CND

[Vice]

And if you can send me a copy of the profile before and after something like that occurs, that can also help pin down what may have happened. I've reviewed the codebase for those systems and they appear to be functioning correctly, so there may be some other obscure combination of events or actions that may be producing such a result which I'd need to know to troubleshoot it further.

[ELiTe]

@Vice -

I got the profile "just before". It's the "just after" that is overwritten Do you absolutely need the "just after" or "anytime after" will do?

Cuz now the "anytime after" are my MP profiles and I don't use them in SP anymore.

@Marvin -

1. Load profile, select MP, play
2. Have fun, press ESC, save to new slot
3. Say bye bye guys, exit MP.
4. Exit to desktop
5. Launch EM
6. Load last-saved-profile
7. Click LAUNCH for SP mode
8. Weep when I see my stations have disappeared

If you need further breakdown of (2), I don't remember much.. just heaps of exploration, killing red ships, found new planets etc. No contracts were done if I remember right.

[DaveK]

Are the missing stations one's you created in MP? If so they are on the server and won't appear in SP . . . or are they ones you created in SP earlier and they have gone missing when you go back into SP after having had a play in MP?

If you create a station in SP and then exit to desktop, are they missing from SP when you go back into SP?

[ELiTe]

@DaveK -

The stations in question are all built in SP. They are built prior to the MP session(s).

I have never had a station go missing when I build one in SP, exit to desktop, and go back into SP.

I also know that stations built in MP stay on the server, so I'm not asking about those.

Also, in case it's "noteworthy", I understand that recently there was a server-side update of sorts. This only appeared to have happened recently (as in, past week or so). I was on MP much earlier (2 to 3 weeks prior to last week) and have never run into this before. Back then I switch between SP and MP without even exiting to desktop and my SP stations were all fine.

EDIT - More info: This happened after 4 June 2013, right after I posted my "what I did when I got bored" thread. Might be helpful if I provided a date, who knows? My stations went missing after my exploration stint with AdamSelene here ("Caleb" in MP).

[Edited on 13-6-2013 by ELiTe]

[Marvin]

1. Load profile, select MP, play
2. Have fun, press ESC, save to new slot
3. Say bye bye guys, exit MP.
4. Exit to desktop
5. Launch EM
6. Load last-saved-profile
7. Click LAUNCH for SP mode
8. Weep when I see my stations have disappeared

Where, in that list, did you build the trade station(s) ... the one(s) which disappeared?

[DaveK]

I've just done a looong sequence starting with building a station in SP, then moving around, saving each time I exited. I alternated between MP and SP and exited to the game and to desktop. Each time I returned to SP, the station was still there.

Hope this helps

[ELiTe]

@Marvin -

That would be item 0 - stations were already built in the profile I loaded in (1). All done in SP. No stations were built in MP.

Revised list for clarification:

1. Load a profile.
2. Click LAUNCH for SP mode.
3. Build a bunch of stations.
4. ALT-F9 (save into current slot, call it slot 1)
4. ESC, save to new slot (call it slot 2).
5. Exit to desktop.
6. Start EM
7. Load slot 2
8. Click Multiplayer.
9. Have fun. ALT-F9 throughout (ie, save into slot 2). No stations built in MP. I'm wary of building in MP due to this problem.
10. Say bye bye to guys.
11. Hit ESC, save to new slot (slot 3).
12. Exit to desktop
13. Start EM
14. Load slot 3.
15. Click LAUNCH for SP mode
16. Weep at missing stations.
17. Exit to Desktop
18. Start EM
19. Load slot 2.
20. Click LAUNCH for SP.
21. Weep again at missing stations.
22. Exit to desktop.
23. Start EM.
24. Load slot 1
25. Smile at SP stations still alive and well, but weep at the "lost" rep and money earned in MP.

So that's why I say, I have the "just before" profile in reply to Vice.

@DaveK -

As I said, it's not a CONSISTENT thing that happens. It hasn't happened today yet, and today I deliberately tried to do various things I used to do - switching between SP and MP at whim without exiting EM... so far I've used 6 new slots and all the SP stations are still there. The moment I find a save slot that has missing SP stations I'll send both the "before" and "after" profiles to Vice.

If it was CONSISTENTLY reproduceable, I'd have given detailed steps on how to reproduce it definitively.

FYI I still do have the most recent profiles .. the "just before" one, and the "anytime after" (my current MP profiles). I just don't have the "just after" profile cuz it's been overwritten.

[Edited on 13-6-2013 by ELiTe]

[Vice]

Any time after would be find, but as close to when the loss event occurred would be best.

From your description, one possibility that came to mind was that saving out to another profile slot may have been interrupted at some point. That is, perhaps the delete operation to remove the old profile in that slot (if one existed there) failed for some reason (ie file interference), leaving the old one (with no stations saved to it) behind. Then when game tries to save out, it retrieves the station data for the old profile left behind and as a result, is unable to properly transfer the data to the new slot. Another way to test this might be to consistently load and save your profile to the -same- slot, rather than try to swap slots during gameplay. Saving out to empty profile slots would be another step to try.

[ELiTe]

@Vice -

I have sent you a U2U with the 2 profiles, and thank you very much for looking into this!

Right now I'm doing my best to deliberately try to get the stations to disappear again, so that I have a better idea what might have caused it. If I manage to get another case of missing SP stations I'll send the newer profiles to you.

That means, I will not exit to desktop, like I used to NOT do

[Marvin]

Thanks for the list ... I'll see if I can duplicate your problem.

[Vice]

I have sent you a U2U with the 2 profiles, and thank you very much for looking into this!

Thanks, I'm reviewing them now.

