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[Elvin]

Well, I have been following TinyPirate's (very good) tutorial on how to play this game. I have just got up to smelting ore to make iron etc, when I got:

" FATAL ERROR Nemesis Unit Load Failed"

This has happened 4 times now, all about the same time from the last save. Is there a way to fix this? I'd prefer not to have to restart or anything like that, but I guess if I must I will, as this is a brilliant game.

[Taritus]

It means your save is corrupt.  If you have any kind of back up, use that instead, otherwise, you need to restart.

[alfie275]

Some how Nemis Unit sounds really cool.

[Elvin]

How far back are we talking here? I reloaded three autosaves before ( as the previous two seemed to be identical), and it still crashed.

Is it worth trying to play through from earlier than that? I might just start again, it would probably be a better learning expierence.

[Untelligent]

The world folder is corrupted. If you haven't backed up the game into a different folder, you're out of luck. Create a new world. If that doesn't work, install the game again (NOT into the same folder).

This error can occasionally happen when you force the game to quit via, for example, the ctrl-alt-del task manager. Not an overly common error, but when you get it, it's not fixable.

[Elvin]

Ah well, a restart is in order then. Thanks for the information.

[Albedo]

This error can occasionally happen when you force the game to quit via, for example, the ctrl-alt-del task manager. Not an overly common error, but when you get it, it's not fixable.

Wish the game would exit on command a little quicker - seems to take forever sometimes.  But good to know.

I think a hard kill (holding the PC on/off switch) will not corrupt the file, as it has no time to do anything to the saved file.

[Footkerchief]

For future reference: had you been using the Ctrl+Alt+Del / End Process thing to quit DF?  There's been some speculation that it can cause this bug, but confirmation would be helpful.

[Elvin]

I had been using ctrl-alt-del a fair bit, as I kept loading the wrong save file ( the date modified doesn't seem to correlate with the place I was in game, but that bug was mentioned in the tutorial I was reading)

But I just re-installed the game ( using the same downloaded file, possibly a bad idea) and I got the error a lot earlier, with no ctrl-alt-del usage. I had installed in another folder, but it seems it makes no difference.

I'll just go make my own fortress now....

[Sowelu]

I think a hard kill (holding the PC on/off switch) will not corrupt the file, as it has no time to do anything to the saved file.

This, in particular, is untrue.  In my understanding, the corruption occurs because some data is loaded into memory when you load a game, and removed from disk--and is not written back out unless you save properly.  If you reload from the same file in the future, that data just plain isn't around anymore.

If you load a game, the save is no longer valid until you save.  You must save properly, or you're in for some trouble.

Just minorly necro'ing in case someone else wanders through this thread >.>

[morikal]

I think a hard kill (holding the PC on/off switch) will not corrupt the file, as it has no time to do anything to the saved file.

This, in particular, is untrue.  In my understanding, the corruption occurs because some data is loaded into memory when you load a game, and removed from disk--and is not written back out unless you save properly.  If you reload from the same file in the future, that data just plain isn't around anymore.

If you load a game, the save is no longer valid until you save.  You must save properly, or you're in for some trouble.

Just minorly necro'ing in case someone else wanders through this thread >.>

Computers do not work that way! (Morbo)

There is no reason I can think of that Toady would have had it read into memory, then wipe or invalidate the disk files.

What I've heard (I have no idea if this is accurate) is that non-local data (ie: region data for your world) is saved asynchronously during play. Other data that it is tied to (such as at your local fort and possibly other data) is, on the other hand, not saved until you actually save your game. Thus, when you kill the game without saving, you have some region data which expects other data to be there, but that other data never got saved.

[Footkerchief]

Also the game occasionally puts files in the "current" folder during gameplay.  I don't know if it's moving the files from the save folder or copying them or creating a new file or what, but it's clearly doing something that it cleans up later (the current folder is always empty while the game isn't running).  So it seems possible that End Process-ing could disrupt that.

[Sowelu]

Ah that must be it, it moves them to Current...I know that one of the big symptoms of this corruption is that frequently, the nemesis files are not merely out-of-date but missing entirely.  If you only have a small handful of files in your save dir instead of a big pile, you've been hit by, you've been struck by a smooth nemesis load error waiting to happen.

...Now I wonder if it's possible to recover from a crash by poking at the 'current' dir before the next time you start DF.  THAT might be valuable information.

[Toady One]

The current folder is meant to prevent these kinds of errors.  Your main saves are never touched except at the moment it says it is synchronizing the folders when you are done, at which point it copies all the current stuff back into the main folder.  If you shut off during that point, you'll corrupt your game.  I'm not sure of the source of these latest corruptions, but in the newer versions, quitting out of the game during play using the OS should be fine.

[Footkerchief]

Thanks for the clarifaction.  We now return to our regularly scheduled savescumming.