My whole frickin game just got deleted. WTF???

JayReiter

I went to save my game and an error popped up of some sort. I don't remember what the error was. Said something about how all of my image files were gone. I "X" ed out of the gamemaker and rebooted it. Now my game is totally gone. All images, behaviors/code...EVERYTHING. WHAT THE HELL?????

DestinyDragon

You have to save this often because gamesalad often crashes. Also this isn't gamemaker

Mash_Mobility

Yup, learned the hard way myself to save often. Lost quite a lot.

quantumsheep

This is a horrible and traumatic thing when making games, so I sympathise.

Perhaps you opened a blank project by mistake? Always worth checking as in the heat of the moment you might not be thinking clearly and making simple mistakes.

Do you have any previous versions of the game?

Did you use 'save as'? I find I lose all my images if I do that, and copy/paste the entire file to make a new version instead.

Good luck, sorry for your loss!

QS

Socks

Regardless of the software, Photoshop, GameSalad, Flash, After Effects (etc etc) you will get a corrupt file from time to time, if you want to ensure you don't lose too much progress always work on incremented files, otherwise expect to lose a project every now and then.

Mash_Mobility

@Socks said:
Regardless of the software, Photoshop, GameSalad, Flash, After Effects (etc etc) you will get a corrupt file from time to time, if you want to ensure you don't lose too much progress always work on incremented files, otherwise expect to lose a project every now and then.

Ha don't even get me started on After Effects. Can't tell you how many times I lost a ton of work, even with their "autosave" feature. I would love it though if Gamesalad would add autosave. That's what messed me up in the beginning, I just assumed they had it, boy was I wrong!

Franto

The same thing happened to me on the windows GS. I only lost about 3 hours of work since I'm always backing up work and e-mailing myself a copy of the backup.

I'm sorry for your loss, years ago, I was working on a game I had invested some time in, and I lost the entire file, and since I never made back ups of anything since I was a teen, I was devastated and I didn't work on a game again for years.

bjandthekatz

I use dropbox as my backup folder. Whenever I make an edit to my game I will save a version of it. I end up having hundreds of project files, but in the end it will be worth it.

quantumsheep

@bjandthekatz said:
I use dropbox as my backup folder. Whenever I make an edit to my game I will save a version of it. I end up having hundreds of project files, but in the end it will be worth it.

I do the same. I number them gamename_1_1 and go up to gamename_1_9 then change to gamename_2_0 and carry on like that.

I'm currently on version 15_3 of my latest game :O

lovedislike

If you by any chance uploaded the game to the publishing portal then you can download the version uploaded under the History tab. If not then sorry for your lost.

bjandthekatz

Did you by any chance test your application on the viewer?

BazookaTime

I had this happen early on and now save all of the time.

JayReiter

@DestinyDragon said:
You have to save this often because gamesalad often crashes. Also this isn't gamemaker

By gamemaker, I meant the game making part of gamesalad, but I'm sure you knew that. Being a grammar Nazi to someone who just lost hours of work is not cool, dude.

JayReiter

@Mash_Mobility said:
Ha don't even get me started on After Effects. Can't tell you how many times I lost a ton of work, even with their "autosave" feature. I would love it though if Gamesalad would add autosave. That's what messed me up in the beginning, I just assumed they had it, boy was I wrong!

Dude, EFF After Effects. Lol. I've found that program to be way buggy. I love using it, when it works.

JayReiter

@bjandthekatz said:
Did you by any chance test your application on the viewer?

Sigh. No.

imGua

@Socks said:
Regardless of the software, Photoshop, GameSalad, Flash, After Effects (etc etc) you will get a corrupt file from time to time, if you want to ensure you don't lose too much progress always work on incremented files, otherwise expect to lose a project every now and then.

I use Photoshop for more then 10 years. And I never had corrupt file error.

JayReiter

Well, here's the good news, folks: Only the image files were lost. Still a pain in the butt, but not as completely terrible as losing all my behaviors/programing. Fortunately I DID keep a backup of all my image files in a completely different folder. And, on the plus side, it did make me go and do some much needed maintenance to my images and organization. Plus I'm keeping a physical journal/log/notebook from now on for every game I make. It'll be full of all the data from every actor including behaviors, attributes, etc. And I think I'm going to take some of your advice and start keeping backup files of the game itself. Just in case this kind of thing happens again. Lesson learned.

And I was even able to get some further work done to the game after I reorganized everything and got the image files back where they belonged, so yay for that!

quantumsheep

Nice!

That sounds like the same thing I mentioned earlier - if I 'save as' it'll remove all the image files from my project and I have to put them back in myself.

This is why I copy/paste the entire project every time I change something as I can't 'save as' a new version.

Lots of people here have given you good advice on backing up! I think you got a bit of a shock, but got away lightly this time

QS =D

StormyStudio

praise the binary Gods... the king (project) has returned..

....errr but Mr.Binary God.. can he have his images put back too? please.. ?

colander

@quantumsheep I always use Save As and never had a problem. It seems odd that this would happen maybe there is a conflict between GS and some other program on your system. I noticed sometimes when I use Save As I get a warning something about changes made by another program I have always ignored it and so far I have had no issues.

StormyStudio

same.. always used 'Save As' ... have around 147 versions of my current project... really should think about deleting some of my older saves.

Hopscotch

Me too @StormyStudio, but don't delete them, we need them for the day when we are millionaires, get invited to do lectures and present postmortems of our road to fame!

quantumsheep

I know that some people don't have the same issue that I and @uptimistik and @Jayreiter are having and that's fine (and lucky you!).

But we are having this problem.

It's a bit of a hassle, but I get on with stuff by copy/pasting the project in finder to make a new version.

I mentioned this many months ago, but no-one seems to know why it happens.

Still, it's good that people are aware of it now, if not before, and we can try and help those that panic when it happens to them for the first time!

Until it's fixed in... glances at watch about 18 months.

Cheers!

QS =D

GameLabs222

Glad you got it mostly back!

If the thought, "Ooh I'm making headway on this, finally!" ever pops into your head, knock on wood and save as quickly as possible.

Also, it's a good habit to save multiple versions: MySaladEdit01, 02, 03, 04 etc nearly each time.

This way if you ever realize you screwed something up, your coding starts to get too hairy or your salad gets thrown all over the wall, you can just back peddle a little.

JayReiter

@Brenton222 said:
Glad you got it mostly back!

Thanks!

If the thought, "Ooh I'm making headway on this, finally!" ever pops into your head, knock on wood and save as quickly as possible.

>

HA!!!! Isn't that the darned truth??