Problem with saves

[elqatta]

Good morning everyone,
I was sent here by the good Marvho (ITA section) hoping you can help me.

About a month ago I reinstalled AP to be able to complete the latest achievements and everything went fine until the day before yesterday when after finishing Shady Business I realized that I had the "" "modified" "" save and therefore without the possibility of receiving the achievement.
I have not installed scripts, I have not installed mods except a different HUD and a texture pack. Notice that after putting them via fake patch I checked that the save was still vanilla and so it was seen that in the meantime I managed to get other achievements; obviously from then on (about two weeks ago) I didn't check the condition of the save until the day before yesterday when I discovered at the end of the plot that it was Modified.

I tried a little bit of everything: install, reinstall, remove the mods, put the mods back, look for old saves, new game and then I replaced the saves, plugin manager ... but I have not found a solution and so I'm here almost with tears to the eyes looking for help!
Do you have particular solutions to offer me ?! methods I don't know ?! other ideas?!

As a final solution in case the saves are not recoverable I ask if it is possible (and if it works) to have a save on your part maybe made just before the end of Shady Business so that I can avoid having to do another hundreds of hours of game from scratch.

Waiting for the answers, thank you in advance

Christian

PS: sorry if english is wrong but I used google translate.

[Alan Phipps]

The most common causes of unwanted modified games are as follows:

Plugin manager in modified rather than vanilla mode.
Mods not behaving properly when told to uninstall.
Real-time file checks by antivirus on loading from drives.
File corruption, edits, or drive/memory issues (or a virus). (Common causes of corruption may be power spikes or noise or from hardware failures.)
Transfer of signed files using a thumb drive that uses compression, encryption or changes files' flags.
Rare hardware 'normal' behavioural issues such as with specific devices or their bespoke operating drivers doing things the game did not anticipate.

[elqatta]

So...I can assume there's no way out, I need to start a new clean game!

Thank you Alan

[Cycrow]

if you save games have been saved while in modified mode, then theres no way back unless you can find previous saves before.

If you start a new game and its still modified, then you will need to find a way to fix your game as any save game you load will show up as modified.

As long as you havn't saved over the game while its modified it should still work once the game itself is no longer modified.

I suggest backing up all your save games so you dont save over them, fix the game so it no longer shows as modified, then try all your saves to see if any of them survived

[DanKara]

Is there really no way (for the DEVELOPER or a decently skilled MODDER) to remove the 'modified'-tag from a savefile and 'correcting' the related checksum/hash that 'proves' the game as 'vanilla'? Or is there an (outside?) way to 'disable' the whole process of modified-checking to allow a clean save once more?
Asking this for personal reasons (X3FL, Rare Collector ) too.

[elqatta]

if you save games have been saved while in modified mode, then theres no way back unless you can find previous saves before.

If you start a new game and its still modified, then you will need to find a way to fix your game as any save game you load will show up as modified.

As long as you havn't saved over the game while its modified it should still work once the game itself is no longer modified.

I suggest backing up all your save games so you dont save over them, fix the game so it no longer shows as modified, then try all your saves to see if any of them survived

I've already tried that.
BAckup old save, start a new game (not modified), saving it, put back old saves with no mods (Hud and REsurrection), **modified** returned.

ps: Are you that "Cycrow" the one of PlugIn manager and other stuffs?! You're like a god for me

[elqatta]

Is there really no way (for the DEVELOPER or a decently skilled MODDER) to remove the 'modified'-tag from a savefile and 'correcting' the related checksum/hash that 'proves' the game as 'vanilla'? Or is there an (outside?) way to 'disable' the whole process of modified-checking to allow a clean save once more?
Asking this for personal reasons (X3FL, Rare Collector ) too.

Hoping we both have an answer!

[jlehtone]

Is there really no way to remove the 'modified'-tag from a savefile and 'correcting' the related checksum/hash that 'proves' the game as 'vanilla'?

Whether or not that is technically possible is beside the point. There is no way to proof that a save marked modified was due to technical error and not in fact as result of deliberate modification. You and I might both know it, but we both know that I lie ...


The game has multiple save slots. I use them all in rotation, so I don't overwrite a slot until I've written to all others first. (Furthermore, I make an archive copy of all saves before the overwrite. Therefore, I can retrieve from archive every explicit save that I have made in a playthrough. That might be excessive.) The point is that one should be able to keep multiple recent saves (not autosaves) with relative ease. Enough to spot trouble before the latest "clean save" gets overwritten.

[DanKara]

but we both know that I lie ...

I take that for the truth.

Whether or not that is technically possible is beside the point.

Beg to differ. The technical possibility is exactly the point, morality might take a back seat for a while.
While I agree with you in principle, there should always be an exception to a general rule. That's why I reached out to the developers first since they can decide under what circumstances a helping hand through 'tech support' might be warranted.... (At least I hope I did with my limited english.)

The situation on X3FL is a bit different. There, an unobtainable blueprints blocks the progress of 2 Achievements. It is one of the aknowledeged bugs. And by now it was so often stated, that this game won't get another patch, that I start to believe it... start to dispair or start searching for ways to circumvent the problem (still open for suggestions). Which way should I go?