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[Major SNAFU]

Hi all,

I am a few weeks into DF now and am beginning to get the hang of the basics - but I have encountered a problem:

In my save folder there are various regions and various saved games for each region.  I also have seasonal autosaving "on" and it seems to be working properly in that I can load these games.

BUT...

When I use the Save Game option while running the game DF displays the saving message and seems to take abou the same amount of time as for the seasonal saves.  The the data\save\current\folder is empty.

When I restart the game, I select the Continue Playing option and instead of loading the last place  I saved (using the Save Game), it presents a list of the regions and saved games.

So essentially, unless I quit playing right after a seasonal save, any additional work I do is lost.  I lost hours of detailed layouts today because of this.

Is this a known bug with 40D16?  Is there a version of 40D that does not have this problem?  I don't want to stop playing, but only being able to stop at seasonal saves is a real deal breaker for me.

The game was un-zipped into a directory on my HDD.  It is not under Program Files or anything like that.  It is just sitting in its own directory.

Thanks in advance for your help.

SNAFU

[Jim Groovester]

There are no bugs here.

When you continue playing, you need to reload your save game without all the seasonal or yearly back up information.

You do not look in save/current, because that stores data that you're currently using in game.

Instead, look for the save folder that looks like 'region 1' instead of 'region 1-spr-201' or 'region 1-smr-204'.

If you load from one of the seasonal back ups, when you reach an automatic save point, you'll start seeing things like 'region 1-spr-201-smr-201'.

[Major SNAFU]

So let me repeat that back.  When I continue to play, I should load the RegionX file where this is the base region for all of the seasonal saves.

So I just opened the game a number of times and none of the save games listed show me my fortress as I saved it, although the files in one of the directories has the correct time stamp.

HEre is what I see after selecting Continue Playing"

I see 7 games I could open.

the top three are for region 1 and not what I want

I then see 4 entries for region 5

Astmuthakat, Dwarf fortress ---- Khazahd-Rumil 301
Folder: region5

Astmuthakat, Dwarf fortress ---- Khazahd-Rumil 301
Folder: region5-spr-301

Astmuthakat, Dwarf fortress ---- Khazahd-Rumil 301
Folder: region5-spr-301-sum--aut-301

Astmuthakat, Dwarf fortress ---- Khazahd-Rumil 301
Folder: region5-spr-301-sum-301

In the save directory there are 11 directories as follows:

current
region1
region1-spr-216
region1-spr-217
region2
region3
region4
region5
region5-spr-301
region5-spr-301-sum-301
region5-spr-301-sum--aut-301  ( did not miss typing a "301" here, it is not in the direcotry name.)

The most recent file save in in the region5-spr-301-sum-301 folder, not the region5-spr-301-sum--sut-301 folder (which seems odd to me as the autumn auto save should have been the last.

But none of these, and I have just reloaded each one in sequence, is a save file of the state I finally did my last save of the game in (which was about 45 min later).  The last save file (again, the region5-spr-301-sum-301 file, was at 05:51 today.  But I did a final save game at just after 06:30.  There are no files in any of the region5 folders with a time stamp of 06:30.

So, to recap, your instructions seem to indicate that I should load the region5 save to continue playing the most recent save, if I understand you correctly.  The last time stamp in this folder was some 3 days ago. 

So as best as I can tell, the save I made using Save Game are no where to be found in the save directory.

If I do open the region5 directory, it opens the game right after embark with the dwarves standing around the wagon.


I just did an additional test I opened the region5-spr-301-sum--aut-301 save game, played for 10 minutes, saved using the Save Game option and immediately chose Continue Playing and it loaded the region5 save game, which brings me all the way back to right after embark and not the fortress as it was when I just saved.

Checking the timestamps, the world.sav in the region5-spr-301-sum--aut-301 was updated to the time when I just did my most recent save. 

This time when I opened the region5-spr-301-sum--aut-301 file, it shows me the state that I just saved my fortress in.

So I am completely confused.  I looks to me that the game is saving the Save Game data into the last seasonal directory -but nont consistently, because this didn't happend the last couple of times.  the only difference is that I immediately tried to COntinue Playing, rather than kill DF and re-start it.

Last note:  I confirmed this behaviour on a second computer, mirror of this base installation, but with different regions and save games.

loading the base reagionX when I want to continue playing is not working on either of my machines.


