Save-game not displayed on main menu after a crash during an auto save

Support Bug Reports
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Summary:
So I got this game very recently and have about 30 hours on it and I haven’t encountered to many problems with it so far other than the very occasional crash. Except for this time, I was watching my Hearthlings build a house when the game auto-saved, then crashed right in the middle of the auto-save. I thought “Ok ill just reopen Stonehearth and all will be fine” but when I did reopen the game my game-save was not in the main menu, just the “New game” or “Multiplayer” options, no “Continue” or “Load game” buttons. I had only used auto-saves in my game so I did not have a manual save to go back to or anything. I have reopened the game multiple times and uninstalled then reinstalled twice, and nothing. I don’t know if there is a simple fix to this or if my save is corrupted now but i’m hoping not because this is my first game and it would be annoying and boring to have to make a new save all over again.

Attachments:
here is my save game if it is needed:
(https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-3nKEeuq3Fyd1SWMpv1AJvdgj5478FSu)

Version Number and Mods in use:
Version 0.9
when I was playing on this game-save I was not using any mods but now I am playing with the ACE mod on a new game.

System Information:
Edition: Windows 10 pro

Installed RAM: 8.00 GB

Processor: Intel® Core™2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz 3.00GHz

System Type: 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

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It does sound as if the save file is corrupt, which is unfortunate. Personally I’ve opted out of auto-saving to avoid these situations, going forward it is a lot safer to select “Overwrite” and copy your most recent Stonehearth/saved_game/"#########" to a created backup folder within Stonehearth. This stopped all of my corruption problems, as far as confusion towards these crashes–

I’ve come to find the Inn’s guests drop off gifts and saving the moment before it is moved to your inventory causes the game to try and save an object that doesn’t exist in the world yet, and crashes. This is also triggered by selling an item yet to be moved to your inventory, and will carry the bug onto your next attempted save, and will crash.

Since realizing these things I’ve had 0 crashes or corruptions by taking the following precautions:

Allow “Traveler Summary” to pop-up and exist a while before saving.
Save before selling to Market Stalls and then immediately after to check if you’ve sold a “limbo” item.
Keep Saves within 30-45mins.
Install ladders to the rooftops of any inns, as I’ve had more then 5+ items found on rooftops over 1 year-ish.
*If you’d rather avoid this altogether-- Remove all guest beds.

Cheers

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With “before it is moved to your inventory” you mean “before it is moved to some storage”? Like, before a hearthling picks it up?

You can’t sell items if they’re not in your inventory (storage, actually). They won’t appear in the sell window.

Could you elaborate more on how to repro?

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Sure!

If you take a close watch of your inventory, items will appear before guests have actually given it to you. I’ve confirmed this by attempting to place new guest gifts as soon as they appear, and comparing the placement speeds with items I had crafted. They are seemingly not existing for a short time before the “Traveler Summary” appears, but will show the item in inventories and markets.

If someone were to sell in this short period of time, it will create a bug that carries on until their next attempt at saving, causing an instant crash. Since I’ve begun staying aware of my inventory, saving before any selling, and saving immediately afterwards, I have not encountered this. I had triggered it 3 different times because I tend to sell guests gifts quite immediately(OCD), this took collectively roughly 4 hours of troubleshooting before isolation. (Can you tell I’ve experience in game testing? :sweat_smile:)

I hope this was clear, if not please let me know!

1 Like
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@FuzzyGeckos, try copying the metadata.json file from another savefile and put it into your bugged savefile folder. It might enable it to appear in the load list.

Thanks @Omni, I will try to repro with those steps. :slightly_smiling_face:

2 Likes
6

So far I haven’t been able to repro that crash, @Omni :thinking:

Like I said, it’s impossible to sell an item if a hearthling hasn’t moved it into a storage.

Actually, it’s the traveller summary who will appear after the last traveller despawns (or at a fixed time in the morning, I can’t remember). The items are given way before that, right when the traveller wakes up. They just lay in/near the bed until a hearthling comes pick them up.

Something else must be happening. I have seen some warnings about unreachable items in some recent logs from bug reports, so what you said is still a good hint for reproducing this.

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That’s good news!

I also had built ladders as I’d been noticing items randomly appearing on top of the inn, but they would also show in the inventory. Placing them would result in a ghost until the object is found. Selling these lost/ghost objects would result in the same crashing bug, but I could only take note of the times the objects were visibly on rooftops, and had assumed ladders had fixed the issue–but perhaps it’s all one problem.

I would have to assume these dropped guest objects are happening in odd places that can’t be reached, other than the rooftop. Perhaps under the build(I don’t drop foundations), and upon reloading the object might surface. This could lead to the inconsistent crashes when dealing with these items, and the ability to sometimes get around the issue.

The best way to replicate this is building a 2 story inn with 4 bedrooms as long as a bed+1 space for bed uses. Do not drop the foundation into the dirt, and build multiple copies of this inn to allow guest overflow. I couldn’t say if the levels adds to the problem, the small space, or where beds are in relation to rooftops, but hopefully this helps.

If any priority interruption is possible with guests like it is with citizens, I could see items being dropped in this quick chaotic fashion if there is a hiccup with the guest holding the item they are gifting beforehand, and being forced to leave town-- perhaps based on a timer, days, ect.

This is all a theories based on current information, but if this is indeed the case, a solution could be taking the gift handling away from the guest npcs themselves, and treat it as a global reward. If this is already how it is handled then I hope the information above provides some insight!

Cheers!

Edit: Perhaps an x-ray mode that only shows dropped objects and the ground, as this issue may arise in other ways. I know it’s not ideal to give players the tools to fix bugs, definitely better to fix them outright, but it could be handy for the meantime-- and perhaps shed more light on the issue!

1 Like
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Ok, it looks like the metadata file was deleted so I did as @Relyss said and copied the file from another save, and it worked! It first didn’t show the right information about the save game, it showed info about the save that I copied it from but I just needed to manually save the game and the proper information was displayed about the save game. Thank you!

1 Like