"broken savefile" - WHAT THE HELL'S WRONG?! How do I recover my char?!

[Tiburon Silverflame]

Windows does "save on exit." A system crash *may* have sent a Termination signal that initiated the game's exit, and started a write to file, which got trashed by something else. Hard to say, cuz this may (probably is) depend on which version of Windows you're running.

I've had the game crash a few times in Windows...including cases where I'd taken out 2 or 3 uniques and picked up a couple good artifacts...and lost that work. That was painful enough. So I tend to save a bit more often. And periodically, I just manually copy/paste the char file so, if there *is* a crash, I can recover.

It might be nice to have 2-tier saves...so the level-switch autosave is written to one file, while the game-exit or user-initiated save is written to a different file. But I don't think that's gonna get much support.

[Nemesis]

Originally Posted by Tiburon Silverflame

It might be nice to have 2-tier saves...so the level-switch autosave is written to one file, while the game-exit or user-initiated save is written to a different file. But I don't think that's gonna get much support.

At least I am totally with you!

[Sirridan]

Ouch, file is 49kb of all zero's so it can't be recovered, sorry mate.

[Nemesis]

Originally Posted by Sirridan

Ouch, file is 49kb of all zero's so it can't be recovered, sorry mate.

Thanks for having a look at it, anyway. The situation isn't as cathastrophic as I expected though, as I've already managed to hack (with the edit files, not hack and slash) back my stats and xp and some of the artifacts.

[buzzkill]

Originally Posted by Nemesis

Thanks for having a look at it, anyway. The situation isn't as cathastrophic as I expected though, as I've already managed to hack (with the edit files, not hack and slash) back my stats and xp and some of the artifacts.

Just me, but I'd give it up. If you were going to win this game then you'll win another eventually. It just seems like a lot of work and cheating to get a somewhat questionable legitimate win.

What ancient version of windows are you running that crashed? I can't remember the last time windows crashed on me.

[PowerDiver]

Originally Posted by Tiburon Silverflame

It might be nice to have 2-tier saves...so the level-switch autosave is written to one file, while the game-exit or user-initiated save is written to a different file. But I don't think that's gonna get much support.

Would changing the procedure to (1) write to a temporary savefile and then (2) rename the tmp to replace the original be good enough? I'd think that ought to be fairly robust.

[Sirridan]

Originally Posted by PowerDiver

Would changing the procedure to (1) write to a temporary savefile and then (2) rename the tmp to replace the original be good enough? I'd think that ought to be fairly robust.

Sounds like a good plan, if the os dies in the middle of the temp write, no problems. If it happens during the copy over, then there may be problems, so its a little much maybe but:

1) Write to temp
2) Rename the original
3) Rename temp to the original name
4) Delete the original

Again, I may be overthinking things, but I'm not too keen on the differences between all the filesystems that may be in use. But in this case, at least some recent copy of the save should definitely be alive, unless the HDD catastrophically fails.

[Derakon]

How about, if the game needs to make a panic save, saving it to a separate savefile. Then when the player tries to load their save, the game first tries the panic save. If it works, then the original save is removed and the panic save goes in its place; otherwise, the game silently fails over to the original save and the panic save is removed.

[Nemesis]

Originally Posted by buzzkill

Just me, but I'd give it up. If you were going to win this game then you'll win another eventually. It just seems like a lot of work and cheating to get a somewhat questionable legitimate win.

Don't you dare to question my legitimaty! Sure, I edited the files, but only to get my stuff back. When cleaning up killing orc, ogre and troll pits where all of the monsters were edited to have Saruman's drops, I ran into all kinds of items that survived Word of Destruction and/or had odd hit dice/armour rating, but I didn't identify a single item that I didn't have in my old game!

Now, after lots and lots of hard work, I have my xp, stats, artifacts and rings/boots of speed and dungeon spell books again, but I still lack my big collection of Healing/*Healing*/Life potions, *Destruction*/Banishment/Mass Banishment scrolls.

My win would be questionable if I was to boast about having a low turncount, but I couldn't care less about my turncount, I'm just excited because I have a chance of winning Angband!

Originally Posted by buzzkill

What ancient version of windows are you running that crashed? I can't remember the last time windows crashed on me.

Running Vista on a laptop that I've had running day and night for a year and a half, while my computer might not be in Ragnarök yet, it's certainly in its Fimbular Winter.

[ramela]

What you consider questionable might differ from what others see as questionable and you shouldn't snap at other people for voicing their opinions.

Everyone gets to have their own opinion on what is a legimate win and what is not, even if you were hurt by your computer crash.