Many versions of XStoryPlayer have a hidden setting: Auto-save on quit. While convenient, this is dangerous. If the game freezes during exit, it writes a half-corrupted auto-save.

Use a PowerShell script to check save file sizes. A normal save is usually 50KB-500KB. If you see a 0KB or 1KB file, that is a corrupted save. Delete it immediately before the player tries to read it and crashes.

Never save over a single file.

Even with perfect habits, things go wrong. Here is the recovery ladder for when you need to save better in crisis mode.

To enable auto-save in XStoryPlayer, you can add the following code to your project's configuration file:

"autoSave": true,
"autoSaveInterval": 5

This will enable auto-save and set the interval to 5 minutes.

To manually save a game in XStoryPlayer, you can use the save() function:

save("game_save");

This will save the game with the label "game_save".

For the paranoid saver:

Some modded versions of XStoryPlayer allow you to export a save file as a plaintext script. This lets you: