i downloaded from,(gog.com)all kings quest games
they work fine,but now,i am playing kings quest 4
i have now reached the limit,for saving games in the
playing <dir>,wich is 20 saved games,now i have 2 options,#1,to replace prior save games,with new ones
in reality it delete's the old save,for the new
#2,it has a option "change directory",for wich you must
type in some different directory,it should work,its
made for this,however no matter what i type in is never good,if i click on change directory,and insert another
a,(C:),will be seen no mater what i do,so PLEASE
HELP!!,i thank in advance,samuel schwartz

If it were me, I'd just create an additional folder in the save game directory and copy the existing saves to it. In the current save game folder, delete all but the last entry and start building up a new set.

dear sir.
your idea is no good,because this game,can only make
in 1,<DIR> no more then 20 saves,after all it also has
a file in wich all save game names are hidden in this file
this file is (KQ4SG.DIR),the save game files name is
(KQ4SG.000),now if you take out even only this one,the game
feels it,and nothing will,be restored,or even saved,in short
the game will not respond,think about it,its not so hard
to understand it,and thats why you made it worser,but let
me cheer you up,as you said i should make a save,<DIR>
in the same directory as i played the whole time,i named it
<Save>,so now i had to take back from there,all saves wich
i moved there,the game worked again,so i tried,i clicked
on change directory,i entered,(C:\Save),what a wonder,now
the change directory worked fine,so i can save now another
20 saves,when this will get full,i will make another,<DIR>
with another name,and so on,so now your idea plus mine
solved the whole problem,professionly,thanks alot
now you can learn,to do something,from samuel schwartz

Island's suggestion is sound, except that all of the saves must be kept with the catalog file for the game to recognize it. This file is named *.dir in earlier SCI games and *.cat in the later ones. This file is little more than a list of the actual save file names and the name assigned to each save at its creation. The save/restore dialogs will allow you to navigate to other folders for loading or saving games. Just keep in mind that the folder you use has to be under the mounted folder to be accessible from the game. Creating them as a subdirectory of the game's folder will suffice. One advantage of Island's suggestion is that by moving the old saves from the base of the game's folder frees it for more saves. The save/restore dialogs will default to the base, so no navigation to another folder will be necessary until it is full again.

Basically think of it as making a manual backup of your saves. As Collector stated, if a catalog exists (many older games used this method) make sure you copy that file as well.

Most of the time the catalog is nothing more that a text file that can be edited, open it in notepad and remove all but the last save.

Not so with the SCI games. Strings (save names) are stored in ASCII, but the rest of it is not, so you cannot really edit or create the catalog file in notepad. However, I do have an ancient utility that can repair or even create a new catalog file if there is ever a need.

Is that one of the utilities on the SierraHelp site?
Is that the Sierra Saved Game Catalog Fixer listed under Miscellaneous on this webpage?
http://www.sierrahelp.com/Utilities/Utilities.html

If it's the same one you mentioned, does it run in DOS/DOSBox or in Windows?
I downloaded it to see if there was a Readme included in the zip, but there was only the fixsg.exe and a weirdly named file called "!" (without the quotes).

Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about those - still, it shouldn't be an issue once the current saves are archived. IIRC you could overwrite existing saves, so starting over (from the top) would work just as well as deleting all but the first.

Yeah, that is the one. It is DOS. It originally came from the Sierra FTP. The "!" file is a common one for any of the files that were originally on the old Sierra BBS. It is little more than an ASCII art rendering of Half Dome was displayed when you ran the self extractor. I have most of these zipped so that people don't have problems with the 16-bit DOS self extractor executable.

The utility will simply sequentially number the saves in the catalog file when creating a new one. If you want descriptive names, you can load each save and resave it with the name you wish. If you are close to the max limit of saves for the folder, delete the old numbered save after you save it with the name you want.

Thanks for the information.