DID game disappeared

[Lazerius]

So I loaded up X3 AP to a startling discovery this morning.


I tried to load my DID game that I've spent the last 3 days working on to find the save not there.

When I saved and quit last night, I checked to make sure I had a steam connection, and when it shut down everything was A'OK.

WTF is this crap!




{Emoticon spam removed. - Terre}

[Lazerius]

odd, I posted this in tech support forum. Guess the mods decided that steam not storing my saved game wasn't 'support' worthy...

[Jumee]

it happens, steam cloud is not a very reliable thing, several people had problems with it, basically your save file is gone because there probably was some sort of a problem when synchronizing your save with steam, there is nothing you can do with it really

[Lazerius]

I'm a patient guy, and I understand problems can occur.

However, This is about my 10th attempt at a DID game, I was finally doing really good. Had 30 mil in the bank, was collecting IBL's from Yaki for the Tiger I was going to get soon, I was parked at SY in Rhonkar's Trial ready to buy a Heavy Dragon first thing today. Was just doing all this while I had a few ships collecting the microchips I needed, and while they finished that, I was going to get my Heavy Dragon and go farm some L's for the part after the chips.

The only other time I advanced near this far in DID, I had 100 million in the bank, was ready to start the plot, and my springblossom's autopilot blew me up while undocking from a station.


TBH, I don't see a point in bothering with this achievement anymore. If Egosoft can't implement a way to do this without relying on a service that is complete CRAP, than DID is dead to me.

I'll just stick with my main game than...the DID was just a nice little distraction from it. But F*ck it.

[tanner1ie]

Does Steam not create back ups?

Is there just one save file?

If Steam didn't sync right, when you were saving would that corrupt your file or should you not still find your old save there or somewhere else?

[Deleted User]

Last time I saw a user on this forum complain about this to steam with a steam ticket that referred the problem back to Ego tech support, CJB got involved.

I don't have the link to hand, but it appeared that steam suggested it was not their problem and CJB would pursue it further.

Interesting that your thread was moved without explanation, if that was indeed what happened, as it implies that Ego do not consider it their problem either.

Which begs the question, whose problem is it? (apart from the users)

Lets see if Ego can shed any more light on the matter, i.e., exactly where do you go with a legitimate promoted game mode complaint and where exactly does the fault occur, Ego or Steam.

For what it is worth, I do know that if the steam client is not shut down in exactly the way it expects, you can forget about the cloud.

[Alan Phipps]

Nothing here that Egosoft tech support can help further with even if it had been made as a proper request. Disquiet has already been expressed by Egosoft to Steam about X3 Steam DiD save instability. If anything this should have been submitted as a Steam support ticket to gain mounting pressure but such have not been well addressed by Steam in the past as even a casual search for the many similar 'Steam DiD gamesave gone missing' topics would have shown.

I believe that one reliably successful tactic to get to the Steam DiD achievement has been to leave the game on pause rather than shutdown during play - but that obviously is potentially wasteful and has other risks.

Yes DiD only gives one chance to synch the save on your drive with the info stored in the cloud on previous close-down. Any issues and you get no continue and the save on your drive is deleted anyway.

PS: The very helpful Egosoft rep on the forums is CBJ.

[Deleted User]

So are you saying it is a fault with steam.

[EmperorJon]

I don't think that's necessarily the case, it's more of a general fault with how the entire thing works...

When you load your game, it asks Steam for the save, and gives you it.
When you save, it gives Steam the save, and takes it from you. If this fails then AFAIK the game doesn't say "Can't do that, no Steam connection, keep on playing or quit?" but "Yeah, it's gone, tough luck".
And of course, if somewhere along the line it goes missing or gets a bit corrupted on either of the systems... it's gone for ever.

[Deleted User]

I don't think that's necessarily the case, it's more of a general fault with how the entire thing works...

When you load your game, it asks Steam for the save, and gives you it.
When you save, it gives Steam the save, and takes it from you. If this fails then AFAIK the game doesn't say "Can't do that, no Steam connection, keep on playing or quit?" but "Yeah, it's gone, tough luck".
And of course, if somewhere along the line it goes missing or gets a bit corrupted on either of the systems... it's gone for ever.

I appreciate what you are saying, but the fact remains, it is a known fault and it could be rectified if one knew exactly which party is responsible for the fault.

As it stands, nothing is happening except pass the buck.

[Alan Phipps]

I reiterate, there is nothing that this forum or Egosoft can do except continue to inform Steam that there is a stability issue with their implementation of the DiD info handover and retention. If it usually works there is nothing obviously wrong with the related Egosoft game code.

Almost by definition, the problem cannot be readily demonstrated to Steam since by the time the intermittent failure arises the 'proof' is already gone and it is too easy for Steam just to claim operator error or file tampering.