While they are similar and have some matching gameplay history actions logged, there are significant differences, particularly in terms of travel and station licenses. Plus, there is a six hour gameplay time difference between the two profiles, which is very significant (profile 9 has twice has much gameplay time logged). If profile 3 was saved to profile 9, there seems to be some other differences beyond stations as well that indicate a partial mismatch. Profile 9 does contain a player built SP station, Arctarius Command, but the rest are obviously not there. So what I'll need to do is try to pin down why the data wasn't transferred if it was a transfer save from 3 to 9. But so far, everything in the profile's history indicates correct history and data information for the records logged in them. Also, just to make sure, remember that pilot3.sw is profile slot 4 in the game and pilot9.sw is profile slot 10 (the filename numbers are -1 from the profile slots in the game).

Another step I'd be interested in is to have you load your profile 3 (slot 4) in multiplayer, then while in multiplayer, save out to profile 9 again (slot 10), then immediately exit the game and send me that profile (pilot9.sw) as well. I'd like to compare a direct single instance save action like that also, just to make sure what I'm seeing in the codebase and your previous profiles match up with how the game is behaving on your end. Then if that works, we can eliminate primary code functions as a potential root cause and move on to other possible factors (ie external and/or particular actions). That way, I don't spend a bunch of time hunting through numerous lines of code for a problem that doesn't exist and I can focus on where the cause may actually be.

[ELiTe]

@Vice -

As I mentioned, the "just after" had been overwritten in a round-robin fashion. This was the closest time (6 hrs you say) to the "just before".

Profile9 contains a station because I built it in SP not knowing my other stations were missing. Only when I went back to Atlas that I realised my stations were missing.

To make things clear:

Profile0 - 7 = SP profiles (slot 1 to
profile3 = slot 4 ("just before")
slot 5 to 8 has since been overwritten by more SP play, starting from Slot 4 (profile3). I saved slot 8 out to slot 20 to continue without overwriting these slots.

Profile9 - 17 = MP profiles (slots 10 to 18)
profile9 = Slot10 = profile4, the "just after" saved out to this slot

Slot10 has been overwritten by more MP play, starting off from profile9 (slot 10) I overwrite slots 10 to 18 in a round-robin way. As you have mentioned, 6 hours later I come back to slot10 (profile9) and had overwritten it, and slots 11-18 now are even later timestamps because I continued playing more. Slot 10 is currently the closest time to slot 4 (hence profile9 and profile3).

Now I save new SP play into slots 20-28. MP play for today is also using slots 20-28 for the purpose of trying to make the stations disappear.

As you have requested, I took slot 4 (profile 3), went online, immediately saved to slot 50 (profile49). It's in the same folder so the link should still work.

[Marvin]

I'm wondering if the amount of playtime had anything to do with it. 'Cause I couldn't duplicate the "missing stations" bug following your list of steps (minus the numerous auto-saves ... I did a few but not a lot ... and especially not after each completed contract).

[Vice]

Ok, thanks for the additional profile. Everything looks 100% solid on that save transfer. So it's likely some sequence of in-game actions or something external. Conditions that may help pin it down would include things like:

- Whether or not you were trying to save during a contract.
- If you had any kind of file backup/restore application running in the background that might risk restoring old files/data or otherwise interfering at any point.
- If a security program was running in the background that could potentially interfere with a read/write/delete/copy operation.
- If you tried to externally manage the profile files outside of the game (ie renaming, copying, etc).
- If certain repeatable gameplay events/actions resulted in the behavior.

[ELiTe]

@Marvin -

You can't reproduce it because it's not a consistently repeatable problem. It's happened twice so far - first time I just shrugged it off and spent 12 hours flying around in SP rebuilding my stations. This is the 2nd time it's happened, and this time it's after I started exiting to desktops between sessions as per suggested course of action.

You asked for exact steps when this happened, and those were the steps directly just before it happened. These are not the steps "to make it happen". These are the steps that were done "when it happened". The same exact steps were also done when stations DIDN'T disappear after an MP session too. I could have built Station A in SP on Monday. I would go online and play and Station A would still be around in SP for the next few days. Then suddenly on Friday after an MP session, Station A disappears in SP. All this time, the same steps are still done.

Point being, I don't know when it'll disappear. I only find out when I go to a place I've built a station to find it no longer there.


@Vice -

For this most recent case of disappearance, no contracts were done in MP. I was exploring East of Atlas (positive SX), chasing light sources, jumping etc.

I do not have any background restore/backup running, but I do have Microsoft's Security Essentials as anti-virus. Read/Write/Copy would probably be one of the things it checks. I have now added Evochron's EXE file as well as .sw files as exclusions.

I have never tried to externally manage anything. I don't even use Travel Buddy or EM_Tools or such. The only mods I use are cockpit mods (PNG and JPG files).

As for gameplay events/actions, this is what I'm testing now. I'm going on MP and remembering/noting what I do now, for the next time the stations disappear.

For now I'll continue switching between SP and MP "at whim" like I have always done in the past, to see what triggers the disappearances.

[Vice]

Sounds like a good plan to troubleshoot it. If you can, try to recall what the gamestate conditions were right before it happens (your exact location, last contract completed, mining or not, recent in-game transactions, if/when an autosave occurred, etc). Those could be the most important clues to help narrow down a possible cause.

[ELiTe]

@Vice -

Ok I'll note the gamestates as you have mentioned.

If EvochronMercenary.EXE has a commandline for a /debug mode, let me know and I'll enable it. Might help if you had a debug log too. I'm only concerned that the event that triggers this could have happened in the 2nd hour of my 6 hour online play, so even then, the "just after" will have a 6-hour gap from the "just before".

What I can do now is to consistently save to a different slot every hour, or every 30 mins, while online. Might also help to narrow the window down.