I've only had a device capable of iCloud saves for a couple of months and never really paid too much attention to it (except when I had to delete IB2 to be able to get the last update). That said, sometimes I want to try a new game and have to delete something else to make room for it. So here's the question, when I go into iCloud settings, it lists just 5 games under "Documents & Data". But under Backups for my iPhone, it has a bunch of other games listed as having backups "on". Some of them have no data, but others do. So do all of the ones that have data sizes have a "save" backup? Or is it just the 5 games that are under Documents and Data? Just would be helpful to know whether I could delete one of those other games that have a "backup" and know that I could pick up where I left off if I reinstalled it.
I *think* I answered my own question. The games listed under backups (much more than the 5 listed on the main iCloud screen) do endup backing up saves from what I can tell. Just tried it on one game that I wasn't far in, Raid Leader, and after reinstallation, it saved where I was. If anyone can confirm before I delete any others, it would be greatly appreciated. I know iCloud wasn't always dependable at the beginning, but understand it's better now.
As far as I know and experienced, no. If you delete a game and then do some iCloud backups...after a while the data inside ths backup goes away, so if you reinstall the game you will restart from scratch. If the data are OUTSIDE the backup, ie in the iCloud documents data panel, then you can delete and switch devices as you want. I really wish that Apple (optionally) could retain data for every app (even deleted one) in the backup portion...so without dev support (which is necessary for using the iCloud data and documents portion) we at least could retain saves forever. As it is now...a new backup overwrites the previous one (deleting app data for your deleted apps). You recovered the data because probably you didn't had a backup since you deleted the app. I've noticed that SOMETIMES some app data survive 1 or 2 backups, but you can't rely on that unfortunately. If anyone have different experiences...let me know.
That does suck. Probably could have just been that I deleted and redownloaded Raid Leader immediately afterwards so the backup was still there. It's sad. The whole iCloud thing is a great idea, but there are few games that actually use it. So the backup thing, in theory, would be great. Apple says we have a "free" 5 GB of storage. Why can't our backups for things like gamesaves stay there permanently or at least until that storage is filled up? They even have the option to buy more storage. Oh well, guess it was just wishful thinking. It would make life a lot easier juggling apps on my 8 GB iPhone 3GS to not have to worry about losing progress if I wanted download something like Max Payne and have to delete a whole bunch of stuff to do it.
iExplorer is a great way to save you games and then ad them to your file later. Worked like a charm for me so far (latest game I used it on was Hunters 2).
iExplorer does not require being jailbroken. You just need to hook your iOS device your computer via the syncing cable and then run iExplorer. iCloud is a disappointment. In Swordigo the resuits weren't even remotely satisfactory. I ended up stuck playing on my iPhone because it refused to go to iCloud and upload the save, so my save on the iPad was way behind. 2 days later it finally went to the cloud and I was able to get my save back on my iPad. From then on I stuck to playing on the iPad. Disappointing.
Thanks. Might have to give iExplorer a try. Only issue with that I guess is that don't you have to back up the whole ipa file and not just a "save". So if the game's like a gig, then that's a gig you have to wait for? (This is also a personal issue as my aging PC's USB ports have started to give me problems and I often have to use USB 1.0 ports resulting in slow connections. Stangely, the original, older ports are the ones that do work.). It's bad enough that iCloud "backups" aren't permanent, but it's even worse when a game is advertised as supporting cloud saves and they still don't work.