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I've reached the saving part of my game, as in, you press save and it writes to a text file, but I've noticed that most games and programs out there use custom save formats, like Dwarf Fortress DAT files. What are these? are these just text files formatted for the program, or are they a lower level thing?

Russell
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  • This question is not directly related to the game development. – user14170 Apr 03 '12 at 15:12
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    Nor does it show any research effort. – House Apr 03 '12 at 15:13
  • @user14170 Where should I put it? I'm not sure if programmers or stack overflow would accept it, but I could be wrong. – Russell Apr 03 '12 at 15:13
  • @Byte56 A Google search didn't bring up anything. – Russell Apr 03 '12 at 15:15
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    What you're asking about are called file extensions. Google that. – House Apr 03 '12 at 15:17
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    If you want to know what those files are, you should have searched for them directly: a search for PPTX, a search for JPEG, for example. –  Apr 03 '12 at 15:19
  • @Byte56 Thanks, file extension brought up a huge number of results. – Russell Apr 03 '12 at 15:19
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    @JoshPetrie It wasn't those files I was interested in, it was game save files in general. – Russell Apr 03 '12 at 15:20
  • @Russell: .PPT, .PPTX, .KEY, .JPG, and .JPEG are not save game formats. The last two are image formats; they store pictures. .ppt and .pptx are Microsoft Power Point files. I have no idea what a .key file is, but odds are good that it isn't a game's save file format. So, if you're asking about "game save files in general," remove your mention of these formats from your question. They only confuse the issue. – Nicol Bolas Apr 03 '12 at 15:24
  • @NicolBolas I don't normally play games, so I don't know many save game formats, but I've changed the question to say Dwarf Fortress DAT files, and, you are right, .key is for mac keynote files, which is not a game. – Russell Apr 03 '12 at 15:27
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    I think everyone is attacking @Russell too much. The question may have been worded poorly but the question is still valid. Perhaps "How do you design/implement save files?" would have been a better way of going about it. – Mike Cluck Apr 03 '12 at 16:41

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Many games use a proprietary format for saving data, which they serialize in either plain text or binary form. The format of that data is entirely up to the game, as is the extension the author chooses to use (if one is chosen at all).

That said, all the extensions you've listed probably aren't saved game data at all, because they all have canonical uses elsewhere. PPT and PPTX are usually PointPoint slide decks, JPG and JPEG are image files, and KEY, while less of a de-facto standard, sounds more like a file used to store license key information or something rather than game data.

  • .Key is the mac keynote save, I just used it because I couldn't think of game save files of the top of my head (I don't normally play many games) I'll accept this answer after Stack Overflow allows me. – Russell Apr 03 '12 at 15:18