Save game issues

Ghede · Post by **Ghede** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 7:01 am

Hi there, first post for me here, so I'm sorry if I'm asking anything that's already been covered before, but I have a major issue.

I've been playing DL for a couple of days now and updated to version 1.4, I've had numerous issues with my computer randomly restarting on me while playing it (or just crashing to the desktop), but I've managed to work around this by saving very regularly. Unfortunately after the last random crash it appears that both my save games have become corrupted somehow. The first simply causes the game to not load properly as it says there's an error with the save game thumbnail and when I remove it from the same directory the game loads fine, however when I go to load the other save game it just stays on the blank screen with the cursor as an hourglass and doesn't appear to do anything even after a 5 minute wait. I have used Steve2D's save game editor to open the file and all the values are set to 0 apparently. Does anyone know of how I might work around this, or am I doomed to replying hours of the game to get back to this point?

Steve2d · Post by **Steve2d** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 9:44 am

[QUOTE=Ghede]Hi there, first post for me here, so I'm sorry if I'm asking anything that's already been covered before, but I have a major issue.

I've been playing DL for a couple of days now and updated to version 1.4, I've had numerous issues with my computer randomly restarting on me while playing it (or just crashing to the desktop), but I've managed to work around this by saving very regularly. Unfortunately after the last random crash it appears that both my save games have become corrupted somehow. The first simply causes the game to not load properly as it says there's an error with the save game thumbnail and when I remove it from the same directory the game loads fine, however when I go to load the other save game it just stays on the blank screen with the cursor as an hourglass and doesn't appear to do anything even after a 5 minute wait. I have used Steve2D's save game editor to open the file and all the values are set to 0 apparently. Does anyone know of how I might work around this, or am I doomed to replying hours of the game to get back to this point?[/QUOTE]

Ouch...it sounds bad to me, but if you want to email me the saved game files, I can look at them and see if there is any data in there at all. Or you can just hex edit them and see if they are completely zero's, which is probably the case. Does my game edition even should the Game name, Character name or version #? Two options exists if this is the case, you can try to recover the file with a utility such as [url="http://www.data-recovery-software.net/Data_Recovery_Download.shtml#demo"]R-Studio[/url] which I have used to recovery numerous files from and NTFS partition. The link above is to the demo with which you can see the files, but are not able to recover over 64KB files. The free solution is to attempt to run scandisk with the repair option enabled. One of the recovered files should be your saved game files. Scan disk will make irrovable changes to the hard drive and hopefully, recover the invalid linked files.

Good luck with this one. I would use scan disk as the last resort! Once scan disk repairs these files, then most likely none of the other options will work.

Ghede · Post by **Ghede** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 3:30 am

[QUOTE=Steve2d]Ouch...it sounds bad to me, but if you want to email me the saved game files, I can look at them and see if there is any data in there at all. Or you can just hex edit them and see if they are completely zero's, which is probably the case. Does my game edition even should the Game name, Character name or version #? Two options exists if this is the case, you can try to recover the file with a utility such as [url="http://www.data-recovery-software.net/Data_Recovery_Download.shtml#demo"]R-Studio[/url] which I have used to recovery numerous files from and NTFS partition. The link above is to the demo with which you can see the files, but are not able to recover over 64KB files. The free solution is to attempt to run scandisk with the repair option enabled. One of the recovered files should be your saved game files. Scan disk will make irrovable changes to the hard drive and hopefully, recover the invalid linked files.

Good luck with this one. I would use scan disk as the last resort! Once scan disk repairs these files, then most likely none of the other options will work.[/QUOTE]

I'll certainly give those options a try, though I don't know how to use a hex editor but I'll see if I can find one and figure it out.
Having double-checked your save game editor, it shows all values pertaining to the character's stats, exp etc. as 0 but gives correct information for the save game name and game version.

Thank you so much for the advice!

<edit>I've looked at the file using Cygnus and have no idea what I'm looking at or for or even if this program utilises the sorts of things that I need to make sense of the file proper. Do you have an email address that I could send the file to for you to have a look at for me? That is if you have the time.

Steve2d · Post by **Steve2d** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 7:31 am

[QUOTE=Ghede]I'll certainly give those options a try, though I don't know how to use a hex editor but I'll see if I can find one and figure it out.
Having double-checked your save game editor, it shows all values pertaining to the character's stats, exp etc. as 0 but gives correct information for the save game name and game version.

Thank you so much for the advice!

<edit>I've looked at the file using Cygnus and have no idea what I'm looking at or for or even if this program utilises the sorts of things that I need to make sense of the file proper. Do you have an email address that I could send the file to for you to have a look at for me? That is if you have the time.[/QUOTE]
sorry about that...yeah you can just email it to gamebanshee@logicse.com.

It sounds like the game file is was corrupted during a save. If my game editor does population the other information, then the problem does not sound like a directory structure or scan disk issues. However, that R-studio may be able to find it. It is reallly cool in that it can find previously overwritten versions of certain files. Basically an Undelete program, any one of them should do.

I'll take a look at the file when you sent it and let you know if I see anything simply that can be repaired.

Ghede · Post by **Ghede** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 6:08 am

[QUOTE=Steve2d]sorry about that...yeah you can just email it to gamebanshee@logicse.com.

It sounds like the game file is was corrupted during a save. If my game editor does population the other information, then the problem does not sound like a directory structure or scan disk issues. However, that R-studio may be able to find it. It is reallly cool in that it can find previously overwritten versions of certain files. Basically an Undelete program, any one of them should do.

I'll take a look at the file when you sent it and let you know if I see anything simply that can be repaired.[/QUOTE]

Sending it through now. Thanks a bunch for this!

Steve2d · Post by **Steve2d** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 9:16 am

[QUOTE=Ghede]Sending it through now. Thanks a bunch for this![/QUOTE]
Hmmm, I'm a bit confused What time zone are you in? According to the time stamp in the file it was save after you posted you intial thread indicating that you had a problem? "March 6, 2006 8:01 PM"

Anyway, .sav game files have two copies of most character data from different times, but your game files does not appear to either of these. Can you look at the list of sav game files in your dl's save folder and what are the sizes of the others. I'm wondering if the one the you sent is got cut off when it was saved by the game.

Ghede · Post by **Ghede** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 10:19 pm

Sorry I have taken so long to reply. I've just moved house and don't yet have internet access again.
It appears that the save file I sent you same through correctly, it's larger than the newly created save files for the game, but smaller than the save file for a character that I've remade and started playing again. You needn't worry about trying to fix that save file for me unless you were going to do it to see if it's possible

Thanks for all your advice so far, though!