Game crashed- lost months

[ccd494]

My game crashed and when I booted it back up I am months behind where I was in the game. Which makes sense, because I hadn't saved in a while.

Any sneaky ways to get things restored to where I am? Because this has me wanting never to play this game again.

[oomm]

Originally Posted by ccd494

My game crashed and when I booted it back up I am months behind where I was in the game. Which makes sense, because I hadn't saved in a while.

Any sneaky ways to get things restored to where I am? Because this has me wanting never to play this game again.

Man, does that resonate.

Not that I know of. Something is either on your hard/SS drive or is not. Maybe others know better.

[ShawnSoup]

No sneaky way. Backup and save religiously

[ccd494]

In all previous versions I had set a weekly backup. The backups in this version take longer than it does to simulate a week. So I turned it off.

What a disaster. This I think has been the last straw on OOTP for me.

[oomm]

Originally Posted by ccd494

In all previous versions I had set a weekly backup. The backups in this version take longer than it does to simulate a week. So I turned it off.

What a disaster. This I think has been the last straw on OOTP for me.

Yep, been there. Often. Typically I make it until beginning of June after purchasing and sinking hours into setting up a new release. Because by June the game will have nuked itself upon which it gets hurled from my harddrive with me sputtering never again. But here I am. And this has been the best year in years... mid-June and things are looking good....

[Sweed]

I've been playing since 2002, v4. I had OOTP crash on me and lost some progress once in all this time. It happened with v4 20 years ago.

Did you also have autosave turned off too? My game is set to once per month, just in case

[oomm]

I think the most overall excitement/drama produced my OOTP is, after sinking hours into updating league teams/structure, fins and scheds, logos and uniforms etc etc and realize you haven't saved yet, and you click 'save' and you get the hourglass/white screen experience. It's like all of time just stops and you wait to see how the coin lands this time.... A bit like roulette perhaps, not quite?

[Lukas Berger]

You can typically restore a crashed save from the autosave function.

That might set you back in time at this point too though, depending on how often you have the autosave set to save.

Going forward though, you can always adjust the frequency in the settings, and have the austosave save weekly, daily or even dynamically.


1) Open the game and on the start screen, click on Settings.

2) Now click on the tab "Troubleshooting".

3) Click "Open folder containing saved games".

4) Now open up the league folder you're wanting to restore.

5) Then select all of the .dat files in the folder and back them up (just in case) by copying them to a temporary folder or creating a zipped file with them

6) Open the folder called "auto-save".

7) In there, select all of the ".dat" files and copy them to the league folder (the parent of the current folder) overwriting all of the ".dat" files in the league folder.

8) Now start the game and load your league.

[BBGiovanni]

Originally Posted by Sweed

I've been playing since 2002, v4. I had OOTP crash on me and lost some progress once in all this time. It happened with v4 20 years ago.

Did you also have autosave turned off too? My game is set to once per month, just in case

I do the same, but I set it for every day because I play out most/all of my games. Now I only lose progress when I'm setting up an elaborate game, and even then I try to save as soon as I finish a reasonably important edit/change.

And I have an old computer running Win 7! It doesn't add that much time to advancing a day. Or for people that sim a week at a time, a week.

[oldfatbaldguy]

I realize the amount of time required to do this varies with the user's equipment. But this would really demoralize me, too, and that's why I have the game set to autosave every day. I back it up with the in-game utility every time I close it. It only takes me a few seconds -- I don't even notice the auto-saving -- and it can save a lot of grief.

[sabin357]

Originally Posted by Sweed

My game is set to once per month, just in case

Started doing this a few years ago & it was such a great idea to protect against things like this.

[BBGiovanni]

Originally Posted by oldfatbaldguy

I realize the amount of time required to do this varies with the user's equipment. But this would really demoralize me, too, and that's why I have the game set to autosave every day. I back it up with the in-game utility every time I close it. It only takes me a few seconds -- I don't even notice the auto-saving -- and it can save a lot of grief.

You just get used to it and it seems like part of the sim, IMO. I don't even remember which version I started this, maybe 14 or something.

