[3.50 beta, manually restored, solved] After power outage bug

[Míriel]

  Hi, I was playing UnReal World when there was a brief blackout that turned off the computer, after turning it back on and loading the character I went to sleep since that was the action interrupted by the blackout, after waking up the message log displayed that a quest had expired my animals disappeared and a tanning fur returned to the previous stage and to the place it was before, essentially being doubled. The quest and the fur I don't mind but my pack animal was full of trade items, can I get it back?
  I'm not sure which of the files inside the character folder I should send so I will wait for an answer first


  Thanks for the replies, I will try to keep a backup like you suggested and starting anew is a great favorite of mine too so shouldn't be a problem. Last but not least, should I wait until Sami says if he can help or should I just e-mail him directly?

[PALU]

Only Sami can give a definite answer, but UrW isn't as good at handling crashes as one might want (although Sami took some steps lately, which I think is for the next update). UrW writes things to file at check points, and in addition to that the OS may decide on its own that it won't actually commit the written data to disk for some time, and if the power goes at that time what was committed but not written is obviously lost. The OS might not like incorrectly terminated files either (as happens when the application gets killed before it has closed the files).

If Sami says he can try to help you, it would normally be the complete folder for that character that should be zipped up.

The standard recommendation for UrW is to make regular backups of the character folder (I typically copy it after every sitting) in case things go horribly wrong. Obviously, that doesn't help you after the fact, though.

[Privateer]

TBH, I'm sorry to say you're probably best off to just start a new character.

Curruption due to stopping the game by choice or happenstance can cause problems both immediate and unforseen.

[Sami]

Serious crashes or power losses can always corrupt and always lose things. It is not about this game alone, it is about computers and laws of physics in general.

Miriel, you can .zip up and e-mail the savegame over to me and I will take a look. However, if you were playing the latest the pack animal shouldn't disappear even if things crash.

(I sometimes wonder how often OS provides, Microsoft for example, get requests to restore somebodys recent data due to powerloss or a crash.   ...we try our best, even if we don't have as many personnel in the house for that.)

[PALU]

I would expect them to get a lot of those.
I also would expect the to refer to the EULA that states that the OS may not be used for anything important, and that Microsoft takes no responsibility for any losses making sure that holds even for when they are negligent.

[Míriel]

  I can't seem to find how to attach files in the e-mail option in the forum or in the PM one and the zipped archive is too big to be attached to this post. How do I send the file to Sami?

[PALU]

I use 7-zip to split the zip file into 10 MB chunks and send each chunk into a separate mail. The chunks would be added as mail attachments.
Sami's mail address is found on the Contact page of the forum (sami@unrealworld.fi).

[Míriel]

  Thank you for all your help, I've just sent the e-mail with the save file.

[Sami]

We managed to manually restore the missing animal. This all happened with 3.50 beta version so crash the latest (3.50 stable) crash security improvements weren't functional upon the incident.