"damaged save game"

NuclearTesting

I was playing Subnautica yesterday when one of my cats jumped on the computer and turned it off. I turned SN back on and went to load my save. The save showed a placeholder picture and said that it was "damaged save game". It was dated to 1st of January 2015, 12:00 AM. I loaded the save and it worked just fine, no problems asides from the fact that the date was messed up and said it had been created when I tried to open it back up. Weird bug, probably a 1/100,000 chance of happening.

narfblat

I had a crash happen when saving a few weeks ago, did the same to my save. Played 16 or more hours since, no problems so far.

Zinaal

I had the same message and problem with a problem that turned off my computer and then my game said damaged save and all that except my game was gone and reset to a new game and I have nothing and have lost about 10 hours of gameplay and don't know what to do. Is there a way to look in the files of the game and choose save files to find a non damaged previous save?

0x6A7232

Zinaal wrote: »

I had the same message and problem with a problem that turned off my computer and then my game said damaged save and all that except my game was gone and reset to a new game and I have nothing and have lost about 10 hours of gameplay and don't know what to do. Is there a way to look in the files of the game and choose save files to find a non damaged previous save?

You would have to have manually backed up previous saves. Or you could use the built in Windows file history tool here (point it at your \Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Subnautica\SNAppData\SavedGames )

https://www.groovypost.com/howto/configure-windows-10-file-history/

Vex

This just happened to me, live version.

I played, saved the game in my prawn suit in front of a very tasty wreck, and quit the game. My computer froze during quitting and I had to do a hard reset - the first time this happened playing Subnautica.

Now, when I load the "damaged save file", it puts me back without equipment near my lifepod, and apparently the entire game is reset.


I do not want to spend another 30 hours replaying everything just to have it corrupt again. Is there any way of restoring the save file?


I am utterly gutted.


No, I do not have File History enabled.

0x6A7232

Win + X, then A
chkdsk c: /f

Replace c: with whatever drive Subnautica is on.

This will only work if there was only save file corruption - if it was never completely written, there's nothing you can do.

Vex

There seems to be no physical damage to the file itself or the partition in general.

All files in the save game folder are perfectly accessible. I would estimate the issue being linked to the save process.


I would also greatly prefer if the game would keep several save slots, to prevent this kind of catastrophic failure.

matrixdll

Yup, went on to play 1.0 for a first time - lost 5 hours of gameplay to the "damaged save file" curse. Started to backup the save folder like crazy after that and felt a little bit safer after that.

dmncr

New player,, just lost 9h of gameplay because of this. From what is seems this bug has been present for over a year. If the developers haven't been able to fix it they should at least implement some rolling auto backup feature. This sucks..

Caiobrz

It should help a lot if they allowed us to save in different slots / files. Not only you would be able to have saves from different times (like before venturing into some dangerous area), but it would add the easy way of having backup saves.

theluckiesunshine

I have a big problem! i was almost at the end of the game, making the position for the sea emp's eggs...
And now it says damaged saved game, and when i click on it. it is all the way from the start, with nothing, and the arora hasnt even exploded!!!! MY GAME! I NEED IT BACK! I had played for 2 whole days with it!

Shadox

0x6A7232 wrote: »

You would have to have manually backed up previous saves.

Yeah i didnt have issue yet with save but like we never know what could happen i always make a backup , atleast once a day.

0x6A7232

@Belgarel You guys need to implement a system where the new save is stored in a temporary save file, and then after completion of the files being written to disk, they over-write the old save (if I understand correctly, no data would be changed, just the file name pointers would be changed to point to the new updated save data?). This way, either the old save or the new save is always available.

Not sure exactly how this works, but you may be able to do something with filesystem journalling to achieve the same effect.

Anyways, sorry for the layman's mangling of the procedure, but something to this effect should be able to be written (heck if Unity accepted Windows batch files I could scratch something together using that to achieve the result, so I'm sure it's able to be done using other more polished tools).

EDIT: Unless of course you guys already have something like this and this is one of those awful save corrupting bugs from the deeps of coding horror. If that's the case, please forgive my hubris.

BildumGProman

Recent player here, had a similar issue (new to the forum, still can't create a topic). Game crashed while using the Prawn; not during a save, not while quitting, just during movement. But, apparently that's enough to corrupt my save. The save image is replaced with a generic red "?" (no message of a corrupted save, though), and I'm spawned at the beginning of the game.

