Minecraft – load and save the Minecraft maps to My Dropbox

minecraft-java-edition

Is it possible to setup Minecraft so that the maps are loaded and saved from a different folder (like my Dropbox folder)?

Where are they stored by default?

Best Answer

You would need soft links to do that.

Create a soft link from your minecraft savegame folder to inside the Dropbox folder.

However, it will be quite suboptimal. Minecraft stores save games in many, many small files and Dropbox does not support folder-wide rollbacks.

What I would use instead is a source control versioning system.

First time setup

  1. Learn the basics of Mercurial
  2. Get Mercurial for your operative system
    • If you use a modern operative system, use your distribution's package manager.
    • For other operative systems, download mercurial here.
  3. Run hg init on your save folder
  4. Run hg add; hg commit to save the state of your game.

Backing up

  1. Play the game normally.
  2. When you close the game, run hg commit again to save the state of your game. Give a meaningful commit message (e.g. "got my first iron pickaxe!")

This, except maybe for the commit message, should be easily automated with batch files. Here's a very simple bash script for Ubuntu:

java -jar minecraft.jar
cd ~/.minecraft/
hg commit -m `zenity --entry --title Minecraft --text Announce your deeds!`

Going "back in time"

  1. Notice your save file is corrupted.
    • If you did commit last time you played, run hg rollback to undo the last commit and restore the save game to your previous save state.
    • If you did not commit last time you played, run hg revert to restore the save games to your last commit.
  3. Be glad you bothered and keep on playing.

Dropbox backup

While we are scripting, we might as well have a single file copy of your game files to be put on Dropbox.

java -jar minecraft.jar
cd ~/.minecraft/
hg commit -m `zenity --entry --title Minecraft --text Announce your deeds!`
zip -r ~/Dropbox/Minecraft/savefile.zip .

This makes for a much more Dropbox-friendly solution -- just be aware you are backing up the repository, not just the game files. If you want just the latter:

java -jar minecraft.jar
cd ~/.minecraft/
hg commit -m `zenity --entry --title Minecraft --text Announce your deeds!`
hg archive zip ~/Dropbox/Minecraft/savefile.zip

Remote hosting

If you want to keep game files up to date between different machines, it is trivial to do so - even without Dropbox. You can have a remote copy of your repository for free at these hosting solutions. Choose one that will not complain about your not using their service for a non-code project... Intuxication for example.

Be very careful, however -- you want to avoid conflicts. Merging will not work, so you will need to always push after you play and always pull before you play. This is trivial to do if you are using a script:

hg pull #get remote changes 
java -jar minecraft.jar
cd ~/.minecraft/
hg commit -m `zenity --entry --title Minecraft --text Announce your deeds!`
hg push #push to remote server

Specific setup details vary based on your hosting solution.

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