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[Sowelu]

Sorry for giving out old info!

[morikal]

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.

So it sounds like we should clean out our "current" folder before re-starting DF if we didn't exit normally?
Could not cleaning it out cause issues? Or does DF get rid of anything in there when it is started?

The following thought experiment is pure speculation:
E.g., if you have a saved fort. You load it, try some stuff, and then kill the game using task manager. Presumably the current folder will still have data in it now. Then, you start DF back up and load the save.
1) Does having data in the current folder when the game starts mess things up? I assume it is expected to be empty when the game starts...
2) So, you load with a non-fresh current folder, and as you play, more things are written to it.
3) You eventually save and exit normally. The current folder is synchronized in, causing issues due to having old cruft in it from the time you killed the game abnormally.

[Elvin]

Well I am once again in this situation. I downloaded a new copy of TinyPirate's file, from a different mirror, and installed it on the other partition on my HDD. I have never ctrl-alt-del'd it, nor quit it unexpectedly in any way that I am aware. Even when I loaded the wrong save I went esc-save game and tried another folder.

The only thing I had done just now was leave DF on the job queue list while I went afk for a little over an hour. It crashed about 2 minutes after I resumed playing. I saw a couple of theories posted about possible cures etc- if you want me ot try one, please post exact instructions, i'll do my best to follow them and report back.

But it looks like I'm gonna go download a copy of the high-res DF and start my own world etc. I hope I can get away from these crashes.

[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.

So it sounds like we should clean out our "current" folder before re-starting DF if we didn't exit normally?
Could not cleaning it out cause issues? Or does DF get rid of anything in there when it is started?

The following thought experiment is pure speculation:
E.g., if you have a saved fort. You load it, try some stuff, and then kill the game using task manager. Presumably the current folder will still have data in it now. Then, you start DF back up and load the save.
1) Does having data in the current folder when the game starts mess things up? I assume it is expected to be empty when the game starts...
2) So, you load with a non-fresh current folder, and as you play, more things are written to it.
3) You eventually save and exit normally. The current folder is synchronized in, causing issues due to having old cruft in it from the time you killed the game abnormally.

It cleans it out when you start/load/save a game.  I'm not sure what's causing the corruption.

[Elvin]

Is it supposed to completely clear out? because I still have one file in my current folder, called art_image-4.dat. No idea what it is, but its last modified date is about the time the game crashed, and I haven't loaded DF since.

Also, i'm not sure if this means anything, but of this but all the autosaves between me loading it up and it then crashing ( two folders) both only contain 5 or 5 files, whereas all my previous saves contain a lot of them.

Hope this helps.

[Footkerchief]

Is it supposed to completely clear out? because I still have one file in my current folder, called art_image-4.dat. No idea what it is, but its last modified date is about the time the game crashed, and I haven't loaded DF since.

As was just said, the folder only gets cleaned when you start/load/save a game.  The file is still hanging around because the game exited via a crash rather than a normal save-quit.  It's not a problem and will get cleaned out next time you load a game.

Also, i'm not sure if this means anything, but of this but all the autosaves between me loading it up and it then crashing ( two folders) both only contain 5 or 5 files, whereas all my previous saves contain a lot of them.

Could you reword this sentence?

[Sowelu]

I can.  Save folders commonly have a ton of extraneous files, and nemesis load errors are associated with those files not being there--because they refer to people who aren't on your site.

This guy seems to have, say, autosaves from Summer 301 to Summer 309; he previously had the game saved (and working fine) at Summer 307.  After loading the game, the autosaves in 308 and 309 are both missing the 'external units' files, while the autosaves before Summer 307 do not.

Sounds like something went horribly wrong the last time the game saved out to regionFOO in hypothetical year 307, or when regionFOO was last loaded before the crash (and then played for two years).  Or maybe in memory between the time it was loaded and the time the first autosave was made.

[Elvin]

I can.  Save folders commonly have a ton of extraneous files, and nemesis load errors are associated with those files not being there--because they refer to people who aren't on your site.

This guy seems to have, say, autosaves from Summer 301 to Summer 309; he previously had the game saved (and working fine) at Summer 307.  After loading the game, the autosaves in 308 and 309 are both missing the 'external units' files, while the autosaves before Summer 307 do not.

Sounds like something went horribly wrong the last time the game saved out to regionFOO in hypothetical year 307, or when regionFOO was last loaded before the crash (and then played for two years).  Or maybe in memory between the time it was loaded and the time the first autosave was made.

Yep, I think that this is what happened to me. Can't think of anything else to say, just that these bugs are getting annoying

[Sowelu]

Hey, do me a favor, I want to test something crazy.

Look at the files in your most recent pre-crash save, then your most recent GOOD save.  All the files that are in the old one but not in the newer one?  Copy those over.  See if the old nemesis files will work in a corrupted save to fix it.

Your recent save is already hosed.  You can't hurt it worse than it already is, the only thing that can happen is you waste a lot of time trying to test a stupid idea.  But isn't it worth it? 

The way I see it, it hadn't crashed yet so maybe it never needed to touch those files before.  And that means maybe it's okay if they hadn't changed in a few years.

[Elvin]

Well, i've been playing for an hour and a bit so far and it hasn't died on me yet. So replacing the files does seem to work. No idea what it actually did, but it fixed whatever it was 

thanks

[Albedo]

Nemesis unit is aptly named.  I only play a bit each evening, and save, since I'm often far from a seasonal auto-save.  Nemesis has crushed two of my first three games (the very first I just got crushed the old fashioned way.)

[Kittah_Khan]

Is it possible this is related to auto-save ?
I never have had saves corrupted despite frequently using ctrl+alt+del in earlier forts, I don't have auto-save on.
It might be possible the ctrl+alt+del is done when an autosave is just getting initiated, so that it doesn't get fully saved, just, half-way, making for a corrupt save ?

[Spectre]

The Copying of the old files worked for me too. And I also used ctrl+alt+del a lot because of loading the wrong saves.

[Toady One]

Yeah, if people ctrl-alt-del during the auto-save, the auto-save will be corrupted.  It'll say "Saving..." on the screen when auto-saves happen.

Copying over files works most of the time, but since the files are from an earlier time, they won't necessarily be in sync with the files that survived the process, which could lead to any sort of behavior.

[MarineElite]

So your game should be fine if you dont have any autosaving features on?