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Author Topic: Any successful work-around for crashes while saving?  (Read 4604 times)

Actualspider

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Any successful work-around for crashes while saving?
« on: March 15, 2015, 08:08:30 pm »

I'm coming back after not having played for a few years, and I already feel my enthusiasm sapped from losing 6 hours of progress to a crash while saving. After some searching, the closest thing to a solution I've found is a suggestion to use DFhack to quicksave. Does anyone have experience with this being successful or unsuccessful for crashes while saving? Out of maybe 15 times I've saved after a session, only 2 crashes have occurred and only one of those resulted in a loss of progress. Not a very easy thing to test.
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Telgin

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Re: Any successful work-around for crashes while saving?
« Reply #1 on: March 15, 2015, 08:11:58 pm »

The only times I've had the game crash when saving is when I was using an external drive that became unmounted while I was playing (the cable was finicky), and even plugging it back in wouldn't keep the game from crashing when I tried to save.  I believe I may have had it crash when saving after fooling around in DFHack, but I can't remember any specific incidents.

Are you using any mods or are you using DFHack for other things?  I'm not aware of any general things that you can try to avoid crashes during saving, but that info might help others diagnose it.
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Through pain, I find wisdom.

Actualspider

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Re: Any successful work-around for crashes while saving?
« Reply #2 on: March 15, 2015, 08:24:50 pm »

I use the Lazynewb pack, but just for the ease of the all of the graphics mods/therapist/etc in one package. I haven't touched DFhack yet.
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Boltgun

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Re: Any successful work-around for crashes while saving?
« Reply #3 on: March 16, 2015, 04:04:09 am »

Perhaps deactivating twbt will help, I had a lot of crashes while saving on linux LNP r1 and going to r2 helped.

But otherwise, always use seasonal save with backup. As annoying as it can be you're never sure if your copy of DF is stable.
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H995

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Re: Any successful work-around for crashes while saving?
« Reply #4 on: March 16, 2015, 06:30:33 pm »

Most of my crashes happens on world gen, not so much during fortress mode.

You could add seasonal saves, like Boltgun said, but you could also enable automatic backup of those autosaves, you have this option on LNP, don't know about vanilla DF. This way, if you ever experience a crash, at least you'll not lose an entire play session, just a single season.
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mndfreeze

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Re: Any successful work-around for crashes while saving?
« Reply #5 on: March 19, 2015, 03:34:26 am »

Here on my work PC when its slow I play DF to keep my mind awake n shizzle. Also to fight off boredom monsters.

I have a strange issue that makes me crash sometimes when saving, but I never lose data.  Its like it crashes out at the very last step of the progress bar saving and exiting makes.    Also this crash only occurs after I have loaded up the game to the main menu and either played an existing world or made a new one, any option that takes me OUT of the main menu.  Then when whatever I'm doing is done and I go back to the main menu from saving the game or making a new world, if I try to generate a new world it crashes.  If I try to continue my fortress then usually it will play OK until I try to save and quit this second time around, then I get the save crash.

So something to try maybe is see if the game crashes on the first run.  Like can you open the game fresh, play, then save/quit sucessfully?  If you can sucessfully, exit the game ALL the way, completely close everything then reload it and play again and see if you can again play and save sucesfully.  Or see if perhaps you are having a similar problem to mine where it crashes when you go back to the main menu from playing, then try to go back into your world and play again without actually exiting all the way completely out of the game.

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osunightfall

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Re: Any successful work-around for crashes while saving?
« Reply #6 on: March 19, 2015, 11:11:37 am »

I'm coming back after not having played for a few years, and I already feel my enthusiasm sapped from losing 6 hours of progress to a crash while saving. After some searching, the closest thing to a solution I've found is a suggestion to use DFhack to quicksave. Does anyone have experience with this being successful or unsuccessful for crashes while saving? Out of maybe 15 times I've saved after a session, only 2 crashes have occurred and only one of those resulted in a loss of progress. Not a very easy thing to test.

You should never play dwarf fortress without autosave seasonal in my opinion. It can be turned on in the lazy newb pack or in the ini. Also, I've gotten into the habit of saving after doing anything I wouldn't want to re-do, like designating large areas to be mined out, setting up military schedules, or adding a bunch of jobs. Dwarf fortress is surprisingly stable given its complexity when compared to most pc games, but you still have to exercise caution.
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tsuki66

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Re: Any successful work-around for crashes while saving?
« Reply #7 on: May 06, 2015, 07:34:47 am »

After losing much progress from several sessions, I've developed the habit of saving the game every 5-or-so minutes, returning to the main menu and then back in the game. I now also use 2x2 embarks and smaller worlds, to make sure that there isn't too much stuff to save at once. It gets a little annoying having to save-and-get-back-in every time, but I think it's worth it.
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Revenant342

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Re: Any successful work-around for crashes while saving?
« Reply #8 on: May 07, 2015, 05:08:33 am »

I was having this same problem until I got the 4GB Ram patch and ran it on the DF executable.  Lets DF use up to 4GB of RAM instead of 2.

http://www.ntcore.com/4gb_patch.php
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