Failed save; Destroyed autosave; Database issues

[sgraber]

This appears to be a duplicate of:
https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...d.php?t=342562
https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...d.php?t=343139
https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...d.php?t=342790

However, none of those have a successful resolution, and I have a lot of additional information from my own fix attempts that might be useful, so I'm going to post again in the hopes that someone can help. I've ftped my .dat files as instructed, in "Shlomo's mets.zip". I'm having issues taking screenshots (f12, which is supposed to be Steam's screenshot hotkey, just toggles airplane mode), but I'll do my best to describe what I'm seeing.

The initial issue was an attempt to save that failed with an error message about not being able to open the SQLite database.

I then closed the game, figuring that I'd go back to the autosave, since I autosave monthly. The game failed to load with error:

"An error occurred while loading the database! Could not load world file"

The game then tries to run an automatic troubleshooter, saving the "potentially damaged" files to an incident folder and attempting to restore from the autosave folder. This fails with the same error message.

I also tried restoring from the autosave manually, as described by Lukas Berger in this thread:
https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...d.php?t=337733

Unfortunately, the .dat files in the autosave folder appear to be identical to the primary save (identical file sizes and timestamps), and restoring did not help.

On a hunch, I copied the .dat files into a new folder, and then replaced that world file in the new folder with a world file from a clean save of a brand-new game. The new folder loaded successfully with most of my information from the corrupted save - the 2 major things that didn't load are the date, which reset to the date of the new world file, and the league structure - all my expansion teams got kicked into the minors. Also, all my settings and league rules got reset to defaults, but that's easy to fix.

Crucially, all players and personnel, even the ones on the expansion teams, appear to have their correct stats, ratings, teams, etc, and all the league history is still there.

I assume it's possible to manually set the date, and it's definitely possible to manually move the expansion teams back up, which might function as a workaround. However, it's possible there are subtler changes I haven't noticed. Does anyone have a full list of what is defined in the world file, so I can try to look at those things specifically?

I also tried using the world file from a backup of the corrupted game, which is about 5 game years out of date. With this world file, it started to load, but then crashed with an issue in the players file, which I found to be very interesting.

It seems like the overwhelming majority of the important information is in uncorrupted files, and my game shouldn't be totally bricked, so I'd really appreciate any help getting it back up and running.

[tonnage]

Originally Posted by sgraber

This appears to be a duplicate of:
https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...d.php?t=342562
https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...d.php?t=343139
https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...d.php?t=342790

However, none of those have a successful resolution, and I have a lot of additional information from my own fix attempts that might be useful, so I'm going to post again in the hopes that someone can help. I've ftped my .dat files as instructed, in "Shlomo's mets.zip". I'm having issues taking screenshots (f12, which is supposed to be Steam's screenshot hotkey, just toggles airplane mode), but I'll do my best to describe what I'm seeing.

The initial issue was an attempt to save that failed with an error message about not being able to open the SQLite database.

I then closed the game, figuring that I'd go back to the autosave, since I autosave monthly. The game failed to load with error:

"An error occurred while loading the database! Could not load world file"

The game then tries to run an automatic troubleshooter, saving the "potentially damaged" files to an incident folder and attempting to restore from the autosave folder. This fails with the same error message.

I also tried restoring from the autosave manually, as described by Lukas Berger in this thread:
https://forums.ootpdevelopments.com/...d.php?t=337733

Unfortunately, the .dat files in the autosave folder appear to be identical to the primary save (identical file sizes and timestamps), and restoring did not help.

On a hunch, I copied the .dat files into a new folder, and then replaced that world file in the new folder with a world file from a clean save of a brand-new game. The new folder loaded successfully with most of my information from the corrupted save - the 2 major things that didn't load are the date, which reset to the date of the new world file, and the league structure - all my expansion teams got kicked into the minors. Also, all my settings and league rules got reset to defaults, but that's easy to fix.

Crucially, all players and personnel, even the ones on the expansion teams, appear to have their correct stats, ratings, teams, etc, and all the league history is still there.

I assume it's possible to manually set the date, and it's definitely possible to manually move the expansion teams back up, which might function as a workaround. However, it's possible there are subtler changes I haven't noticed. Does anyone have a full list of what is defined in the world file, so I can try to look at those things specifically?

I also tried using the world file from a backup of the corrupted game, which is about 5 game years out of date. With this world file, it started to load, but then crashed with an issue in the players file, which I found to be very interesting.

It seems like the overwhelming majority of the important information is in uncorrupted files, and my game shouldn't be totally bricked, so I'd really appreciate any help getting it back up and running.

I'm having the same problem although I think my entire version of OOTP 23 is corrupt, as I'm getting several different messages. I even uninstalled the program, reinstalled it at least three times (via Steam) but the problems persist. I tried to repurchase 23 through Steam but they won't let me (seems ridiculous) because they say I already have it, even after I had it removed from my library - shouldn't really be any of their business what I have or want. So now (because support here is pretty much non-existent), I'm back to using 22.

[tonnage]

Okay, in my search to solve this problem, I came across an OOTP video supplied on Steam (why no support was offered by OOTP themselves is beyond me, they couldn't even point me to their own video. As I said before, support here is non-existent). At any rate, I did everything in the video right to the end and my problem was solved! I'm back to using 23. I hope this helps.

https://youtu.be/xTZoz7aCtD8