[m1.30 - General] Geoscape CtD saving game.

[Melee]

Description: Game crashed to desktop after changing file name and hitting 'Enter' on save dialog.

What Happened:  Dropships Alpha and Bravo returned from missions, then corpses and captures and alien weapons (oh my!) at both bases were sold.  Hit 'Esc', clicked 'Save Game', then edited save filename to a filename that should have already existed and hit 'Enter' expecting overwrite confirmation which I don't think ever came.  The "...139c..." save that was created is attached and loads.   Loading prior save (also attached) and replaying didn't result in crash.

output.log user_day_139c_manual_save-187.json auto_strategy_after_combat-134.json

[Chris]

On 8/12/2023 at 10:15 PM, Melee said:

Description: Game crashed to desktop after changing file name and hitting 'Enter' on save dialog.

What Happened:  Dropships Alpha and Bravo returned from missions, then corpses and captures and alien weapons (oh my!) at both bases were sold.  Hit 'Esc', clicked 'Save Game', then edited save filename to a filename that should have already existed and hit 'Enter' expecting overwrite confirmation which I don't think ever came.  The "...139c..." save that was created is attached and loads.   Loading prior save (also attached) and replaying didn't result in crash.

output.log 5.29 MB · 0 downloads user_day_139c_manual_save-187.json 821.61 kB · 0 downloads auto_strategy_after_combat-134.json 827 kB · 0 downloads

Thanks. Sory for the slow reply here. Just to clarify - did you try to recreate the crash a second time, or did you just play normally and find it didn't crash?

We'll take a look at the logs and check if they show what the problem is.

[Melee]

After initial crash during which the '139c' save was created, I loaded the attached autosave and repeated the 'What Happened' steps over and it didn't crash. This is around the 3rd time after playing for awhile and trying to save over a previous save the game crashes without prompting for a overwrite.  Does the save process create the save first and then copy it over the previous when overwriting?

Edited August 19, 2023 by Melee

[Chris]

On 8/19/2023 at 6:25 PM, Melee said:

After initial crash during which the '139c' save was created, I loaded the attached autosave and repeated the 'What Happened' steps over and it didn't crash. This is around the 3rd time after playing for awhile and trying to save over a previous save the game crashes without prompting for a overwrite.  Does the save process create the save first and then copy it over the previous when overwriting?

Thanks. Yeah, we're very confused at this - basically the game appears to be finding a null value when trying to do the comparison of the new save game name to that of the existing ones.

It's almost certainly a multi-threading issue because the game is loading all the save game (names) on a second thread, which is why you see them load in over time when you open the panel. How many save games do you have?

We'll have a chat with our tech director about this a bit later this week; it should be possible to prevent these issues by running things only on a single thread at the key points.

[Melee]

At the time of save there was ~169 manual saves plus however many ufo intercept and ground mission autosaves still existed.  Can you explain the save mechanics? I was surprised it had created a loadable save file despite crashing.  Wouldn't it wait for the names list to complete loading before writing the save?  Seems like if you changed the name quickly and hit 'enter' the name list might not be completely loaded.

Edited August 21, 2023 by Melee

[Chris]

2 hours ago, Melee said:

At the time of save there was ~169 manual saves plus however many ufo intercept and ground mission autosaves still existed.  Can you explain the save mechanics? I was surprised it had created a loadable save file despite crashing.  Wouldn't it wait for the names list to complete loading before writing the save?  Seems like if you changed the name quickly and hit 'enter' the name list might not be completely loaded.

It first creates the save, which has a different number appended on the file system number to anything sharing the same name, and then checks to see if there's an existing game with a shared name and deletes it if so.

Yes, you'll potentially get duplicates with the same name (within the game at least) if you have a lot of save games, but the alternative is that the game has to make sure all the saves in the list are loaded before it finishes the save process - which could add a long time to the process if the player has a huge number of saves.