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Dark Mod Just Deleted my entire FMS\Venice folder and eveything in it


NeonsStyle

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I'd been chasing down a persistent and annoying leak without cause. The map had been fine
this morning and compiled. Later had this going on. Every previous version I tried had the same
problem. So in an attempt to solve it, I loaded TDM, loaded a different map, went back to my map,
did a cleanup and then installed my map. Go to dmap my latest v162 not found, v161 gone, 160,
159, 158 etc etc check the folder and it's all gone, all folders, models, textures scrpts everything is
gone! 3 weeks work lost and no explanation as to how it can do this???? 

I've been working for 4 to 6 hours a day for 3 weeks. OMG I've lost so much! How can TDM Do this????? 
I tried winfr data recovery but it always comes up empty, not really sure how that works. I used to be
right up with DOS. Is there no way to get it back?

This has to be fixed!!! 

Edited by NeonsStyle
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I have an eclectic YouTube channel making videos on a variety of games. Come and have look here:

https://www.youtube.com/c/NeonsStyleHD

 

Dark Mod Missions: Briarwood Manor - available here or in game

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18980-fan-mission-briarwood-manor-by-neonsstyle-first-mission-6082017-update-16/

 

 

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1 hour ago, NeonsStyle said:

I've been working for 4 to 6 hours a day for 3 weeks. OMG I've lost so much! How can TDM Do this?????

I would ask you the same question: how can you do this? Pour 4-6 hours per day for 3 weeks of your life into something and not make a single backup at any time? Do you just assume that disks and computers are 100% reliable and data never gets lost for any reason?

It takes literally seconds to make a copy of your FM directory somewhere else, even if you are just manually doing it with Explorer rather than using one of the many available backup solutions, Dropbox, SpiderOak, Google Drive or whatever.

Regardless of whether TDM has a bug with deleting FM directories (one of the core devs would need to investigate that; I don't know the answer) I'm afraid I have no sympathy for people who store an important ongoing work in a single place and never bother to make any backups.

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Ouch! Hope you can get your files back. Try doing a search to make sure they haven't just been moved somewhere, for instance into the directory of the other map you were loading.

But yeah, backups are the way to go.

My missions:           Stand-alone                                                      Duncan Lynch series                              

                                      Down and Out on Newford Road              the Factory Heist

                                                                                                  A House Call

                                                                                                  The House of deLisle                                                                                                  

                              

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No, they are gone. I thought I could get the map I was working back when I saw it in My PC in File Explorer but it was just an echo of the

lost files :( The only thing that can save me if someone knows how to use data recovery and can explain it to me. I did try but just ended

up with empty folders in a different drive. 

  • Sad 1

I have an eclectic YouTube channel making videos on a variety of games. Come and have look here:

https://www.youtube.com/c/NeonsStyleHD

 

Dark Mod Missions: Briarwood Manor - available here or in game

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18980-fan-mission-briarwood-manor-by-neonsstyle-first-mission-6082017-update-16/

 

 

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That's an awful shame, sorry to hear it. But if you decide to start again you'll probably find it will go quicker the second time. Good luck!

My missions:           Stand-alone                                                      Duncan Lynch series                              

                                      Down and Out on Newford Road              the Factory Heist

                                                                                                  A House Call

                                                                                                  The House of deLisle                                                                                                  

                              

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That is bad, but certainly you can maybe recover it. If files are deleted, the only thing that happend, is that you delete the first letter of the file in the FAT, that makes that this space is asigned as free. As long as no other files are saved in this space, this deleted file is recoverable, simply by replacing the first letter of it, with which it is restored back to its original folder.
For example, if I delete Test.exe, this turns the FAT into _est.exe, which is listed as deleted.
There are applications that allow you to access the FAT and list its contents, similar to the file explorer. In these apps, just look for these deleted files and replace this first letter of the name to restore them. It has no more secrets than this. Bad only if the space is occupied with new files, than are is no way to recover.

