Single Player World Fails to Load

[Lone_Puppy]

After editing a ship late at night, I was too tired to save it before shutting down. The following day, it just fails to load the world.

I tried creating a new world and this works fine.
I tried created a new install and moved the world not working to this and it fails.

Is there a method or a tool to recover a single player world0?

 

[Sachys]

I had this the other week. I'm not aware of any method to save a SP world from death on startup, though I've no doubt somebody better informed will come forwards soon enough. Intrigued myself as I have lost a couple of unsaved ships and stations over time that I may still have the dodgy world file etc for.

 

[Lone_Puppy]

I've restored a world once before when this happened, but foolishly I think I didn't take any notes. And if I did, they're probably buried in a folder structure of chaos on my desktop or a USB drive.

I've been messing with a copy of it. I even tried the update process with no joy. So, will keep working on it and post an update here if I'm successful.

 

[SmilingDemon]

start the game , load the broken world and let it crash
then add the latest logfile from the logs folder inside of your install path to an answer here.

to make it work again i guess you may have to delete some certain files

 

[Lone_Puppy]

start the game , load the broken world and let it crash
then add the latest logfile from the logs folder inside of your install path to an answer here.

to make it work again i guess you may have to delete some certain files

Problem is, is it never loads in order to crash. It's sits at a permanent Universe Loading... screen until I close it.
I'll pull the most recent logs when I next experiment.

 

[Lone_Puppy]

Well, here are the logs after attempting to load the world with the latest update. I was hoping the update would have automagically fixed it, but sadly no. :-(

I let the game sit for roughly 5mins before killing it.

 

[SmilingDemon]

Uhh .. great .. nothing got logged about why at all it seems!

you did try to start the world0 from "C:\S\U\Fresh\v0.199.654PopB\StarMade\.\server-database\world0\"
correct ?
You are able to create a new universe and run it.
correct?
make a backup copy of that world0 folder.
then delete the following files from the
C:\S\U\Fresh\v0.199.654PopB\StarMade\.\server-database\world0\
folder
chatchannels.tag
CATALOG.cat
SIMULATION_STATE.sim
TRADING.tag
if that isnt going to make it start delete
FACTIONS.fac
too. (that will kick you from your faction and removes it from the game. causing ships to be in an unknown factions)

other than that ... you could try to start the world as a standalone server version and see if it gets to log than some problems to the logfile.

 

[Lone_Puppy]

Uhh .. great .. nothing got logged about why at all it seems!

you did try to start the world0 from "C:\S\U\Fresh\v0.199.654PopB\StarMade\.\server-database\world0\"
correct ?
You are able to create a new universe and run it.
correct?
make a backup copy of that world0 folder.
then delete the following files from the
C:\S\U\Fresh\v0.199.654PopB\StarMade\.\server-database\world0\
folder
chatchannels.tag
CATALOG.cat
SIMULATION_STATE.sim
TRADING.tag
if that isnt going to make it start delete
FACTIONS.fac
too. (that will kick you from your faction and removes it from the game. causing ships to be in an unknown factions)

other than that ... you could try to start the world as a standalone server version and see if it gets to log than some problems to the logfile.

Yes and yes.
I did try removing the seed and a couple other files but not those files. Will defo give this a try.
Thanks heaps SmilingDemon. You're awesome!

 

[SmilingDemon]

you did remove the seed ? --- bad idea !

 

[DrTarDIS]

If you just want that ship back
-copy the ship's entity name (e.g. "myname_numbers.ent" without the .ent) from the serverfolder that doesn't load
-load new, fresh universe in client, spawn a core, name that core by pasting the"myname_numbers", exit universe
-copy everything with "myname_numbers" from the crashed server over to the fresh server(yes, replace existing)
-load the new universe, core should now bee your recovered ship
-save blueprint, exit, launch catalog tool, export for backup.
-???
-profit.

