can not get this to work about satisfactorysaveeditor HOT 1 OPEN

I've tried save, save as, with game running, without game running can not get it to delete hostile animals.

You can't delete hostiles reliably anymore. They changed the game a few updates ago to make sure that all hostiles spawn at least once. If you remove them with the editor, the game will likely simply respawn them again because it thinks it's the "first time" condition again.

The only thing this seems to do is create a png map and travel.save.gz file, neither of which are used by the game.

If you click "Save", it will overwrite your savegame. The PNG is the last rendering the save editor made, which can be used to quickly inspect save files without opening the editor or game. You can delete them if you want.

Is the save.gz a backup of the "edited" file or the original file?

The gz file (unless explicitly overwritten by you) is the file before you saved it for the first time. It's created whenever you overwrite a file and there isn't already a backup. If you need the backup restored you can either use the appropriate button at the bottom of the save file manager window or you can manually extract it using an application like 7-zip.

Can this be run from any location?

Yes. Unless you did some trickery with the save file location (which you almost certainly did not) it will find the directory for the files automatically.

does the game need to be running or not?

It doesn't matters. You can let the game running if you want, either at the main menu or with a save file loaded. Changes made with the editor will only take effect after you load the save again in the game but you don't need to exit it. It's usually better to stay in the main menu though to not get messed up with autosaves.

what is the initial cloud api window, what am i supposed to choose?

You can press F1 at any time in any window to get extensive help on what the window can do.

after closing the editor and starting the game, i get another confusing set of options that i'm left wondering which one to choose

If the options in the game itself are confusing, you should direct those at the developers of the game, not me. This is an independently made save file editor.

What are all the other files and applications that this application creates in the saved folder?

The PNG and .gz are already mentioned and are for convenience and backup.

The editor itself will create a few files in the directory you have the editor executable itself in:

• lastrun.log: As the name suggests, this contains log messages from the last application run.
• QuickPlay.exe: This is the audio player the editor utilizes if you listen to the audio tracks in the game files.
• settings.xml: As the name suggests, this contains the settings you made in the editor.

from satisfactorysaveeditor.