Depending on the SO you use there are several apps which you can use. In Windows I use Glary Utilities, which among others also can recover deleted files.

 

 

Edited by Zerg Rush
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Sys Specs Laptop Lenovo V145 15AST, AMD A9- 9425 Radeon R5 - 5 cores 3,1 GHz  RAM 8Gb, GPU 1+2 Gb -Win10 64 v21H2

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And it may be worth checking to see if your hard drive isn't faulty.

My missions:           Stand-alone                                                      Duncan Lynch series                              

                                      Down and Out on Newford Road              the Factory Heist

                                                                                                  A House Call

                                                                                                  The House of deLisle                                                                                                  

                              

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1 hour ago, duzenko said:

Unless you can reproduce the deletion there's nothing much to fix

This seems to be the effect of the "Cleanup" button in the mission list, which Neonsstyles said on Discord he used.

demo.thumb.jpg.b820b5b52911532d54aa227015a70c97.jpg

demo2.thumb.jpg.22003e665c5965a9182acb31862c0581.jpg

Judging by the text it sounds like it should mostly just delete savegames that accumulated while playing, but in fact it deletes almost all files that are outside of .pk4's. This thing is a landmine for a mapper, and now someone has stepped into it without making a backup.

Reproduction is easy:
1) Go to your darkmod/fms/stlucia folder and extract the .pk4 (so you get darkmod/fms/stlucia/maps etc.).
2) Open TDM, go to the missions list, click on Mission 2: St. Lucia and click on "Cleanup" and then "Delete".
3) Go to your darkmod/fms/stlucia folder again, now almost all the extracted files outside of the .pk4 have been deleted.

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The immediate question is, is there anything special to consider when trying to recover files that have been deleted by a program instead of by the user himself?

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41 minutes ago, Dragofer said:

Judging by the text it sounds like it should mostly just delete savegames that accumulated while playing, but in fact it deletes almost all files that are outside of .pk4's.

I wonder why it should not just only delete the savegame files. I mean everything else is probably added later manually and should therefore also been deleted manually.

 

Personally I think it's good to make TDM as much as possible mapper friendly. Mappers could stop altogether after such an experience, although I agree about backupping.

Edited by datiswous
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2 hours ago, Zerg Rush said:

 

Depending on the SO you use there are several apps which you can use. In Windows I use Glary Utilities, which among others also can recover deleted files.

Just tried that, and it worked I got the files back but they are .lin files, and there are mapping files but they are corrupt. Tried another program, and 

it wanted me to pay to maybe get them back. Screw that. So I'm just going to learn the lesson, and take the hit and rebuild from my last backup

in 16th August. 

The Clearnup thing has to go, or do what it actually says, wipe just save games. It wiped everything but the pk4, darkmod.txt and readme.txt All folders. Fortunately,

I just lost the map, not any of the resources or prefabs. (Speaking of which, I can put my own mission related prefabs in fms/venice/prefabs rather than tdm/prefabs yes? Would like to have them available for other mappers once a mission is complete.

 

I have an eclectic YouTube channel making videos on a variety of games. Come and have look here:

https://www.youtube.com/c/NeonsStyleHD

 

Dark Mod Missions: Briarwood Manor - available here or in game

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18980-fan-mission-briarwood-manor-by-neonsstyle-first-mission-6082017-update-16/

 

 

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5 hours ago, OrbWeaver said:

I would ask you the same question: how can you do this? Pour 4-6 hours per day for 3 weeks of your life into something and not make a single backup at any time? Do you just assume that disks and computers are 100% reliable and data never gets lost for any reason?

It takes literally seconds to make a copy of your FM directory somewhere else, even if you are just manually doing it with Explorer rather than using one of the many available backup solutions, Dropbox, SpiderOak, Google Drive or whatever.