SNAFU

[Slythe]

I'm relatively new to the game as well and just recently ran into similar save game oddities.  Awhile after the summer seasonal autosave I manually saved then reloaded and couldn't find the most recent save at first.  Eventually, even after the autumn seasonal save, if I manually saved the game, for some reason it would save it in the previous season's folder - summer.  Maybe this all has something to do with ctrl-alt-deling and killing DF at times.  Anyway, if you manually save the game, it will save it in one of that region's folders; you might just have to experiment with reloading each one to find it.

[gtmattz]

If you open from a seasonal save, then save out, it will save your current progress to the save you opened.  So pay attention to which one you open .

Say you open up your spring whatever save, and play through till winter and save, you will have a summer, fall, and winter save, but when you save out it saves to the spring folder you opened from.

Hope this makes sense?

A surefire way to tell which folder you saved to last, is to view the folder contents full details and sort by date, the most recent one will be the one you saved to.

[Old Skool]

A good idea (for me anyway) is to keep all those sub folders in the save folder cleaned up.

I delete all the regionX folders and the regionX-season-year folders when finish monkeying around with an embark.

Another thing you can do is to save out of the game and rename a folder. For example you can change the name of a folder from regionX to HappyLand. You can even change a folder named regionX-SomeSeason-RandomYear to DorkLand. The nice thing about this is that all autosaves after the folder name change will be name DorkLand-NextSeason-NextYear.

Dwarf Fortress always sorts save files alphabetically, if you rename your save folder AAA it will be on the top of the list.

anyway, I know I'm not explaining myself well but hopefully you get the idea.

[Major SNAFU]

Thanks for all of the help.

But this all seems a bit wrong to me.

The whole point of turning on autosaves (yearly or seasonally) is to have an archive of the progression of your fortress.  You shouldn't touch them (nor should the game) unless you are prompted to overwrite them.

When you hit Save Game, it should write out a new folder with the new information, number the folder sequentially if necessary.

So the way that this is working on my system now is this:

The most recent file is the region5-spr-301-sum--aut-301 because that is the one I opened.  Even though there is a seasonal save folder for win-301, it is really older than the the folder named with the previous seasonal autosave.

I never noticed this until I turned the autosaves on.  This bit need a good re-think, in my opinion.



I can see how you could, by being careful,  retain the original regionX as the continuous save, but the game doesn't really guide you to this correct way of doing things.

[Ilmoran]

Let me see if I can try to clarify what's going on.

You generate a world.  I'll use Region5 as the world, just because that's what you seem to currently be using.  You have seasonal autosave and backup option turned on.
Save Folder contents:  Region5.
You create a new fortress.  The game does a seasonal autosave and back.
Save Folder contents:  Region5, Region5-spr-301.
You play for a while, then save and exit while still in spring.
Save Folder contents:  Region5 (this has your current data), Region5-spr-301 (this is your fort at the moment of embarkation).
You resume playing, by selecting the Region5 folder.  You play through summer.
Save Folder contents:  Region5 (this has your summer start data, until you actually save and exit.  If you crash out now, this folder has your summer data), Region5-spr-301, Region5-sum-301 (summer start data)

Now, if you continue opening Region5 every time, Region5 will always have your most current data.  But given your directory, at some point, you opened Region5-spr-301.  At that point, the game does not treat it as being a seasonal save of Region5.  It is a save of "Region5-spr-301", a different region/world/timeline as far as the game is concerned.  When you got to summer, it autosaved.  The autosave is always created by appending the season and year to the current save folder name, within a character limit.  This is why if you play Region5 continually, you end up with Region5-sum-301, but if you loaded Region5-spr-301 and go to summer, you end up with region5-spr-301-sum-301.  Then at some point you loaded region5-spr-301-sum-301, and played to autumn, at which point it tried to append aut-301, but the string was too long, so it truncated the original name first, down to region5-spr-301-sum-, and then appended -aut-301, so you ended up with region5-spr-301-sum-301--aut-301.

As for your last post:  You seem to be mixing up autosave and backup options.  The autosave option saves your progress to your current folder at certain intervals.  The autobackup option makes a second copy of that save, with a different name (the current folder name with season and year appended).  Neither option change which folder your progress gets written out to: it's always the same folder that you loaded your current session from.  I'm not sure how that isn't clear from the text for that init option, or how (or even what) you would expect it to behave differently.

And you couldn't have ever noticed the behavior until you turned on backups because it never happens otherwise.

[SniHjen]

turned on backups

Mike Maydays mod have autobackup turned ON as standard.

I'm willin to bet that thats whats going on.