In Foldit, quicksaves are numbered "slots" used to store different poses or solutions of a protein. Quicksaves can be used manually, and recipes can also use them.
There are several other ways to save a pose.
The Foldit client automatically saves poses at certain points. Players can manually save poses, using "Save Solution" (Windows keyboard shortcut ctrl+s) or "Manage Solutions" (Windows keyboard shortcut ctrl+o). Both of these types of saves can be shared with others in the "Manage Solutions" menu.
In "Manage solutions", check "Show auto and quick saves" in to see the both poses automatically saved by the Foldit client and the poses saved in quicksave slot.
Players may also use tracks to save solutions.
Manual use of quicksaves
In the Foldit user interface, quicksave slots 1 through 8 are available using keyboard shortcuts.
The Windows keyboard shortcut to save a pose in a quicksave slot is:
- ctrl + shift + *num*
where *num* is the slot number, 1 to 8.
The Windows keyboard shortcut to load a pose from a quicksave slot is:
- ctrl + *num*
where *num* is again the slot number, 1 to 8.
The remix tool makes use of quicksave slots when used manually. The remix tool provides a list of results which can be reviewed to see how they change the protein. Promising poses can be selected. The selected poses are saved in quicksave slots when the player closes the remix tool.
Recipe use of quicksaves
Recipes can't do the equivalent of a manual save, and recipes can't create a new track. Recipes can use quicksaves. Many recipes use quicksaves as their primary means to testing new solutions. In a recipe, quicksave slots 1 through 99 are available.
Recipes also have another mechanism called "recent best". The "recent best" pose is based on score, and is automatically updated as the protein changes. A recipe can "set" a specific pose as being the recent best. Then, after applying a series of changes (shakes, wiggles, and so on), the recipe can "restore" the recent best. If the changes improved the score, "restore recent best" has no effect, otherwise it sets the protein to the last "set recent best" pose.
Some recipes use a combination of quicksaves and "recent best" to maintain the best pose. The advantage of using the recent best pose is that the restore function implicitly compares the score of the poses. Using quicksave slots, the recipe must do its own score checking.
Quicksave functions
In the Foldit Lua interface, the function save.Quicksave saves the current pose to a specified quicksave slot. The function save.Quickload loads a pose from the specified slot. The function [Foldit_Lua_Functions#save.QuicksaveEmpty|save.QuicksaveEmpty]] returns an indication of whether a slot already contains a saved pose.
While there aren't keyboard shortcuts for working with quicksave slots 9 through 99, the contents of these slots are still available after a recipe ends. Players can load these slots either using a small helper recipe or via the "Manage Solutions" dialog with "Show auto and quick saves" checked.
Recent best functions
The recent best pose can be set using the function recentbest.Save and restored using recentbest.Restore.