Regardless of whether TDM has a bug with deleting FM directories (one of the core devs would need to investigate that; I don't know the answer) I'm afraid I have no sympathy for people who store an important ongoing work in a single place and never bother to make any backups.

Nice! I guess you're the type to kick a guy when he's down! You do that to homeless people too? What a turd! I can do a good job

kicking myself, I don't need a turd like you doing it.

  • Sad 2

I have an eclectic YouTube channel making videos on a variety of games. Come and have look here:

https://www.youtube.com/c/NeonsStyleHD

 

Dark Mod Missions: Briarwood Manor - available here or in game

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18980-fan-mission-briarwood-manor-by-neonsstyle-first-mission-6082017-update-16/

 

 

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2 hours ago, Dragofer said:

This seems to be the effect of the "Cleanup" button in the mission list, which Neonsstyles said on Discord he used.

Judging by the text it sounds like it should mostly just delete savegames that accumulated while playing, but in fact it deletes almost all files that are outside of .pk4's. This thing is a landmine for a mapper, and now someone has stepped into it without making a backup.

Reproduction is easy:
1) Go to your darkmod/fms/stlucia folder and extract the .pk4 (so you get darkmod/fms/stlucia/maps etc.).
2) Open TDM, go to the missions list, click on Mission 2: St. Lucia and click on "Cleanup" and then "Delete".
3) Go to your darkmod/fms/stlucia folder again, now almost all the extracted files outside of the .pk4 have been deleted.

Thanks

Do you think anything here needs fixing?

Or it's intended operation? I'm asking because someone put it there for a reason a while ago, not something new

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That does seem kind of lazy. I suppose it was intended as a catch-all for other kinds of files that might be produced, eg, leak files, error diagnostics, and so on. That strikes me as poor design. Cleanup functions like this should have a list of files it's safe to remove, not just go "rm *".

My missions:           Stand-alone                                                      Duncan Lynch series                              

                                      Down and Out on Newford Road              the Factory Heist

                                                                                                  A House Call

                                                                                                  The House of deLisle                                                                                                  

                              

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45 minutes ago, NeonsStyle said:

Nice! I guess you're the type to kick a guy when he's down! You do that to homeless people too? What a turd! I can do a good job

kicking myself, I don't need a turd like you doing it.

I see why you're upset, but sometimes lessons are painful

It's not nearly worst what could happen in life, no need to drive up the heat

Every mapper or digital creator here is on your side

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49 minutes ago, NeonsStyle said:

 

Yes, the only manner to avoid this, is to backup frequently the important files., because most times in new systems, between a deleted file and overwriting with new files it goes quite fast, which in many cases makes a full recovery impossible, especially on SSD. For this reason, having to defragment disks has become quite obsolete in return.

Well, as unpleasant as it may be, bad experiences can also be positive for the future, remembering old computer days, where I have also learned in a hardcore way.

 

Edited by Zerg Rush

Sys Specs Laptop Lenovo V145 15AST, AMD A9- 9425 Radeon R5 - 5 cores 3,1 GHz  RAM 8Gb, GPU 1+2 Gb -Win10 64 v21H2

Favorite online apps you may like too 😉

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38 minutes ago, duzenko said:

Thanks

Do you think anything here needs fixing?

Or it's intended operation? I'm asking because someone put it there for a reason a while ago, not something new

From my perspective it should only remove savegames - at the moment I can't think of any more files with significant weight that can be safely removed.

Maybe previous devs had a reason to delete more files, but tbh it doesn't really seem thought through. The purpose of this button seems to be to reset the FM folder to the state as if a player had just downloaded the .pk4, ignoring the possibility that it could be a WIP FM.

Tbh if it only removes savegames the feature could just as well be removed, since I don't think their file size matters anymore - the GUI would be a little bit cleaner. I don't think we've had problems with bloated savegames for a long time.

