OMG I LOST EVERYTHING

Ok... I've been using Construct and then Construct 2 FOR YEARS. This month was the second BIG SCALE game that I was making...

SUDDENLY the Construct 2 crashed with a message that I've closed (saying something about xml.tmp that could't save and "Sorry for any loss of your work") Ok, I've lost some of my work but I could do it again...

When I went to the project folder to open it and start over. WHERE THE FUCK IS MY PROJECT? IT WAS DELETED AND THE AUTO-BACKUP WAS FROM 10 DAYS AGO.

I'LL NEVER USE CONSTRUCT2 AGAIN! I WAS MAKING A GAME FOR A GAME JAM 30 FREAKING DAYS OF PROGRAMMING, NO-SLEEPS, WAS LOST.

THANK YOU SO MUCH SCIRRA.

AND WHERE THE HELL CAN I GET AN ERROR LOG TO PUT IN HERE?!xdi@?!?!?!?!?

I'm afraid all software and hardware can fail - this could come down to anything like a failing hard drive, OS corruption bug, or any such thing. This is why you should keep regular backups of any digital work you do, with any software on any system. Also note Construct 2 has built-in backup settings.

I'm afraid all software and hardware can fail - this could come down to anything like a failing hard drive, OS corruption bug, or any such thing. This is why you should keep regular backups of any digital work you do, with any software on any system. Also note Construct 2 has built-in backup settings.

Ok and all softwares have an error log, how can I know what happened? This is the minimum I could know.

And how a software when crash delete things from your HD? This is wrong. Very wrong.

15 years of computing and this is the first time that I see a software delete something from your HD by a crash.

...

Any program can glitch and corrupt your file if you save it to one location and don't make backup copies. You have nobody to blame in this situation but yourself.

Ok guys just read what I've said. My game is GONE, nothing we can do anymore. BUT I WANT TO KNOW IF THERE'S SOME ERROR LOG THAT I COULD VERIFY.

I not talking about corruption I'm talking about deleting files from HD. I've been making games for more than 10 years and used almost every engine in the market. This never happened, how can I guess that's this is possible? I'm not a wizard or something like this. Let's do magic just in our games.

ERROR LOG, Construct 2 have or haven't? Yes or no? Just the answer that I need.

I don't know if there are any logs, but here is something I found:

Check Documents and Settings\{your profile}\AppData\Local\Temp

or \Documents and Settings\{your profile}\Local Settings\Temp

if there are folders starting with "cap*", they may contain your project files and there is a chance you can recover your game.

Construct 2 does not keep an error log. Even if it did, it might not include any information about the problem, and even then if it did, it might not be enough information to allow us to actually fix anything. To actually be able to fix bugs, we need all the information required in the bug report guidelines, the most important being reliable steps to follow to reproduce the issue. We may need to follow the steps to reproduce a dozen or more times before we even understand the problem, so without these, it's almost impossible to make any progress.

FWIW when you save a project, Construct 2 takes the following steps, specifically to try to avoid issues like this. Suppose you're saving to project.capx. It never writes directly to the file. Instead:

1. It writes all files to a temporary folder

2. Assuming that was successful, it then compresses it all to a zip (capx files are just renamed zips), to a file named project.capx.tmp.

3. Notice at this point, it still hasn't touched project.capx at all, and only continues if everything so far has been successful. Now it deletes project.capx, and renames project.capx.tmp to project.capx. This basically swaps the old file for a new fully-saved one.

There are several types of problems this avoids:

• if writing files to a temporary folder fails, project.capx is untouched.
• if compressing a zip fails, project.capx is untouched.
• if deleting project.capx fails, it's left behind.
• if deleting project.capx succeeds but renaming project.capx.tmp fails, you should still have a valid project file at project.capx.tmp which you can rename and use.

The only case I can think of that actually completely erases the project is if renaming project.capx.tmp fails and somehow deletes the file, which is a catastrophic OS/file system/hardware failure. These types of errors can happen on any device, and this is why you need to have a good backup strategy for any kind of digital work you do.

BTW even if you save a project folder, each individual file in the project goes through the same process as above. It's designed so there is as little scope as possible for any work-destroying bugs. But they can still happen due to factors outside our control.

Ok by reading this article , i imediatelly set up OneDrive forlder with 3 more backup folders and set up construct to do 3 backup. Thank you for your bad experience that saved me

Ok by reading this article , i imediatelly set up OneDrive forlder with 3 more backup folders and set up construct to do 3 backup. Thank you for your bad experience that saved me

lol good job!

i had this same issue. I made a game and couldnt find it after my lights went out and my computer crashed. I think its dumb that Construct doesnt have an error report like EVERY program seems to have. However, I did find a "Preview" folder in my appdata which gave me a little hope after having had lost said project months ago...Though this particular find didnt quite fix the issue of the lost project, it made me look again for it.

Lord and Behold, I found the damned project. it was renamed by Construct to "myproject.capx.backup1"...By it having the "backup1" at the end of it, i couldnt open it or anything. But, simply delete ".backup1" from the file and it will magically transform into a Construct 2 project file...So, with that being said, SAVE! SAVE! SAVE! BACKUP to more than 1 place, preferably an external drive. Autosave is annoying and always seems to happen when im in the middle of something important. But, with Autosave off you MUST remember to Click that "SAVE" button whenever you come to a stopping point to think, breath, get a bite to eat, etc etc.