intfiction.org

So I just booted up my game to write some more and it's just gone. All the folders and stuff is there but there is nothing in them. I haven't erased anything or done anything to my computer whatsoever - it's just magically disappeared overnight! WTF is happening? Luckily, I saved all the code in an email a few weeks ago, but I just lost a ton of work. If I hadn't saved that code, I would have lost everything! Why did this happen?

Could it have been eaten by a grue?


Robert Rothman

Hilarious. I've restored from my previous code and just spent a marathon rewrite getting the stuff that's missing back in. I probably shouldn't have posted this issue in this section to begin with, but I was FREAKING OUT! I'm going to recommend to everyone that you frequently back up your code someplace other than inform.

If you are on Vista / 7, you can right-click the folder in Explorer, go to Properties, and click the Previous Versions tab to see any copies of that folder which were snapshotted by a restore point. Usually that happens whenever Windows Update installs a patch, which is quite often if you have automatic updates enabled.

I'm not aware of any similar trick under OS X.

My sympathies, though, it really sucks to lose your work.

This type of situation sucks! Not to pat myself on the back or anything, but I back up my creative work every day, to a separate physical drive. Every few days I also back it up to a separate computer, and/or to my Dropbox folder. Hopefully, you won't need another horrible experience before you start doing this.

It's true that computer hard drives are a lot less likely to crash than they were 15 years ago. But that doesn't mean accidents never happen. My first computer was a Kaypro. It used 5-1/4" single-sided floppies, but at least it had two drives, so you could back up a file from drive A to drive B before powering down. I guess I just got in the habit.

That happened to me once when I made the foolish mistake of cleaning my registry while using Inform 7: for some reason, all my source code disappeared. And strike two: I automatically saved it (out of habit) before quitting. Hooray for stupidity.

Did you maybe run something else while using Inform 7? Registry cleaner, anti-virus, I don't know... theoretically it shouldn't matter, but you know how these things happen.

Now I'm getting nervous. I have a backup drive, but the power supply for it was destroyed when my office flooded a couple months ago due to a coffee machine malfunction...!

I also use an svn repository on my personal website, but I haven't checked in lately...

There. Committed current state. I was holding off because not all my tests are passing, but all of the failures are at the TODO level right now - nothing breaks the game.

Sync your projects with Dropbox and you won't have to worry about this. It saves every version of every file, so even if you save the story file after the text disappears, you'll be able to roll back to the last good version. You can also use Dropbox to host Parchment or Quixe games (or any other simple website).

You may need to use symlinks to backup some files if there is a requirement that they sit in a certain place on your hard drive (I'm not sure what Windows I7 requires). Note: symlinks are not the same as aliases; when Dropbox syncs a symlink, it transparently syncs the original file, but it only syncs the alias file when it encounters an alias.

_________________
Glimmr: Advanced Graphics for I7
blog | download | bug-tracker

For years I did not have a backup system in place (which I suppose is the digital equivalent of playing Russion roulette). Then, my computer died without warning (actually, I did have some warning that something was amiss, but did not react in time). Fortunately, I was able to get the data on my hard drive recovered, but it cost me a pretty penny. After that, I decided to take no chances. I now subscribe to an online backup system (set up so that it automatically backs up changed files every night, and saves all earlier versions). I also bought an external hard drive, and every so often I do a manual backup to that.


Robert Rothman

We've all learned a valuable lesson.