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7 hours ago, NeonsStyle said:

I'd been chasing down a persistent and annoying leak without cause. The map had been fine
this morning and compiled. Later had this going on. Every previous version I tried had the same
problem. So in an attempt to solve it, I loaded TDM, loaded a different map, went back to my map,
did a cleanup and then installed my map. Go to dmap my latest v162 not found, v161 gone, 160,
159, 158 etc etc check the folder and it's all gone, all folders, models, textures scrpts everything is
gone! 3 weeks work lost and no explanation as to how it can do this???? 

I've been working for 4 to 6 hours a day for 3 weeks. OMG I've lost so much! How can TDM Do this????? 
I tried winfr data recovery but it always comes up empty, not really sure how that works. I used to be
right up with DOS. Is there no way to get it back?

This has to be fixed!!! 

Holy... I also add that happen to me once, almost made me give up modding altogether, something like that can destroy someone will for a long time, hope you can recover from the situation fast!

Btw on windows you can try using Recuva (from the makers of CCleaner) to try to recover some of your work or even all if you are lucky. 

I can only say good luck and hope that this situation don't make you give up on TDM mission making. 

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I can recover, it's not a major problem, just a set back. I lost probably about 70 hours of work, or so. 

Not backing up is of course an important lesson. So is not walking into a sharp stick. It's just pointless

to be saying things like that, as if I didn't know it already. 

  • Like 1

I have an eclectic YouTube channel making videos on a variety of games. Come and have look here:

https://www.youtube.com/c/NeonsStyleHD

 

Dark Mod Missions: Briarwood Manor - available here or in game

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18980-fan-mission-briarwood-manor-by-neonsstyle-first-mission-6082017-update-16/

 

 

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The bad news is: the chance of recovering deleted files quickly reduces as you write more and more data to the same drive/partition, because deleted chunks can be reused for new data, at which moment the data is totally lost. You need to be extremely cautions and quick if you want to undelete something. If the partition contains OS, then it will most likely write lots of stuff quickly, making recovery even less likely.

As for the button itself, I never understood why it exists in the first place.
Maybe this is the remnant from the very first release, when savegames took hundreds of megabytes because all editor spawnargs for every alive entity were saved in them.

Unless there are other opinions, let's delete the button.

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I used NTFS Undelete in the past, although how much its free version is allowed to do might have changed already.

Also, I'm not sure if recovering deleted file from SSD has any specifics... I think most importantly the tool must be suited for a specific filesystem used (i.e. NTFS on Windows).

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I did recover the files, but they are corrupted and won't load into DR. 

I have an eclectic YouTube channel making videos on a variety of games. Come and have look here:

https://www.youtube.com/c/NeonsStyleHD

 

Dark Mod Missions: Briarwood Manor - available here or in game

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18980-fan-mission-briarwood-manor-by-neonsstyle-first-mission-6082017-update-16/

 

 

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Nice! The map files are just text files, so if you open them in a text editor you should be able to see what's going on.

My missions:           Stand-alone                                                      Duncan Lynch series                              

                                      Down and Out on Newford Road              the Factory Heist

                                                                                                  A House Call

                                                                                                  The House of deLisle                                                                                                  

                              

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6 hours ago, Dragofer said:

Judging by the text it sounds like it should mostly just delete savegames that accumulated while playing, but in fact it deletes almost all files that are outside of .pk4's. This thing is a landmine for a mapper, and now someone has stepped into it without making a backup.

 

Reproduction is easy:
1) Go to your darkmod/fms/stlucia folder and extract the .pk4 (so you get darkmod/fms/stlucia/maps etc.).
2) Open TDM, go to the missions list, click on Mission 2: St. Lucia and click on "Cleanup" and then "Delete".
3) Go to your darkmod/fms/stlucia folder again, now almost all the extracted files outside of the .pk4 have been deleted.

The whole time I was wondering what this button is supposed to be good for (never pressed it, thank god). I totally agree with you: With this accompanying text, the thing is really like a landmine.

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