ALL BUILDERS - BACKUP YOUR WORK REGULARLY

For toolset tutorials as well as question and answers.
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indio
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ALL BUILDERS - BACKUP YOUR WORK REGULARLY

Post by indio »

I'm crushed to learn Wynna's work has sufferred the same fate as Aelreds. And I was stupid enough to not post something like this after Aelre'd savage experience.

Backup your work people.

Before every bake, copy your work to another hard drive, to a different partition, or somewhere else safe.

I hope you stay on Wynna, and I regret not being more active in keeping this sort of thing from happening.

Someone please make this a sticky.
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AcadiusLost
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Post by AcadiusLost »

I would also recommend anyone building for a server team to make regular uploads of their progress to an FTP- whether it be the tech FTP, DM FTP, or one maintained by someone on the server team.

In addition to giving a fallback point in case of module corruption or folder wipes, it also means your work can stay with the server it was intended for even if RL intervenes- I think several of our servers have areas in limbo currently, due to builders who were making solid progress on a given area, but then stopped posting/replying- leaving the HDM to wonder- should someone else start over on those areas? Or just leave them out indefinitely?

It sounds like a large prefab of Wynna's University tower survived the wipe, so hopefully that will speed up the painful process of replacing the lost work. Hopefully future updates can also aid the stability of the toolset and keep this from becoming a common occurance.
Rick7475
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Post by Rick7475 »

Putting the SM mod on the DM FTP now ....
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Wynna
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Post by Wynna »

All right, this is twice. I was trying to test spawns in a prefabbed interior of Indio's Silvy module because I can't get spawns to work in my module. While baking, I got the error message below. The game shut down and when I reopened, there was no longer a Silverymoon directory. I've lost Indio's whole module, again. This time I don't seem to have lost all the other modules, at least, and I have been backing up my own work to an external drive, but it's irritating.

What is going on?

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Wynna
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Post by Wynna »

It looks like Indio has come up with the answer to my crashing problem. It's the dual core of my system conflicting. Now that I'm setting affinity to CPU0 before saving/baking, I haven't crashed and burned a mod once. See this link for details:

http://nwn2forums.bioware.com/forums/vi ... ke%20crash

Thanks, Indio!
Enjoy the game
Hialmar
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Post by Hialmar »

Ah good I had the same problem.
Will set the affinity as well :)
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Post by Thangorn »

that's excellent news.. that explains my system's problems with the toolset, good find indio..
On indefinite real life hiatus

[22:52] <Veilan> obviously something sinister must be afoot if a DM does not have his social security number in his avatar name!
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Wynna
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Post by Wynna »

OK, so, I just had another complete module directory wipe after an unhandled exception error. The only thing I'd done since the last save was place a single instance of a newly created item into the module. There'd been a save made just before that, then I placed the item and got the error. I shut down to see if that fixed the error and when I went to reopen the directory, my entire module folder was empty of all saves, copies and RARs of all various modules (003, OAS2, my own...).

I did have a save on an external flash drive from two days ago, luckily, but I cannot stress how important it is for people to do the same.
Enjoy the game
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AcadiusLost
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Post by AcadiusLost »

Given Wynna's experience with these wipes, I'd go as far as to suggest all our builders keep their modules outside of the /NeverwinterNights folder tree entirely, when they are not being directly edited. Make the /modules folder home to just the current "working" project, with regular copies dropped somewhere else on the HDD for safekeeping.

I know I'm guilty of storing anything and everything in my /modules folder- but seems like so long as this bug is lurking about, that's a seriously risky proposition.
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ç i p h é r
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Post by ç i p h é r »

Sounds like good advice, but it could be that the toolset is confusing the "modules" folder with the working directory for the open module (could happen if the file path is getting corrupt), in which case it wouldn't matter what folder you actually store your modules in. It would be nothing short of horrid coding but....

Perhaps it would help to set files you are not explicitly working on to READ ONLY.
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indio
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Post by indio »

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NW ... tail&id=67

Safe Save

Get it, use it. Best Directory Backup method around.
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