Deleted half a map with important events

[ADMtn]

TLDR version: Accidentally cut the dimensions of an important map in half, deleting a bunch of complicated events. However, I had a backup on another computer and reverted to a slightly older version of that map. Going to keep more backups from now on.

My current project utilizes a hub town, so certain maps are revisited often and include a fair amount of complex events. When I was creating a new sub map, I accidentally edited the parent map instead and changed its dimensions which resulted in cutting the map in half and deleting a bunch of events along with it. This was a map with events layered with switches and conditional branches--days of work, maybe.

This was on my desktop.

Fortunately, there was a fairly recent version of this same map on my laptop. So I emailed myself the map JSON from the laptop and used it to replace the FUBAR version on my desktop. Lost about an hour of work from today, but saved hours (or days) of work that would've been needed to recreate the old events. Not bad. Now I'm thinking I'll create a separate backup every week or so (the last time I made a proper backup was maybe a month or two ago). Lesson learned.

This was a pretty big scare; not sure if I'm getting that across here. Just felt like sharing. Haha.

 

[Andar]

anyone with any serious worktime into a computer needs to care about backups, althout some people learn about this to late (for example an architect bureau who lost an 80K$ project without backups a day before it was due).

However, please make this manual backups - do NOT place your project into a cloudsync for automated backup.
All RM's access their files like a database (think MS Access or Filemaker Pro), not like regular files - and that can conflict with a cloudsync, destroying the files. A manual backup a day is much better

 

[Touchfuzzy]

anyone with any serious worktime into a computer needs to care about backups, althout some people learn about this to late (for example an architect bureau who lost an 80K$ project without backups a day before it was due).

However, please make this manual backups - do NOT place your project into a cloudsync for automated backup.
All RM's access their files like a database (think MS Access or Filemaker Pro), not like regular files - and that can conflict with a cloudsync, destroying the files. A manual backup a day is much better

What I do is work on my project directly in one folder on my primary drive. Then I copy that folder manually to a backup folder on my secondary drive. The folder on my secondary drive is cloudsynced to google drive.

Because 1. Yes never cloudsync a project folder you are working from directly, and 2. It requires 2 separate drives to fail and my google drive backup to fail to lose my project.

 

[Scribblestick]

I've done that a few times. Luckily, it was usually the first thing I did after saving, so I was able to just reload and undo the damage. But, I'm definitely taking all this backup advice to heart!

 

[stramin]

If you deleted half of a map... WHY DID YOU SAVE THE FILE?

 

[ADMtn]

What I was trying to do was edit a copy of a map (to create another floor of the same building with mostly the same layout). However, I was operating in a daze and didn't actually make a copy. Instead, I changed the dimensions of the original map. Confirming the new dimensions = saving the map.

Anyway, I redid the work that was lost the very next day (it was just some minor event movement and dialogue), thanks to my backup. So it wasn't too bad.

 

[ChampX]

I like to use version control for these sorts of things. I use bitbucket personally, but basically each feature gets committed to a project in the cloud. This means not only is my project backed up, but I can make all sorts of changes and then decide, ok this isn't working out and then either undo some or all of what I just did. I can also have another machine also be connected to version control which means to have total loss of my project means all machines I have the project on + whatever is stored on bitbucket would have to have some disaster. Highly unlikely.

I am oversimplifying here, as this is mostly a tool programmers use and things can get more complex, but I find this to be the best "backup" tool for any game development projects.