X3:AP with XRM & Plugin Manager. Formerly overwritten saves make a comeback.

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Gregory_Rainsborough
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X3:AP with XRM & Plugin Manager. Formerly overwritten saves make a comeback.

Post by Gregory_Rainsborough » Wed, 12. Aug 15, 19:47

Hello chaps.

I have a slight problem. I've been running XRM with a few other mods and everything was trundling along quite nicely. Then I decided to install Logain Industries Capital Ship Energy Cell Generator (CSecG) which requires you to use the Plugin Manager. I'd used the same program before and went ahead as normal and installed it through the Plugin Manager.

This is where the problem begins. ALL saves on my game have now reverted to saves that had been overwritten several days earlier. What I would really like is a solution to get my old save games back but I'd settle for some method of getting back the 400 million credits I'd earned in those 2-3 days?

Alan Phipps
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Post by Alan Phipps » Wed, 12. Aug 15, 23:06

Saves don't and cannot revert all on their own. Once a save is overwritten (as opposed to just shuffled in the 3 slot autosave queue) it is gone - unless you restored your computer, copied/moved in an old save folder, changed a campaign in a savefile manager, or deleted the saves entirely leaving gaps and Steam Cloud (if enabled) replaced them.

I have left this here as I don't see how mods will change the way saves are handled, otherwise I would have moved it to the S&M forum.
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Gregory_Rainsborough
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Post by Gregory_Rainsborough » Wed, 12. Aug 15, 23:26

Yeah I thought it was a tad bit unusual and that as I've never come across anything like it hence why I'm struggling to find a solution. Is it possible that the Plugin Manager stored some of my old saves from when I last booted it up and then overrode the saves I had when I booted it up to install this mod?

Cycrow
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Post by Cycrow » Thu, 13. Aug 15, 09:48

The plugin manager does have a save game manager built in, if you have enabled it.

but it will only take affect if you switch between vanilla and modified mode.

if thats the case, then the old saves would be backed up in GameDIr/PluginManager/Backup/Saves

Gregory_Rainsborough
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Post by Gregory_Rainsborough » Thu, 13. Aug 15, 15:27

I don't believe that I had switched between vanilla and modified mode at any point since I don't ever play vanilla any more.

I don't have a Backup folder in GameDIr/PluginManager so what can that tell me?

In addition all my saves seem to change their times every times I boot it up. So for instance, say that I made the actual save at 15:23:02 when I boot the game up that save will then change the time it apparently saved to say 23:00:05 and so will every single other save despite the fact they were all saved at different times and certainly not 8 within a second.

Alan Phipps
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Post by Alan Phipps » Thu, 13. Aug 15, 16:31

That near-identical time means that something (Steam Cloud or some Save Manager?) is overwriting all your saves with a stored version copied as at the stated time.

Two questions for you, what is overwriting them and why? Only you can answer them really as only you know what you have set up on your system. It is certainly not vanilla or Steam usual behaviour so you have something unusual going on in the background. What about some sort of 3rd party application that routinely backs-up your documents, or backs-up recently-changed files etc - just wild guesses though.
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Cycrow
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Post by Cycrow » Fri, 14. Aug 15, 12:28

It doesn't sound like its the save game manager in the plugin manager, but to be sure, you could disable it and see if it still happens.

Gregory_Rainsborough
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Post by Gregory_Rainsborough » Mon, 17. Aug 15, 23:42

I know that it's not the Steam cloud that's the problem as I have my X3 files in a completely separate folder on my desktop and I use the no-Steam launcher in their.

I've disabled the save game manager and it seems that it has stopped overwriting all the files (as beforehand every time I went onto the game the save game times all changed to the time I booted it up) but that doesn't answer the question of

a) Where are the old saves?

b) How and why was the save game manager able to overwrite my most recent saves with the ones that they had overwritten several days previously? Is it possible that since I do not usually boot the game up through the Plugin Manager (PM) that when it detected the different saves it overwrote them with the ones that it had kept in a folder from when I had last booted the game up through the PM.

I think it might be either a case of the PM getting a bit upset or the Logain mod making it upset. As I said, I've never had a problem just installing a mod before though it is possible that I might have accidentally activated the save game manager (though I do not recall such a thing occurring). To my knowledge I don't have any other 3rd party programs that tamper with those files. I know that I had a Windows update the previous day but earlier that very same day the program had been hunky dory.

EDIT: Apologies for the late reply I've been away from home the past few days.

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Post by Cycrow » Tue, 18. Aug 15, 09:44

What version of the plugin manager are you using ?

the saves should be in GameDir/PluginManager/Backup/Saves

they may also appear in a backup directory in My Documents/Egosoft.

Why its suddenly overwriting the saves, i have no idea

Alan Phipps
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Post by Alan Phipps » Tue, 18. Aug 15, 12:41

Also since this confirmed as a Plugin Manager issue (even if due to corruption of same) this can go over to S&M from Tech Sp.
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Gregory_Rainsborough
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Post by Gregory_Rainsborough » Tue, 18. Aug 15, 21:27

I'm using an version 1.47 at the moment. Would you advise that I update it?

Unfortunately there is no 'Backup' folder. In GameDir/PluginManager I only have

>Graphics
>Icons
>Original
>Readme
>Saves
>Uninstall
>PluginManager.dat

All the saves in the Egosoft folder in the My Documents folder have the exact same file size as those that are in the GameDir/PluginManager/Saves folder. The saves that I had most recently played do not seem be in either folder any longer.

I have just noticed though that while booting up the game through the Plugin Manager the save game files have all changed their 'date modified' information to the current time.

Cycrow
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Post by Cycrow » Wed, 19. Aug 15, 09:43

yeah you should update, there was a bug in the old version with the save game manager

Gregory_Rainsborough
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Post by Gregory_Rainsborough » Wed, 19. Aug 15, 21:50

Okay I've installed the old one. What now?

Is there any chance of recovering my old saves (by which I mean the ones that have been overwritten) and if not I don't suppose someone could point me towards a decent money script so I don't have to redo two days worth of gaming?

Btw Cycrow your mods are awesome!

Gregory_Rainsborough
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Post by Gregory_Rainsborough » Wed, 19. Aug 15, 23:55

Actually no need to link any cheat scripts. I see you've already seen to it in your released mods!

Cycrow
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Post by Cycrow » Thu, 20. Aug 15, 10:00

if the saves are not in the backup directories, then its unlikely you would be able to recover them, as they have most likely been lost.

1.47 of the plugin manager did have a bug that caused it to lose track of the save games, this was fixed in 1.49. So if you make sure you have the latest version it should prevent it in the future

The cheat scripts should be able to get you back to where you were in the old saves

Gregory_Rainsborough
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Post by Gregory_Rainsborough » Fri, 21. Aug 15, 00:53

Okie dokie. Thanks very much for helping me find the problem so it won't happen again :)

GunthorNC
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Re: X3:AP with XRM & Plugin Manager. Formerly overwritten saves make a comeback.

Post by GunthorNC » Sun, 20. Jan 19, 22:03

It appear's that version 1.531 also eat's save's... No sign of them any where, I've searched for over an hour now, none of the potential posted location's have any of them. And they don't come back when I switch back to vanilla.

Step's I took to lose my save's.

1. Install plugin manager.
2. Switch to modified.
3. Install Ap Libraries and Universe explorer's.
4. Launch the game.

Any idea's? I had at least 150 hour's invested...

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