By Hey everyone!
Several players have recently run into MindWare running out of room for saves and other game data. That is what prompted Public Hotfix 1.
MindWare is built with Twine and the SugarCube engine. SugarCube stores browser saves in an area called localStorage, which is usually limited to roughly 5 MB for an entire site—although the exact allowance varies between browsers. Saves, settings, and other cached game data all have to share that small shelf, so it was only a matter of time before a game as long as MindWare began pushing against it.
However, I made the problem much worse than it needed to be. I had allowed several tracking lists to grow indefinitely, and I was storing bulky information that the game could reconstruct for itself—things like fake PeekStream chat data, full song details, derived image paths, generated notifications, and one entry for every day certain effects occurred. SugarCube also stores several recent moments of game history inside each save so that Back works. That meant the unnecessary data was copied across those history moments and then multiplied again across autosaves and manual save slots.
I’ve burned a lot of midnight oil building a proper fix rather than simply reducing the number of saves players can keep. This hotfix adds a versioned save-upgrade system that safely compacts every recent history moment when an older save is loaded. Reconstructible data is removed, repeated records become compact IDs or last-seen values, player-written notes are preserved, and new saves stay much smaller instead of beginning to grow in the same way again.
There is also a new Storage tab in Settings. It gives you a rough estimate of how much room MindWare is using and breaks down what is taking the space. If a save fails because storage is full, the game offers recovery and export options, lets you choose what to remove, and retries the save. MindWare’s cleanup tools never silently choose a manual save to delete; you remain in control of any deletion.
Other fixes found along the way
While addressing the storage problem, I also fixed a larger collection of issues reported with player saves. Loading returns you to the passage where the save was made, including on slower devices, and using Go Back after a load no longer traps you in a loop with the loading screen.
Several quest states repair themselves correctly when a save is loaded. This includes the completed Hack Drake’s computer and Unlock boyfriend’s phone tasks, the malware-cleanup client’s chat and payout stage, an obsolete reminder that could block sleeping, Crash disappearing before the Reek confrontation was finished, the blank firmware-risk answer at the Aegis hideout, and a missing animation in some of Xavier’s sessions.
Interface and settings cleanup
The third-party-site warning and phone-unlock screen behave better on short or narrow displays. Music volume is remembered after reloading, with a separate music-volume slider added beside Master Volume. The inverted Receive Hentai Images from Cipher option works correctly as well.
Settings is divided into tabs, the Notes app separates player notes from activity messages, game updates, and bookmarks, the malware-cleanup tool reports marked and infected files separately, and the bug-report window fits the rest of the game’s menus.
Download
The hotfix is live:
- Play online: playmindware.com
- Offline downloads and updates: playmindware.com/downloads
There is no new story content in this one, but it should make the game much safer and more reliable for long-running saves. Thank you to everyone who reported these problems and attached saves. Those reports made it possible to track down several issues that were difficult to reproduce from a fresh game.
Archived release announcement. The current version of MindWare is always available at playmindware.com and on the downloads page.
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