Here is a quick breakdown of the user files generated by the game.

All user files will be located in:
Note: The folders AppData and/or LocalLow may be hidden by default on your machine.

For Linux / Proton you will need to locate the emulated app data folder:
Note: .steam will be hidden by default on your machine. The path may be slightly different depending on your Linux version.

• Backups - Contains a backup of the last 10 saves that have occurred in case something bad happens and you wish to manually restore it.
  
• Saves - This folder contains all the files related to your saved games including vessels.
  
• Workshop - This folder contains content related to mods and subscriptions and is covered in detail here: How to Make a Mod

• NautikinAdventures.log - This file contains filtered log data from the game. Normally Unity creates Player.log, but this is the equivalent for the game without some junk that the game engine does not allow you to disable like spam warnings or bugs with the game engine or physics engine itself.
  
• NautikinAdventures-prev.log - This file contains the previous log file from the last time the game was started. Every time you start the game this file will be replaced with the last log file and NautikinAdventures.log will be cleared.
  
• Settings.ss - This is the user config / settings file related to settings you configure in the menus (e.g. Music volume, Keybindings, etc.). This file is used across save files and is also used as the indicator to display the welcome dialog when it is not present. It is not human readable and should not be modified manually.

Your save games are located in the Saves sub directory. Each folder will match the name of the game save created when playing Nautikin Adventures. You should avoid manually changing the names of these directories or files, they can be renamed in game.

Inside a save directory you will find the following:

• Vessels - This directory contains various sub folders for your saved vessels.
  
• Various .ss files - These are non-human readable files related to where stuff is and what is going on in the game when you save. You should not modify these files manually.
  
• World.jpg - This is a screenshot of the view when the game was saved, it is used to display the preview when choosing a game to load in the main menu.

This is the folder where all your saved vessels are stored. Vessels are stored separately per save game. You can check here for how to upload a vessel to the workshop.

• Aircraft - Contains vessel json and image files related to vessels made in the runway.
  
• Ship - Contains vessel json and image files related to vessels made in the dry dock.
  
• Structure - Contains vessel json and images files related to vessels made with build areas.
  
• Part group - Contains part group json and preview image files created with part groups.

Each vessel you save will have 3 files associated with it:

• .json - This is the json file that contains information about the vessel created in build mode. It is intended to be as small as possible because it is used in multiplayer so many of the parameters are minified and not really human readable. It is not recommended you edit these files manually.
  
• .jpg - There are 2 jpg files. One if for the preview shown when loading a vessel, the other is a higher resolution image in case you decide to upload it to the workshop. Both of these files are updated when you save the vessel.

Sometimes, especially in early access, there will be unexpected problems. Getting those problems fixed should be quick and straight forward, but in order to do so you may need to send the developer some of the files described in previous sections so that the problem can be reproduced and quickly fixed.

• Discord - Join the discord.[discord.gg]. Regardless of your opinion of Discord, it makes it very easy to drag and drop files to the developer. If you are requesting help or reporting a bug please create a new thread or use the discord bots to create the corresponding request.
  
• Steam discussion - Open Steam discussions. This won't allow you to post files, but you can paste information or describe the issue you are seeing.
  
• Email - Email probably is not the best option because you may not want to give out your email and user generated files do not contain personal info so you may otherwise be anonymous. If you do want to use email you can create a Steam discussion and you will be provided a contact email. It will not be listed here because bots exist and are constantly scraping for emails to spam.

If you suspect something is wrong or your are seeing something weird and you report that to the developer via Discord[discord.gg], you may be asked for a log file.

You want to provide the log file mentioned in the first section: You can drag and drop this in the thread you have created on Discord[discord.gg]. The log file should not contain user info, but you can open it in a text editor and double check prior to sending. It does contain hardware information about your computer such as GPU and CPU.

The game allows you to build vessels in an essentially unlimited number of configurations, sometimes something specific can reveal a bug which may manifest as weird behavior with the vessel, the vessel failing to launch, or the game breaking in some way.

If you are unsure if what you are seeing is normal, feel free to ask for help in the help channel on Discord[discord.gg].

If there is something wrong with a specific vessel you may want to provide the developer with the .json file for the specific vessel. You should be able to drag and drop this in the Discord[discord.gg] thread you have created for your issue.

Example:
Note: The .jpg files are not needed for reporting problems.

Sometimes there may be an unexpected problem that will prevent a save file from loading or there may be a bug you are seeing that can only be seen with the map loaded with your save file (the location of your vessels, what you were doing, etc.). While this can be troubling sometimes, especially if your save file is not loading, usually it is an easy fix. Problems with loading save files will be prioritize and may be put in a hotfix patch so that you can continue asap.

The best way to provide your save file is to create a .zip file for the entire save directory in question. For this example your save game is called "MySave"

1. In the Saves directory right-click on the MySave directory and select "Compress to zip file"
   Note: this may be worded slightly differently based on your OS
   
2. Drag and drop the zip file in the Discord[discord.gg] thread you created for this issue.
   
3. Delete the zip file you created in the Saves folder otherwise it will never be deleted.

All of the user files will automatically sync with Steam Cloud and will download to whatever computer you are playing on. The only way to delete these files is to delete them while the game is open, that way the deletion will be synced to Steam Cloud. You may be able to disable Steam Cloud and otherwise manipulate these files.

This should be done in game, but you can do so by deleting the .json file and the corresponding .jpg files.

You can delete saves from the main menu in game. If you click "Load" and then edit the desired save, there will be a delete button marked in red.

You can also simply delete the folder matching the name in the Saves directory while the game is open. If you do so while the game is not running, Steam Cloud will just re-download the latest version thinking it is missing. As an added benefit of doing this manually it will appear in the Recycling Bin in case you change your mind.

On Windows, deleted vessels and saves will be sent to the recycling bin by default. You can restore them if you made a mistake. You can disable sending files to the recycling bin in the Misc. tab under "Files"

Note: On Linux/Proton the game will attempt to send deleted files to the trash, however this will only work for vessels. Save folders will likely be deleted outright regardless of the recycling option. This is because there are problems with how files are deleted in Proton/Wine. It may work in the future if the issues are fixed, but it appears unlikely and is well outside the scope of this game.

There is a button hidden away in the "Miscellaneous" tab of the in game menu under "Files"
The purpose of this button is to have a quick way to open the folder containing your current save files. This is useful for copying your vessels over to another save or server. You can also use this as a quick way to access the root save folder to delete unwanted files. This button is not front and center on the UI because messing with files can break stuff and new users may not be ready to mess with files. However, if you are reading this guide you are probably able to manage your file system.

The open game folder button will only work on windows (will be disabled otherwise) because it needs to use "explorer.exe". It will do nothing if you have not saved the game. If you have not opened the vessel load dialog and/or created any vessels, no vessels will be in the vessel folder, but you can copy some in there from another save using explorer.

If you are testing for a specific problem or wish to monitor the log file for whatever reason you can do so in several ways.

Obviously you can simply open the log in a text editor, Notepad++ is nice because it will tell you when the log file has updated. It will not update automatically though.

Using PowerShell with the following command allows you to monitor live on Windows:

Using a Linux or Git Bash terminal with the following command on Linux or Windows
Note: replace [username] with your username or env variables. If you are on Linux and not using Git Bash on Windows you will need to change the path to match the emulated folder mentioned in the first section of this guide.