[WD] Lost save-files
My savefiles are just... lost.
I played through the entire episode earlier today. I continued from a savefile from yesterday. Worked like a charm.
When i sat down just now to play through the game again, a second time, to make other decisions i wanted to start from a new save file but i found out that my old was gone.
This was all done from the same computer. I haven't installed the game on any other machine.
I'm really bummed out because the decisions i made in the first save file are the ones i want to continue episode 2 with. And what happens if this happens again? What if i loose my save file when i have completed episode 4??!?!?!?
Has this happened to anyone else and how do i fix this?
Edit: when i started the walking dead game i was also starting up diablo 3. I got some errors about direct 3d from walking dead game and when i restarted the game it started in windowed mode 1024x768 so my settings where reset. this was just before i found out that the save files where missing.
Edit: im unable to reproduce this now. but i think i started diablo 3 first. is it possible that this is some racecondition that caused the walking dead game to fail to sync to steam cloud and reset its settings and save files? the windowed thing is weird though, i dont remember that being standard...
I played through the entire episode earlier today. I continued from a savefile from yesterday. Worked like a charm.
When i sat down just now to play through the game again, a second time, to make other decisions i wanted to start from a new save file but i found out that my old was gone.
This was all done from the same computer. I haven't installed the game on any other machine.
I'm really bummed out because the decisions i made in the first save file are the ones i want to continue episode 2 with. And what happens if this happens again? What if i loose my save file when i have completed episode 4??!?!?!?
Has this happened to anyone else and how do i fix this?
Edit: when i started the walking dead game i was also starting up diablo 3. I got some errors about direct 3d from walking dead game and when i restarted the game it started in windowed mode 1024x768 so my settings where reset. this was just before i found out that the save files where missing.
Edit: im unable to reproduce this now. but i think i started diablo 3 first. is it possible that this is some racecondition that caused the walking dead game to fail to sync to steam cloud and reset its settings and save files? the windowed thing is weird though, i dont remember that being standard...
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Comments
Is there anywhere i can file an official bug report?
it's borring, what a shame !!
=> yesterday I played walking dead twice, no problem. Today, my save is gone, and the only thing i Have done, it's playing Dota2 ....
Thing is, if you look on your computer, the autosave files are still there, so the game needs to be rebuilt.
This must be a fairly consistent bug then?
I'll try and see if WabbitTwaks ideas ring true once the kids go to bed.
So no, you're not on your own....
Anyway, I'm restarting (again) the game. I hope it's the last time.
And why do not you use the Steam cloud save system? I can't load my game from another computer...
Just for my information, what means "after a launch hang" ? is it a crash ?
So the best I can say is to replay episode 1 if your save is gone.
When I launched the game, it sat at a black screen and never loaded.
What happened: Game crashed while it was starting up and when I restarted the game after the crash the game had no savefiles of my last gamesession. However, the savefiles were still present in users/my documents/telltale/The Walking dead. The game just did not recognise these files.
What to do:
1. Check if your 'lost' saves are still in your savesfolder (users/my documents/telltale/The Walking dead).
2. Take a backup of this folder.
3. Locate the savefile you want to 'unf**k'. Do this by checking the time of creation. The order the names of the savefiles suggest are not always correct. Take care to at least backup this save. Then delete the whole The walking Dead folder. The game will create a new, empty one if you start it.
4. Start the game and play long enough to have at least one savefile created. Playing until you wake up after the car crash should do.
5. Close the game and download SKTimeStamp (http://code.google.com/p/stexbar/downloads/list). Install the program.
6. Now locate your NEW savefile. Again, check the creation time. DO NOT think the higher the number in the name, the newer the file is. Right click it and select properties. Select the tab Timestamps. Now do the same with the old savefile that you wish to reinstate. Now change the three timestamps of your old savefile to the exact same values as your new savefile. Click 'apply'
7. Now name your old savefile exactly as the new one. (i.e. Save_2, if your new savefile was named Save_2). Delete your new savefile and replace it with your old, now named exactly the same, savefile.
8. start the game and get Lee killed.
Edit: It seems the situation is slightly different when this happens across different episodes. Some fine sleuthing from McHitman47 later in this thread delivered the solution:
cheers
Chris
This is the second huge problem I've had with this game! First being that the game doesn't start with a Xbox 360 controller plugged in on Windows 8. Neither do any other telltale games. It's very strange. Telltale are making some amazing games, but they need to do more testing.
Anyway, can't wait until the next one comes out!
There should be an sticky on this thread or atleast an reply from an developer to let us know if/that they are working on fixing this bug.
Thanks, worked perfectly.
You sir are a genius. Lost all of episode one after a crash. Thought I'd have to play through and remember what I did. Was really pissed off but your help has made this unnecessary.
Registered just to thank you.
Cheers!
This happened to me as well, on my third playthrough of Episode 2 as I booted it up, I got the message "Save Data Corrupted". One person here said I may have turned the PS3 off while it was saving.. I don't think so, because I don't normally do that.
