steamapps\common\machinarium\Machinarium.exe\'
 - '[APPDATA]\Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects\[ANY_DIRECTORY]\localhost\program files\steam\steamapps\common\machinarium\Machinarium.exe\'

Descriptors Syntax

Each descriptor file needs to include the following properties:

• Target folder name
• Windows source paths

In the future there could be paths for other OS and that might make the "Windows source paths" section optional but until then it is required.

The "Target folder name" property is the name that Tentaculo will use to store the files from this descriptor within the target folder (more on that in the "Using Tentaculo" section bellow) so you might want to make it the name of the game you want to backup.

Now for the "Windows source paths", those are the actual files or folder that are going to be copied. You can use base paths from the system by placing a keyword within [ and ]. The next section details the paths that are available for Windows in the current release.

Windows Keywords

Since games can store the saves information in different locations depending on the system configuration Tentaculo uses keywords to refer special paths in the system, the paths that are currently available are:

• [TEMP] Temporal files directory for the current user.
• [PROGRAMS_32] Program files directory for 32bits programs.
• [PROGRAMS_64] Program files directory for 64bits programs.
• [APPDATA] The default location for standard application settings
• [LOCAL] The default location for system-specific application settings
• [PUBLICDATA] The default location for cross-user application settings
• [PUBLIC] The default location for cross-user system settings
• [SAVEDGAMES] The Windows Vista default Saved Games folder
• [USER_HOME] Current user home directory.
• [DOCUMENTS] The default location for the "My Documents" shell folder/library for the current user
• [USERNAME] The name of the Windows account you use on your computer
• [ANY_DIRECTORY] Search in all directories for the appropriate one. Can NOT be used as the last portion of the path.

The only special case is the [ANY_DIRECTORY] which can't be use as the last portion on a path since it requires the next portion of the path to identify what it refers to. In the example descriptor:

 - '[APPDATA]\Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects\[ANY_DIRECTORY]\localhost\program files (x86)\steam\steamapps\common\machinarium\Machinarium.exe\'

That path is translated to C:\Users\XXX\AppData\Roaming\Macromedia\Flash Player#SharedObjects\3VFQEBA7\localhost\program files (x86)\steam\steamapps\common\machinarium\Machinarium.exe\ note that [ANY_DIRECTORY] was replaced with 3VFQEBA7 but to do that Tentaculo had to know what to look for inside that directory and see if that matched.

Using Tentaculo

To use Tentaculo you need to have Java 6+ installed in your machine, then download the latest release version or build it from the source code. Unzip the release in your system, open a shell, browse for the folder where you unzipped Tentaculo and execute the following command:

java -jar Tentaculo.jar

Tentaculo will print the following information: Tentaculo expects the following parameters: [-backup] CONFIGURATION_PATH -backup Optional. Performs the backup in addition to printing the translated paths. CONFIGURATION_PATH Required. Path to the configuration file

Example: Tentaculo -backup "c:\tentaculo\config.yml"

In the release package you can find the file config.yml with default settings for Tentaculo the format of the file is the following:

## Tentaculo configuration file.
---
# System path where the game save's descriptors are store. Replace XXXX with your username.
Game descriptors path: C:\tentaculo\descriptors\
# System folder where the retrieved save files will be store. It will be created if doesn't exists.
Target path: C:\tentaculo\saves\

There are 2 settings in the file, the "Game descriptors path" is where Tentaculo will look for descriptor files to process. The "Target path" is where the files are going to be copy. So edit the config.yml file and set the paths to what you need them to be. When done execute the following command:

java -jar Tentaculo.jar config.yml

If there are no decriptors in the descriptors path you will get an error message, otherwise you will see the number of descriptors found and the paths that are found in each one. This won't copy any files but will only show the paths for each descriptor. Finally if the paths look good, you can execute the following command to perform the backup:

java -jar Tentaculo.jar -backup config.yml

Tentaculo will present the same information about the descriptors and will present messages as it process each of the descriptors in the descriptors folder.

Current features

• Reads descriptors and translate paths
• Copy files to central directory
• Support for Windows Vista and 7

What is next

• Execute the backup of only one descriptor
• Files restoration feature
• Graphic interface
• Add Steam specific keywords
• Add support for Windows XP, Mac and Linux
• Tool to create Descriptors

Gibberish

I created this project to solve the save files backup problem but also as an exercise to improve my development skills. I invite anyone to contact me with suggestions or push request that would improve the quality of the code. Ideas on new features are welcome as well.

I can be reach at twitter @hjmmm, email or in my blog