Quantum Break – Script That Will Periodically Save Your Game

Simple Powershell Script That Will Periodically Save Your Game As You Play

Note: Credit goes to Thrawn

I just played (and beat) this game for the first time. It was… mostly enjoyable, but as I was learning how to use the Vision power to look for the secrets and collectibles, I definitely missed a few in the early levels. When I realized that since the game doesn’t have the ability to use save slots, I got frustrated when I realized that I’d need to replay an entire “Act X, Part Y” level in order to go back and collect the thing that I missed.

I played Control when it came out in 2020, and wow the open world idea is way better to have collectibles in. For a completely linear game like Quantum Break, I didn’t like being led through a level, miss out on a collectible in the room/area behind me, and have zero way to get back and keep looking for it if I accidentally triggered a story-progressing cutscene as I was running around and searching for stuff.

So! I wrote a simple powershell script that can run on any version of Windows, to automate backing up the game’s save files – if they’re in their default locations, that is.

Background and Getting Started

Take the code from the last section of this guide, copy it all into a new file – name it whatever you want, like QuantumBreakSaver.ps1 but it really doesn’t matter as long as it ends in PS1. As the instructions in the code say, all you need to do is right click the PS1 file and run it, before you want to start playing the game.

If you find you missed something in a part of the game and want to go back to try it over again to find the collectible, refer to the timestamps that each folder is labeled with. You’ll usually want to go back 5 or 10 minutes or so. By default, the code will make a new copy of the game’s save folder every 5 minutes but if you want to adjust that (to have more or less granularity) simply adjust the “Start-Sleep” value on line 18 to a new number, in seconds, that you want the script to wait before making a new backup copy.

Enjoy!

Disclaimer – Be Cautious With Code!

You should always be very suspicious when random “helpful people” on the internet tell you to “save this code as a file, then run it on your computer!” You have every right to be suspicious of me, too!

That’s why I put comments (with # marks in front of it) before every section of script code. You should feel absolutely justified in looking what commands like “Copy-Item” and “Start-Sleep” and “Get-Process” do; you do not want to just take people’s words that their code is safe.

Thankfully for you, this is a VERY simple powershell script. It’s about 7 lines of actual script code. It won’t take you too long to look it up.

Powershell Script Code (Save This Section’s Text As a PS1 File)

#Simple Powershell script to back up Quantum Break save game files
#Instructions:
#Simply right click this file, as a .ps1 file, and select "run with powershell"
#Then launch Quantum Break via Steam or however (as long as it uses the executable "quantumbreak.exe" it will work


#this part just makes the script wait 2 minutes before checking if the game is running
Start-Sleep -s 120 -Verbose

#This do loop section checks if the game is running, and if it is, copies the savegame folder to the location your .ps1 file was running from with the Date and Time
do{
    $running = Get-Process quantumbreak -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
    if ($running)
    {
        Copy-Item -Recurse "$($env:LOCALAPPDATA)\QuantumBreak\19631580\savegames\savegames" "$($PSScriptRoot)\$(Get-Date -Format "yyyy-MM-dd HHmm")\"
        
        #Now, wait for 5 minutes before doing it again... unless...
        Start-Sleep -s 300
    }
#...If powershell detects the game's process is not running at the end of that 5 minutes, end the 'do loop' which ends the script.
} while ((Get-Process quantumbreak -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) -ne $null)