I have had it with not being able to install the NMS v1.07 update. Tech support has not even bothered to reply to my last two "What do I try next?" tickets.

1) What do I save if I want to back up my NMS save files?

2) How do I completely scrub GOG Galaxy from my computer?

3) How do I correctly reinstall No Man's Sky?

Thanks.

1) Well your game saves are in this folder (username is you or whoever you are logged in as)

C:\Users\%usersname%\AppData\Roaming\HelloGames\NMS\DefaultUser\cache

2) This will take some time and patience. You will have use Control Panel to uninstall it, then edit your registry of everything that the uninstall leaves behind, which a lot. Search for Gog Galaxy and delete what you find. I spent 2 days editing out all that was left over from a Nero uninstall to get my microphone working. Tip: F3 is your friend, after your done going thru the registry using F3, go thru at least once more it will miss items. Back up your Registry first, then start editing, bad things can happen if you make a mistake.

3) Download the game file and run it. On this front you may want to do step 2 with NMS, searching the registry for "No Man's Sky, and Hello Games. Then download and install. Also put your saves back if you want.

Did you ever use Beta channels for NMS? If so, you need to change it back to DEFAULT in order for normal updates to proceed. I found this out the hard way as I too was not getting 1.07 update, but once I switched from the specific Beta channel to DEFAULT it perked right up and downloaded immediately.

You can launch any of the games you install via galaxy from the shortcut as well, if you want to (without launching goglaxy first, and glaxy won't start in the background, etc). It's.. sort of just a useful frontend for patches and so on, if some games get a lot of them for a while, etc. If developers start using the beta-channels, it has another real use.

But otherwise, follow misscrabtree's recipe (just be careful with the registry edits... gog-packages also tend to be sane, so to speak, so they clean up after themselves. Also don't install any weird stuff, other than the background service. Only annoyance probably is that it defaults to starting up automatically on boot by default - there's a switch in the settings tab to turn that off).

And I think the savegame/userfile location is the same between the versions - anyone know that for certain? If not, it may be placed in the game-folder. It does install as a normal user, though, so you won't get another entry in the admin dir or something like that (but milage may vary with earlier windows versions). But you lose your gog user-name as the name of your explorer, etc.

And you have to uninstall the gog-version (you can uninstall nms in either goglyx or the program manager) and apply the patches to the download version - they are not compatible with the gog-version. So can't update to any potential new offline patches from the glaxy version.

But just saying - completely possible to run goglaxy once in a while for the patch-updates, and just launch the game from the shortcut.

Are you quite sure? All that directory contains is a bunch of 22k files. Somewhere I'd got the idea NMS keeps the last five saves. (And if they're 22k, I'm impressed.) Which game file? Currently there's "part 1 of 2", "part 2 of 2" and three patches. I'm guessing download the first two? Then do I run them both, or does "part 1" launch "part 2" itself? (I think I installed NMS by running 1 then 2, but I'm not sure.) I never got GOG Galaxy working, if that's what Beta channels refers to. Tech support kept me busy downloading and trying to install stuff from Microsoft which kept telling me I already had it. When I found I couldn't install the NMS v1.07 patch and tech support wanted me to uninstall the Windows stuff and reinstall it, I decided it was time to cut the Gordian knot and uninstall GOG Galaxy.

Despite never being able to run Galaxy, the patch seems to think I have the Galaxy version of NMS installed. It says it's "incompatible" with my version of NMS. I noticed that two days after I sent in my last tech support ticket.

Thanks, everyone.

:) the /cache directory holds the unuploaded discoveries, I think. Save-files are in the defaultuser-directory. Actual save-file is 1.5kb or something. ..which is possible, if you're not.. serializing every object in the game-world down in the save-file every time like a certain well-known foundation software does..

Btw, missing visual studio runtime libraries (I'm guessing that's the problem) can be many and varied depending on windows version, update state, the weather and if the coffee-maker is done or not. But usually works if you install both 32-bit and 64-bit versions (it has to do with some windows-check that needs implied functionality to be present for backwards-compatibility in visual studio before it allows the actual library to run).

And I think Judas said the install-version just insisted on reminding you that the install-version patches should not be installed on top of the gloxy version. That it shouldn't refuse installing altogether, etc.

That still doesn't seem to be it, I'm afraid. That directory contains six files: three 1k ones called mf_storage and three 833k ones called storage. Definitely a coffee maker situation. The page for help with Galaxy tells you to do that, but it's easy to overlook. My actual problem is the library installation file ... won't. When the v1.07 patch said it would "break" the game if I (unknowingly) had the Galaxy version, I cancelled. At that point it told me it was incompatible with my version. GOG can't tell me with certainty if that's a rogue message or if it's true. I don't want to force it and find out days or weeks later that it *did* break things in the game. But until I find and back up my save files, I can't scrub this mess out and get a version I *know* isn't tangled up in Galaxy.

Thanks.

No, those are the saves. Two slots + some realworld environment data of some sort.

And the patch-thing - it only depends on whether or not you used the gog-installer to install the game, or used goglaxy. The files are the same, built from the same archive (or gog creates the install-files from what galaxy pulls down). But presumably there's some user-files and some init or other that isn't using the same process.

So that's why the entire.. not quite sure if the user-directory is identical between the installs comes from. Most likely it's not going to be a problem.

Honestly, you really should go for the goglaxy install, though. Because of patches and things turning up for the galaxy branch first. A lot easier all round. Seems to me gog is serious about the "always optional" thing as well, so.. not having huge reservations about it personally.

Generally - having a client like this is pretty much the same as having a client interface able to pull a branch off Git, for example, without being able to edit or push changes. So it saves a lot of effort for one, and having that as a baseline for how clients such as this should work is useful. That it's just tied to your account on gog, rather than, say, gog's entire advertisement channel and an external datamining operation. While not, like Origin, for example, also being tied to the publisher's channel without any reservation, so updates only come packaged in the way the publisher signs off on.

This is the "console" approach, like what Sony has with the psn, EA with Origin, Activision with Actiworld (or whatever it is), Ubisoft with Uplay - that they have just kept the whole distribution channel in the way it was from physical releases. Q&A and approval processes included. Having those deployment channels available for the dev more directly, like gog is doing, and Valve to some extent with Steam, is sort of - how it's supposed to be done.

Outstanding questions on the goglaxy thing is probably the datamining, traffic-data and how exactly it's tied to your personal account. But at least they very deliberately avoid storing real names, purchase information and so on online. And make some effort to specifically avoid sending purchasing information through their servers directly, I've noticed (unlike Steam, which saves the entire thing on Valve's servers, and insists you should have to send a lot more data than needed - partially owing to the fact that Steam does not have to conform to EU regulations on that specific issue about privacy).

But overall - not a bad app, imo. And like said, it's literally a more efficient frontend that replaces the gog-installer application (which.. arguably is more sketchy than goglaxy). Understand your reservations about it very well, though.

misscrabtree456: 1) Well your game saves are in this folder (username is you or whoever you are logged in as)

C:\Users\%usersname%\AppData\Roaming\HelloGames\NMS\DefaultUser\cache
Are you quite sure? All that directory contains is a bunch of 22k files. Somewhere I'd got the idea NMS keeps the last five saves. (And if they're 22k, I'm impressed.)

There is an app that will keep your save game files, but you would have to have had it running. I used it once when the game screwed up and had to go back when it wasn't, and I believe you a right those are not actual save game files. I recall using 2 files to replace the save.