I've tried using chkdsk, nothing is wrong with the drive or partition itself, and I had no backup solution set up. I'm trying Recuva right now, and I may try temporarily moving some of the cache files, but those are unlikely to work. Is there any possibility of recovering this save?

Also, what the heck Unknown Worlds. A save-destroying bug after 3 years in early access, that can occur even while not saving? Like @Vex and @0x6A7232 have both said, there are several ways to lessen this risk, but they've taken none of them. Games have done this for years! I'm certainly not putting another 48 hours into the game, and I'll just play something more stable.

0x6A7232

0x6A7232 wrote: »

EDIT: Unless of course you guys already have something like this and this is one of those awful save corrupting bugs from the deeps of coding horror. If that's the case, please forgive my hubris.

NuclearTesting

I know its a bit late to say but... the "damage" came in the form of a missing alien gun, making the game unfinishable.

narfblat

@NuclearTesting have you tried clearing caches? You can find instructions in 0x6A7232's signature above your post. I never did complete the playthrough I had with a damaged save, since I always planned to start a new game after v1.0.

NuclearTesting

narfblat wrote: »

@NuclearTesting have you tried clearing caches? You can find instructions in 0x6A7232's signature above your post. I never did complete the playthrough I had with a damaged save, since I always planned to start a new game after v1.0.

No, just deleted the save. R.I.P. 20 hours of my life.

91sCataclysm

Forgive my necroposting, but has anyone found any reliable solution for this? I tried the gameinfo.json fix, I tried the cache deletion (well, I renamed the folders rather than delete their conent). No dice.

0x6A7232

Reliable solution?
Subnautica Save Backup - a mod to back up your saved game. Yes, it's down to resorting to mods if you're still having problems. There's also a couple other mods, QuickSave (press F5 to save) and Safe AutoSave (saves when entering a Base or Cyclops, with some configurability). You'll need the pre-requisite mod enabler QModManager to use these.

91sCataclysm

0x6A7232 wrote: »

Reliable solution?
Subnautica Save Backup- a mod to back up your saved game. Yes, it's down to resorting to mods if you're still having problems.

I guess this means kissing 20 hours of progress goodbye

TheLight000

The exact same thing happened to me, i saved the game and my computer just turns off,not only the date were changed my progress has been deleted,I lost 17h

Willie321

I am playing the game on an iMac thru Steam and am enjoying it tremendously. I feel lucky to have not encountered any significant glitches or bugs yet. [An inane comment, yes, but I couldn't find an existing topic close to the one I need to create. And now my posting obligation should be fulfilled...]

silk186

This still isn't fixed? I think I was about 50 hours into the games. I'm contemplating either using commands to get my items back or moving on to another game. I don't understand why devs didn't implement multiple saves or a save back-up.

0x6A7232

There's mods for that if you want. Well, more like scripts, but they make it easier to make and maintain save game backups.

mattx878

this is my obligatory comment comment so i can post....

jhlords2

i saved my game an d it crashed at the same time then appered an game from 2015 january that i have never played and i lost allllll my date from the other game that i saved is there any way i can get it back ?

narfblat

Try running chkdsk on the drive, listed in 0x6A7232's signature above. (they also list where to find scripts to backup saves)

My guess is that the 2015 January save is what's left of your original save. After doing the chkdsk, you can try running the save, but no guarantee that there are no later issues.

Realtemmiegaming

I have had this problem but I have a backup on steam backups but I got this error I thought it would be able to restore it with the steam built in recovery but it didn't work it didn't change anything my question is if I delete this damaged save game and try the restore again would it work

Soulstar

Hate to revive this but now the switch is suffering from this. I was loaded up on cyclops near the lifepod and saved to take a break. I was all prepped for the primary containment. I just came back to it saying corrupted save file. Really annoyed as on the switch there really isn't a way to fix it and I lost 2 days worth of exploring...

tombhusk

Had an interesting encounter with this on Below Zero 1.0. Not sure when it became "damaged", but when it did, the label went away quickly. Nothing seemed wrong at first, but as I happily played and progressed the story I eventually found out that there was a serious issue. The iceberg containing the greenhouse was drastically different and contained no greenhouse. I think many other icebergs are also messed up. The greenhouse is present in the same coordinates in every other save I made, so I think it was because of the "damaged" state. Highly doubt I can fix it as I never though to back it up (RIP my first playthrough, 14 hours), but I just wanted to document it. Comparison of OG world and random creative world attached.