Pride will have a fall

[felsenstern]

Sigh...


I am making backups ... from time to time ...


Hadn't checked Windows System protection on the drive I was using for development ...


And today, after I had a coffee with a friend, when I came back to work on my game, I received the dreadful message: "unexpected file format"


(And yes, I've checked the files manually to recover them, but they were just filled with nulls).


First I was angry on RPG-Maker, almost released my frustration in this forum (luckily I didn't), then I checked recovery software, but the data files were overwritten and destroyed already. Well, I've just went outside for lunch, had a walk with a bit window shopping, watched a movie and finally went back to work. First I turned on Windows System protection on my developer drive, then I turned on the automated backup system, recovered the last stand from my game which was one month old and now I am trying to figure out where I was one month ago.  Just wanted to share my still aching pain of loss to feel a bit better and probably to remind you to have your stuff to protect your files all set.

 

[Nirwanda]

Oh man, that sucks. I have virtually no backups of anything I've ever done, I really should learn the lesson.


Anyway, I hope you can get around restoring your game soon. Best of wishes.

 

[Hudell]

If you have both the corrupted (new) and the uncorrupted (old) version of your game, you can probably restore most of your work. I've never had this happening on me, but if you want me to give it a shot at restoring your work you can send the files to me by PM.

 

[taarna23]

That sucks that you lost your work! =(


I keep saying around here something I learned in school (but I have yet to have anyone take it seriously, despite the tales of loss I keep reading): A backup that is not an offsite backup is not a backup.


There's a LOT of truth in this. I hope people that come and read this learn it... I also hope that you find a workable backup of your game somewhere... partial project loss is a lot better than complete project loss.


If it is a complete loss, perhaps it's a good time to make some notes on your current project and work on a small side-project, or design some mini-games. Something to get you back into the swing of it. Failing that, perhaps time to take a short break and be a forum lurker like me.

 

[felsenstern]

If you have both the corrupted (new) and the uncorrupted (old) version of your game, you can probably restore most of your work. I've never had this happening on me, but if you want me to give it a shot at restoring your work you can send the files to me by PM.

Unfortunately there was nothing inside, just a long list of nuls, using an external editor to open the map file was the first thing I tried and a hex editor afterwards to see if I could salvage at least the message strings. I also have no idea how that happened, since I had no crash or something, just clicked the save button, closed the project and closed RPG-Maker. I can just speculate, that clicking save and close shortly after each other (I was in a hurry) produced the bug and it is a stupid habit, since closing the project anyway triggers a save as well as closing RPG-Maker itself...

 

[Idril]

If you're using Ace, you can use http://himeworks.com/2013/02/data-backup/ to prevent losing your data files in the future.


Good luck with restoring your game!!

 

[felsenstern]

If you're using Ace, you can use http://himeworks.com/2013/02/data-backup/ to prevent losing your data files in the future.


Good luck with restoring your game!!

Yes, I am using Ace. Thanks and thanks for the info, will use that.


Edit: added the script and it works like a charm ;-)

 

[kovak]

Maybe that's not so bad, try somenthin fresh now

 

[felsenstern]

Maybe that's not so bad, try somenthin fresh now

Indeed, since most of my lost work were proof-reading, respelling and formatting, I've created a line-break script to not ever again have to manually format my text anymore . If I had lost more than a month or even all game data, I would have probably destroyed my computer and for sure hadn't posted so easy as I did.