Help, lost my campaign!

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darkeness66
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Help, lost my campaign!

Post by darkeness66 »

Yesterday I spent 8 hours on a campaign, saved it went to bed. This morning I get up and decide to reorganize a few folders in my maptools library, one of which is my campaign save folder (or so I thought).

I then go to open my campaign and it has disappeared! I did track down an old version of it from the back-up folder in maptools, but it is before all the work I did yesterday. I can't find anything in autosave (I did have that turned off a while back, but I believe it is back on now saving every 10 minutes).

Where would the defualt save directory be on the off chance that I was saving that campaign in the wrong place?

As a side note, I also lost all the maps that I have exported from the campaign. That kind of sucks, but I am not as worried as the party has completed them. I am just wondering what the hell I did wrong? In all the years of using maptools I have not had this happen.

Any ideas/suggestions welcome. My next game is Monday night and my big maptools "work day" was yesterday :(

Edit: I found the autosave file, but it is of the map before I did the 8 hours worth of work. Maybe autosave is set up wrong now that I turned it back on? Attached a picture of my preferences...
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darkeness66
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Re: Help, lost my campaign!

Post by darkeness66 »

Crisis averted, I accidentally deleted the folder my campaign was saved in. WHEW!

That still leaves me with the issue about the auto-save. Why is it not functioning? Any Ideas?

Do I maybe need to reinstall maptools? I am running 1.3.91 btw.

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Full Bleed
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Re: Help, lost my campaign!

Post by Full Bleed »

darkeness66 wrote:Crisis averted, I accidentally deleted the folder my campaign was saved in. WHEW!

That still leaves me with the issue about the auto-save. Why is it not functioning? Any Ideas?

Do I maybe need to reinstall maptools? I am running 1.3.91 btw.
AUTOSAVES:

Autosave is a misunderstood feature in MT. Autosave is only a temporary file. When MT is *properly* closed, the Autosave file is deleted. It is only used when MT crashes for some reason. When you open MT it checks the Autosave folder. If it finds something, it asks if you want to open it. That's why if you have Autosave On, and have been working on a file longer than your save time, and you open a second instance of MT you get asked whether or not you want to open the Autosave file--Because the first instance is still open there is an active Autosave file and the second instance of MT see's it and thinks there might have been a crash.


BACKUPS:

As for how files get into the *BACKUP* folder (which holds the last 10 backups)... believe it or not, it seems to *only* happen when you OPEN a file. Not when you save a file. Not during Autosave. And not during the warning-save on closing MT. That's why almost every time you see people resorting to pulling files from their backup folder it's *before* their last save or game/development session. You almost always lose something if you need to use the Backup file (whereas if you need to use the Autosave file because MT crashed on you, and you have a frequent save set, you tend to lose less).

In order for Backup to make a backup of your currently file, you would have to save a file and reopen it. Then a copy of the file will go into the Backup folder.

Why does it work that way? I don't know. Is it a bug? Maybe. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me to work the way it does, but I'm fairly certain that its been that way for a very long time.


Personally, I think Backups should be made on CLOSE. If performance on close is an issue, the Autosave could just move over to the Backup folder instead of deleting itself. That way people will have crash protection with Autosave and more recent backups in their Backup folder (then they currently get).

I would not like to have the Backup made when saving every time though... as I tend to save often and wouldn't want to fill my backup folder with only recent versions.
Maptool is the Millennium Falcon of VTT's -- "She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts."

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darkeness66
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Re: Help, lost my campaign!

Post by darkeness66 »

Thanks for the good info. I tend to forget to save often and rely to much on autosave. Now that I know what is happening I need to remind myself more often to save... and not think, oh I don't have to worry, it will autosave. :roll:

Maybe your back-up idea should be added to the 1.4 build...

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Full Bleed
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Re: Help, lost my campaign!

Post by Full Bleed »

darkeness66 wrote:Thanks for the good info. I tend to forget to save often and rely to much on autosave. Now that I know what is happening I need to remind myself more often to save... and not think, oh I don't have to worry, it will autosave. :roll:
It would probably also be nice if there was some better documentation of the Autosave feature in the settings. Thinking that you have a good "backup" that's only as old as the Autosave is set is totally understandable!
Maybe your back-up idea should be added to the 1.4 build...
I'll put up a feature request.
Maptool is the Millennium Falcon of VTT's -- "She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts."

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JamzTheMan
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Re: Help, lost my campaign!

Post by JamzTheMan »

Ya, that doesn't make much sense (saving on open vs close).

A more robust autosave/backup should be in place. Possibly rolling autosaves/backups. That way if it crashes in the middle of an autosave or something, you still have the last one (like autosave 1, then 2, then 3 then 1 again, etc). Clearing those all out on save/close after creating a backup.

Should be a quick hit.

+1 on adding that to 1.4.x.
-Jamz
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taustinoc
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Re: Help, lost my campaign!

Post by taustinoc »

JamzTheMan wrote:Ya, that doesn't make much sense (saving on open vs close).
It depends on what the purpose is. It's good protection against "Oops, I didn't mean to do that, and I saved it after I did," or crashes. Which shouldn't really be called Autosave, IMO.

No arguing that it could be handled better, though, like saving every five or 10 minutes, and keeping several dozen versions (since hard drive space is so cheap these days).

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