Only pressure of numbers complaining to Steam may see a future result. Egosoft will (I assume as I do not work for them) separately keep up the pressure at management level and that has resulted in some Steam effort and improvement to their DiD implementation in the past (read the threads), but obviously not yet a fully stable solution in all circumstances.

[Lazerius]

in the meantime, they need to patch into game, a check that the game has been saved to steam, and if it hasn't, than it informs you 'save has failed, retry/quit/cancel' But since the steam cloud isn't designed to return a query of if saveexists = true, or on that same note, check if the save that's present is even part of the game you're currently playing, I don't see this happening.

Edit: That's all speculation of course. I"m sure it's possible for the game to check if the file exists on the cloud, since when you start the game, it knows if a saved game exists on the cloud to be loaded for a DID game. However, that might be a check on Game startup and not in an active game. I'm not sure, I don't know the code.

[Alan Phipps]

There is a check that the DiD save was successful before shutdown. That is already proven to be no guarantee that the synch will then work later on when the cloud and harddrive must compare notes successfully. The slightest hiccup then and its all gone. The problem is intermittent and if either side knew what to test for then I'm sure that they would have done so by now.

The bits that we know don't change are the game code and the save on the harddrive (unless tampered with or a hardware/malware issue). That surely leaves the Steam data handling and retention to be suspected as being unstable under some circumstances. The cloud data does not just have to exist, it has to be able to synch and match with the player's save.

All we do know is that usually it works and nobody knows why sometimes it doesn't.

[VincentTH]

I have posted here before about what works for me, so with sympathy for the OP, here goes:

(1) Exclude the save path of the game <Documents>Egosoft>[AP or TC]>Save, as well as the Steam path <c>Program files x86>Steam>
from your AV and Anti-Malware apps
(2) When you save and quit from the Ego load window, go to either the the Task Tray (in the Right Hand Corner) or the Steam App (if it is open) and hit Exit. Thils will force Steam to flush and close the Steam Cloud handle. I noticed that most of my lost DID save game are the result of exiting Steam in a haste (Honey-do calls, which I can't miss or else risk a divorce )

Other safeguard include:
(3) Have a UPS for your comp, and put both the comp and the router on it.
(4) If you are running Windows 7, disable reboot-on-update. I posted the procedure somewhere in this forum before. Windows 7 may decide to reboot your computer after it has applied a Windows Update, despite the fact that you have a program running in the foreground. The guy at Microsoft that did that codes ought to be shot!!!!!!

[Deleted User]

The problem is intermittent and if either side knew what to test for then I'm sure that they would have done so by now.

There we have it. Can we expect Dead is dead mode to extend to "your save was killed by [unkown cloud configuration] at unidentifiable party"?

Support is already bouncing.

If this is the only recourse:-

Only pressure of numbers complaining to Steam may see a future result.

Maybe Bernd should list that under the benefits of adopting steam?

[kurush]

Well, this is just another proof that steam is an evil abomination spawned by the great Satan I'm sorry for OP's loss, but this is exactly the reason why I am going to run for my DID achievement with Cycrow's cheat pack activated

[tanner1ie]

Well, this is just another proof that steam is an evil abomination spawned by the great Satan I'm sorry for OP's loss, but this is exactly the reason why I am going to run for my DID achievement with Cycrow's cheat pack activated

What difference would that make and can you earn Steam achievements with mods installed?

[kurush]

What difference would that make and can you earn Steam achievements with mods installed?

For the game loss? No difference, i'm just making fun of the entire idea of DID game enforced by some buggy software. For achievements - not unless you apply a little hack. Setting yourself to god mode and doing a speed-run for the plot would be a sure way to avoid such disappointments.

[Jumee]

all these bugs is why I only played DiD mode 4 times, now when I want to play DiD, I just play normal game till I die, its really that much better all you need is a bit of self-control

[Lazerius]

all these bugs is why I only played DiD mode 4 times, now when I want to play DiD, I just play normal game till I die, its really that much better all you need is a bit of self-control

Well my plan was that after I got the achievement, I was going to swap it over to normal mode, and play like that. I'd heard the horror stories of Steam's DID but it wasn't until today I got to experience it first hand.


I find DID a lot of fun, because you play it completely different than you would when you know that if you die, oh well, just load up that last save, and with some of the known bugs in the game, you try your best to avoid them (see: Springblossom exploding on undocking). But like I mentioned before, I just use DID as a fun little break from my main game.

If a feature doesn't work right in software, it should be either reworked until it is, or removed from the game, IMO. If there's this many problem with using steam to save a DID file, than why can't egosoft find a way to store it locally, and encrypt it to avoid any sort of tampering, like the many signed files that make up this game.