Campaign load failed

Gratuitous Forum Support
1

Hi, I have a really annoying problem.
I have been playing the campaign mode mode for about a week, however i keep being unable to load the saved campaign. i get the message ‘LOAD FAILED’ There were problems encountered loading data for this campaign game’. This happens in 2 different ways.

  1. the game has crashed and when i load it back up i get the load fail message.
  2. having been playing the game for a while i turn the game off (making sure it has saved) when i come back later to play i get the same message.
    Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesnt but having got quite far into the campaign it is frustrating to have to go back to the begining.
    At the moment the game is saved onto an external hardrive, i have tried unplugging this and re-installing the game onto the C-Drive of the computer but have the same problem. It is a brand new quad drive computer with windows 7.
    Please help.
2

Hi, the game should be saving your progress in \my documents\my games\gratuitous space battles\campaign progress
does this folder exist? and is the game happily creating folders and files there?
Are you running the game as the administrator account?

3

I’ve had the same problems before. But I don’t use an external hard drive and I use Windows XP, so I don’t expect either to be your problem.

To answer cliffski in my case:
Yes, the game is happily using the campaign progress folder. I can still create new campaigns and they often save and load fine. I’ve had a few campaigns not load anymore after a crash though, or indeed just seemingly randomly after quitting normally.
Yes I am on the administrator account.
The only thing I can’t do is delete campaigns with the delete campaign button. I have to manually delete it.

I would suggest giving us a more informative error message instead of just “load failed”. Maybe let it tell us what it was trying to load that failed, so we can in turn tell you.

4

Yes there is a save folder and it has saved the files in there. I am running the game as an administrator.

5

I am currently investigating this. It is possibly related to two other bugs, (they are all the same thing) and thus triggered by deleting ship designs, and corruption that results.
I am looking into a long term fix for that, when it’s no longer a problem.

6

It looks like I may have fixed this, albeit in a sort of backwards way. The game will now sensibly not let you delete ship designs that are in use by a campaign, ANY campaign that you currently have, so the delete buttons for those designs are simply greyed out.
That was always going to be a nightmare, and i think it stands to reason that you shouldnt delete designs that are in use. If you no longer have any ships of that design, it should be fine to then delete them.
I am assuming this is indirectly the cause of the problems you are experiencing. It is likely also the cause of the ngative cash and maintenance costs bug, and a rare crash when leaving the design screen.
Anyway, that will be in patch 1.53…

7

Sounds good cliffski, it’s an important fix.

Although honestly I can’t agree with how it works :stuck_out_tongue: There is something strange about not being allowed to delete a design because you have a ship somewhere that used it. Can’t the ship design be stored somewhere separately when you use it to build something? Like captured ship designs end up in some other folder? It’s not like those txt files are going to get anyone’s hard drive full.

I can’t really play more than one race because it clutters up my design page. I like it to be clean, without having to delete a campaign before I can delete their designs.

8

captured designs are indeed stored somewhere else, so as not to clutter things up, but ships you have designed are stored alongside all the other ships. I understand what you mean, which involves another folder, and the moving of files when they are deleted, plus the selective display of them, but this could cause confusion when you are told you already have a ship called X but can’t see any, etc.
(captured designs have a special name prefixto avoid such clashes)

9

I just had a bit of a further look in the My Documents\my games\GratuitousSpaceBattles folder.

I don’t understand why a ship in the campaign would require its design to remain existing. Because in the fleet file (\campaignprogress\default\fleets\fleet33.txt) all design information of the ship is already stored separately for each ship, apart from the name of the hull.

Let’s say I made a fighter design called “painter bomber tribe”, this would be stored in the design folder (\ships) as “painter bomber tribe.txt” like so:
[config]
name = painter bomber tribe
guiname = painter bomber tribe
hull = Tribe Serenity Fighter

[modules]
0 = fighter_engine,
1 = fighter_engine II,
2 = fighter_rocket,
3 = fighter target painter,

If I went to the campaign and produced this fighter, it would store it inside the fleet file (\campaignprogress\default\fleets\fleet33.txt) like:
[config]
fleetid = 33
guiname = 502nd Galactic Navy

[ship0]
design = painter bomber tribe
name = Kaw
quantity = 4
num_mods = 4
integrity = 1.00
id = 123
moved = 0
captured = 0
0 = 0,fighter_engine
1 = 1,fighter_engine II
2 = 2,fighter_rocket
3 = 3,fighter target painter

The only extra information the game could get from the design folder for this ship is “hull = Tribe Serenity Fighter”. If that’s all it needs, why not store it separately for each ship in the fleet33.txt as well as you already do for the modules and design name. Then a ship would no longer require its design to remain existing.

The only other reason I can think of at the moment is: if I changed my design of the fighter and produced it, I would have two groups of fighters called “painter bomber tribe”, but they would be unable to merge because their modules aren’t the same.

I’m probably talking out of my neck though. It would be too much work to change now anyway I bet.