[silvam14]

I guess it comes down to which will make you give up on the game less?

1, setting auto save more frequently and having to wait a little longer when advancing

2. Turning off auto save to save time advancing, while leaving your save vulnerable to a random crash.

I would choose option 1


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Pelican]

Me, too, Silvam. I’m pretty obsessive about saves, nearly as much with backups (though not full backups), and the wait on my Mac Mini III is minutes; not hours. (In all candor, the time spent coincides nicely with bathroom breaks, walking the dog, grabbing a beer, etc.) And once you restore a saved sim, the time invested seems minimal. I wouldn’t single out OOTP for criticism as to saves and backups. It’s no different than any other program with heavy data.

[ccd494]

Just to tie a bow on this:

The last save I had my team was sitting at 57-67. It was year three of starting with an expansion team from 2023. "Unsaved" I finished the year at 82-80, which just barely saved my job.

I finally dug deep and decided to finish things up. I finished 69-93. Fired (I am in Commissioner Mode so I just re-hired myself, but still). My top prospect fractured his elbow.

That's all maddening and annoying, but MOST maddening and annoying is that somewhere, deeeeeeeeeep down, the computer knows what happened the first time around. When I simmed a game and checked the recap the line score, the writeup, and the box score all reflected the "new" result. But the graph? The graph was the sim from the first time around.

I'm looking at a game from 8/8/2025. I lost 6-2 to the Cardinals. The writeup talks about my 7-game losing streak, the big play being a 7th inning Harrison Bader single. The line score has me losing 6-2. The hitting and pitching lines show a 6-2 game. But the graph? The big plays are:

Top 5th: E. Olivares hit a 2-run home run vs. M. Liberatore (I scored one run in the 5th, Olivares went 0-4 with 3 strikeouts, and Liberatore gave up no home runs)
Top 7th: R. Marchan hit a run-scoring single vs. F. Pacheco (Marchan went 0-4, Pacheco pitched a scoreless 9th)
Bot 9th: P. Goldschmidt hit a single vs. J. Cousins (Goldschmidt 0-2, J. Cousins did not pitch, the Cardinals did not bat in the 9th)
Bot 9th: N. Gorman hit into a double play vs. J. Cousins (again, didn't happen)

The graph also shows a MON win. Infuriating to see the difference between games.

Also I am now autosaving every week. Timed the last one, 1 minute 40 seconds. Multiply that by 52 and that's just less than an hour and a half per year of gameplay.

[ccd494]

Oh and the reason I went back to this? I tried to start a new game with the same expansion parameters. Got it all set up, expanded the league by 4 teams, set up their minor leagues to make some sense, got coaches hired, etc. and the expansion draft came around.

And for some reason one of the four expansion teams did not participate in the draft.

[Pelican]

One other thought (from another thread - never occurred to me) is that your OOTP data may have been backed up through your OS in a system-wide save. For example, I have periodic backups via “Time Capsule” on my Mac Mini. It operates in the background, and rarely slows anything down. Of course, even with overwriting old backups, it demands a ton of disk space, so I got a 2TB external hard drive for storage. Pretty sure those OOTP files would be there, although no clue exactly how to reload them. So I rely primarily on in-game backups. And the process for loading a backup file in-game is easy.

[NoOne]

about auto-save hack -- it's important you do not try to reload (or maybe it's just a save/backup event) the game before going through steps lukas laid out above. .. just be safe and don't try to reload immediately after a crash.. go copy those files from auto-save directory first -- put somewhere safe temporarily.. then you can try reloading before getting drastic....

no reload, save or backup in meantime should keep files after a crash in the autosave directory your most up-to-date option.

[legendsbaseball2020]

I save everyday or other day.

[RchW]

Daily saves approx 10 sec
Weekly cumulative backups less than 3 min
Monthly backup reflected in file name ie ColFict 2087_June. 5-10 min

Year end Dec 31 save, big file. That file is stripped of box scores, csv files messages etc as of Jan 1 in game and I rinse/repeat for the next season.

200 seasons in two different saves having lost a few days 2-3 times.

OCD drives this of course.