Saves

In the game

Key or option	What it does
F5	Quicksave to quicksave.zsave.
F9	Quickload it, like rejoining.
Closing the window	Autosaves to autosave.zsave. So does Ctrl-C in the terminal.
--load autosave	Start from a save by name, or --load path/to/file.zsave.
--saves DIR	Where saves go (default saves/ in the folder you run from).

A quickload of a different town (another seed or map size) is refused: start with --load for that.

On the server

--save PATH loads that file if it’s there, or makes a new world and saves it there. It autosaves every --autosave-mins minutes of real time when something changed, and on shutdown. Over MCP, save {name} and load {name} use named saves in the --saves folder, and saves lists them.

What’s in a save

Everything the future depends on: every zombie on every tier with its memory, players with their wounds, needs, skills and inventories, doors and windows and their damage, items on the floor, opened containers, the clock and both random streams. A loaded world carries on exactly as the saved one would have: the same state hash, and the same future for the same moves.

The town itself isn’t stored. It’s regenerated from the seed and the building templates, and the doors and windows changed since are applied on top. That keeps a save small: about 270 KB for the default map with nearly 3,000 zombies, and 2 MB for a 1 km map with 22,500.

Saves and changed data

A save remembers the game data it was made with. If the data has changed since (a new version, or a mod):

• Compatible changes load with a note: weapon and item numbers, new items, weapons and recipes, loot tables (unopened containers fill from the new ones), population settings.
• Incompatible ones are refused: a building template that changes the map, or a removed item or weapon the save still uses. --load-anyway (or load {force: true} over MCP) loads it regardless: it drops what no longer fits, moves players and zombies off ground that’s now blocked, and says what it did.

Damaged and tampered files are refused too, with a reason, never a crash. Saves from much older versions of the game may not load while Zombye is in pre-alpha.