 

[Lone_Puppy]

DrTarDIS Man, I forgot you can do that. Thanks heaps! So typical the one time I don't save before shutting down and BOOM! I'll give that a go and report how I get on. While sifting through the DB folder I did notice a lot of projects I'd completely forgotten about. If anything, the good thing about going through this process has reminded me of many unfinished projects.

SmilingDemon I've tried removing numerous files and also tried replacing them, but I only perform these experiments on a copy of the original world. When I'm done, I make a fresh copy to conduct the next experiment. Saldy no luck so far, but I'll keep experimenting. :-(

 

[SmilingDemon]

Ok .. running out of ideas here.
maybe upload the compressed universe folder somewhere and PM me the link to it and i try it too to get it to run.

 

[Kingofanime]

I'm curious... and could be wrong... but do you guys use the "exit to main menu" or "exit to desktop" button? Because I've had worlds corrupt in the past, and I use to use the "exit to desktop button". I stopped using it, because it works too fast, it closes instantly. Where as, "exit to main menu" actually takes 5 or 6 seconds and acts like it's doing something instead of instantly stopping the game.

 

[SmilingDemon]

Kingofanime i use both ... i havnt had a corrupted universe ever. BUT i do create new worlds very often and do not use big ones for a longer time in testing. ... so your reasoning might not be of entirely here (i sadly have no clue what the game exactly does on exiting)

 

[Lone_Puppy]

I'm curious... and could be wrong... but do you guys use the "exit to main menu" or "exit to desktop" button? Because I've had worlds corrupt in the past, and I use to use the "exit to desktop button". I stopped using it, because it works too fast, it closes instantly. Where as, "exit to main menu" actually takes 5 or 6 seconds and acts like it's doing something instead of instantly stopping the game.

I use both and yeah, I know what you mean. I have seen different activity between both methods. The night before the world stopped working I did a exit to desktop, because I was in a hurry.

I also observed different reactions when we were having the delinking issues with transporters, and other modules.
[doublepost=1504738267,1504735258][/doublepost]It would be nice if there was a tool that could run through the world database and do an integrity check and fix/remove any bugged sections causing it to fail to load.

This would be an invaluable tool for everyone, especially server admins if they urgently need to recover a failed world.

 

[Lone_Puppy]

Good news!
I recovered the world. Sadly, I have not yet recovered the one thing I was working on at crash time. As for the world though, it's up and running for me to move around in. How did I fix it...?

As a precaution, I copy the complete starmade installed folder structured before I do any updates. I know the update process has a backup feature, but I like a completely untouched backup. If I was more organised, I'd setup regular backups or restore points. Sadly I'm not.

1. Long story short, I created a blank install of the same version as the damaged one.
2. Started it up in single player with my usual login name etc so it created it's world0 folder etc.
3. I renamed the new world0 folder to world99.
   
4. Then I copied the damaged world0 folder "Starmade/server-database/world0" into this new install.
5. Testing it, the problem persisted.
6. After trying various file swaps between the backup made before updating to the current version, I isolated the files that were buggy.
7. Copying over ".data", ".properties" and ".script" inside the "Starmade/server-database/world0/index" folder did the trick. NOTE: I deleted everything in the new index folder to remove doubt as I did with any other files I substitued. Was easy enough to re-copy them from the damged install as required.

And that's it for this particular problem. Unfortunately, because I was using old index files, the project I was working on at the time of the crash did not exist at the time. The object/structure files are still there, I just can't see them in the single player world. I'll figure something out.

What made me revisit this was, I had a computer crash the day before yesterday. So went through this drama with the latest version. Sadly, this did not work. The latest problem was caused by a different file.

1. Same deal creating a fresh install and renaming the world0 to world99.
2. Copied over the damaged world0 to try file swapping with the previous install/update version.
3. This time, found the file "TRADING.tag" was the problem in the "StarMade\server-database\world0" folder itself.

And luckily, everything was there.

So, it takes a little time and trial and error, but it can be done.
Hope this helps other players recover their damaged worlds0 or whatever folders.