It's not a coincidence that others are having this same problem as well. Well, I just have to start form Episode 1 again.
same thing happened to me with the save data corrupted crap.
now i have to play episode one 3 times, and episode two 3 times. way to f**k up telltale, get your sh*t together. anticipating this game for two months only for it to wipe all my decisions clean after beating ep2 TWICE.
I'd lost my saves halfway through Ep. 2 after the game suddenly began crashing on startup and I changed Compatibility settings to get it to run (as per another posts suggestion - I think this is what messes up the saves)
Same as above method but started a new game with ep 2, generated random choices and quit when it got through the intro
Used this save as the basis for the Timestamp fix - fired up walking dead and all worked OK
(I did untick "Compatibility Mode" on the .exe first so it was exactly how I ran it originally, before it started crashing - I think this is important too)
I deleted every possible save and replaced it with all new ones just as you said, but the game still insists I am where the temporary save file left off.
Is there an autosave that isn't in the Telltale folder? Even when I put my old saves in the folder, it loads up something on Episode 1 just after the car crash.
I got the same problem after ep3 and this is how I resolved it. I'm using steam in win7/64. I hope this works for you too.
1. Copy your savefiles the whole Telltale Games folder to desktop.
2. Uninstall the game.
3. Run RegClean or something like that program and delete all Telltale games reg files or Walking dead files.
4. Find every Talltale games folder and delete them from my documents (I did find 2 actully from different places) Using Search will help you. But do not delete copyed folder from desktop.
5. Install the game.
6. If game wont start run it as win98 / ME compatibility mode.
7. Start the game and shut it.
8. Now there should be Telltale Games folder at my documents. Copy your backup folder from desktop to documents folder and over write it if possible.
9. Start the game again. Press paly and if you dont have your save files there (i didnt) shut the game.
10. Now go documents folder and now there should be 2 Telltale games folders. In one Telltale games folder there should be your savefiles under "The Walking Dead" folder and another Telltale games folder should have "the walking dead" folder what game greated after last startup.
11. Copy all files from "The Walking Dead" folder to "the walking dead" folder and delete old Telltale Games folder where is The Walking Dead folder completly.
12. Start the game. Now your resolution, settings and savegames should be there and working correctly.
This is how I get my game working.
I pray that your children grow into healthy rich adults , that your water turns into gold , that your life spam reaches infinity , that your boots stomp on the broken necks of your enemies and that you have the greatest life ever .
Because sir, I thank you !
Now , something he didn't mention.
THE SAVE FILE YOU WANT TO RESURRECT HAS TO BE PUT OVER ANOTHER SAVE FILE FROM ---THE SAME EPISODE---
For ex. you finished the first two episodes, and you finally want to start the third one and you get your saves deleted ?
You do all this holy man told us to do but just don't start from the first episode, start the second one, change the dates and all that good stuff and replace it with your save from the second episode.
Replacing a save from the 1st episode with a save from the 2nd or 3rd freezes the game completely.
The fix of Jussiboy might do the trick too, definitly worth a try if the first fix doesn't work.
As for the PS3 problems: I don't know what to do about that. On PC there is just more options for editing files...
I am having this problem after Episode 3. I completed it, then started up the game later and everything was gone. The save files were still in the folder there.
I followed your steps, however step 10 was not true for me. I still only had 1 folder and I am back to square one with nothing working. but save files still there.
I'd love to see WoW players investing hours upon hours of their lives only to see their character deleted.
Very poor support from Telltale Games indeed.
Refund requested.
Hopefully Telltale will put out an official fix soon...
after my steam installed ep 3 and i tried it i got "WalkingDead101.exe has stopped working" error. Then I postponed playing the game and later today restarted my computer. I then got it working, but it started up in windowed mode on lower resolution. I switched them to full screen etc and got ready to load my earlier game, but got asked about random generating choices... I got my saves. Please fix this telltale.
My major choices are intact but i can't tell if thats just coincidental autogeneration because the game thinks I told Clem we are going for a boat now instead of going after her parents which was the choice I made and how the ending proceeded before I lost my saves.
Is there a fix to restore them all? TT needs to release some kind of compiler to repair the prefs file or whatever it is holding the save directory, this is pretty unacceptable. Wouldn't be so bad if we could at least skip cutscenes and dialog to speed it up. Instead gotta sit through 6 hours just to try and get back up to where we were?
Pass on future purchases until this is fixed.
The crash probably just overwrote the prefs.prop. If you have a backup of that, or can restore it by reverting to a previous verson (right click/properties in windows) you should get the saves back.
I didn't foresee the game not being able to pick up my saved files so I don't have a backup and I found no previous versions.
I am running the game on Windows 7 64 bit. It ran fine, it even seemed to save fine. Until I got to the pharmacy. Then when I went to the menu and clicked on anything there the game would automatically start a brand new game and overwrite my last save.
I made it all the way through episode 2 tonight with no issues. I even hit escape a few times so I could take a break.
Thanks again for posting this solution. I would have been sad to miss out on such a great game.
It looks like the solution of changing the timestamps of the old saves to those of the new saves then renaming and replacing the new ones with the old ones seems to have worked for me. Just make sure to, like McHitman says, start a new episode 2 game if that was the last episode for which you have a savegame that worked correctly.