Defold crash and files unsaved

So I left the computer with Defold running for a while and when I came back Defold had crashed. When I brought up the project again all my files were reset to an earlier state. I seem to find no autosave files nor any other backup/failsafe. Nothing to get my files back. Is there some way for me to not lose 4h of work that I’ve missed?

All I found were some c-files in “builds”-folder but they are just half-useful as far as I can see since half of the c-versions are gibberish.

//M

2 Likes

That sucks, we’re really sorry about that. We are currently re-working how the editor saves files and when, so this will soon be less of a problem. But it won’t bring your changes back. :disappointed: If you’re up for it, you could send me a zip of your builds-folder along with instructions of which files you want back the most and I can see if there is a way to resurrect them (no guarantees!). It’s not easy and the time spent would be in the hours-range, so only if there are some magically tuned-to-perfection floats or something that’s difficult to get back. Data loss sucks so I would really like to see if I could help.

Regarding the crash, it would be great if you could report it in github (Help > Report Issue).

3 Likes

No worries. I’m at a noob level at the moment anyway, in both Defold and lua, so there really weren’t a lot of things I was able to create in those 4 hours. ^^ I can rewrite it, absolutely, and get some well needed repetition for learning purposes in the process. However, I won’t deny my frustration since I’m spoiled with constant autosaves or other idiot fail-safes in software I usually use and couldn’t find any after the crash. Such a feature would be appreciated.

I’ll see if I can create a github account and report the crash and some other issues I’ve found.

Thanks for the reply
//M

6 Likes

Hi mattias!

Just to let you know, I’ve been working with Defold for almost a year now, I had no experience with coding before, and I have only had 1 or 2 crashes. I know big crashes can be a pain (and sometimes it almost seems like they are a thing of the past) but overall I find it to be a really stable and hard-working piece of software. I render my game very often to test everything is working, and that automatically saves everything you are working on. If you get into that habit, it will help you out a lot.

2 Likes

Hello 88.josh

I rendered/built my project many times yesterday and clearly nothing got automatically saved when I did.

I don’t know if there’s some option to do that but I can’t seem to find it in Preferences or game.project if that is the case.

//M

It’s different between the two editors, Editor1 does (because it’s heavily based on the FS) and Editor2 does not, because it’s heavily based on memory. We are fixing this as we speak though.

4 Likes

Ouch. I am remembering all the times in my life I have lost work.

BACK UP YOUR WORK, PEOPLE!

Hitting “Save” once in a while is enough, but it’s of course easily forgotten and will be fixed better.

I’ve had to learn this the hard way on many different occasions. It takes discipline, but knowing your work could possibly be retracted should be good enough. Whenever I make a change save. When I move some things around save. When I’m about to exit the program… save save save!