The Dink Network

I was working in Windinkedit, saving after each change, when the program crashed during a save. When I go back I find nothing but the purple boxes, all of my work is no longer there. Does anyone know of a recovery method, or do I have to start over from scratch?

Thanks in advance,

Symian

It did this to me once and I had to use an older map from a backup Couldn't get back anything. Sux but does teach you to back up your work *sighs*

If you think your WDE might crash more than just once, change your settings to Auto-Save every few minutes. It helps

Settings -> Options
In the Auto-Save box, type in any number between 1 and at least 10. It'll save every 1-10 minutes that way. Note that you have to have a Dmod loaded and are zoomed into one of the screens to access the settings button.

I do appreciate both of your responses.

I do backup on a daily schedule, but it happened as I was working on an entirely new project - that project started that very day - many many hours into it, sadly. *chuckle*

I've had Windinkedit crash before, just never during a save. Now I know what can happen so I will be much better prepared for it in the future.

I have found that wde crashes heaps during saves, especially if you have not saved for a while and done heaps of changes. Not a personal fav to have it on auto save tho and it never helped when wde crashed as it took out the map anyway. (yes I am dumb enough to have done it more than once *sigh*)

The only thing I have found that helped prevent crashing after heaps of work and changes was to totally close wde (I suppose a back up/copy then would be rather helpful lol) and then reopen it because wde doesn't seem to be able to be "refreshed" any other way. Sorry you lost your work but at least you can *chuckle about it*

In Reply to MsDink:

I decided to do that - do my saves manually and then exit WDE from time to time. I did chuckle at myself (after letting out a good blue streak of language). It's been so long since I've not been able to recover from a program crash that I just never thought about it when doing all of that work. Oh well, live and learn - and live and learn again, I guess.

I created a batch file that checks the errorlevel when exiting WDE. If I exit the program without an error it backs up everything into an RAR. I am keeping 5 backups so I can go back to the last 5 saves. If WDE exits abnormally the batch doesn't back up. That way I can go back into the program to see if it buggered anything or not before deciding to go to a backup version.

It's all just fun and stuffing, really.

Sounds like an awesome wee batch file. There is a few of us that this could be a bonus for *sighs* Can't have our dmods being buggered (or stuffed for that matter)!

WDE is made to rip your nighty I am sure,it seems to get you at your weakest point and delivers a gizzard punch on a random (loop) basis - so doesn't pay to get too cocky aye *wink* cause that's where it hits you next... case in point- you thought you were above saving your work - *shakes head* Obviously not so... *chuckles*

Looking forward to your dmod. Don't you go and get so busy you cant get it finished ok!

In Reply to MsDink:

The batch file helps a great deal. So did setting WDE to Win98 compatibility mode (I use XP to the newest updates). I keep the batch file in my Dmod's directory (folder). I run it when I want to use WDE for that specific dmod project. Basically all it does is run WDE, checks if it crashes, runs the backup if it does not, checks to make sure I actually updated something (not just went into WDE and exited), and if so deletes the oldest backup and renames the others accordingly.

Here is my workit.bat file. Hope it helps you!



---
@ECHO OFF
..\dinkedit\windinkedit.exe
IF NOT ERRORLEVEL 0 GOTO ERRORED
GOTO ESUCCESS

:ESUCCESS
C:\Progra~1\WinRAR\RAR.exe a -u -r -x*.rar dathp.rar
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO END
CD BACKUPS
IF EXIST dathp5.rar DEL dathp5.rar
IF EXIST dathp4.rar REN dathp4.rar dathp5.rar
IF EXIST dathp3.rar REN dathp3.rar dathp4.rar
IF EXIST dathp2.rar REN dathp2.rar dathp3.rar
REN dathpbk.rar dathp2.rar
copy ..\dathp.rar dathpbk.rar
CD ..
GOTO END

:ERRORED
ECHO THE PROGRAM REPORTED A NON ZERO EXIT!
ECHO DMOD WORK HAS NOT BEEN BACKED UP.
PAUSE
GOTO END

:END

*Workit* ? oh yeah hehe

It has been seriously years since I made a batch file lol - back when dos actually meant dos not some windows thingi ma bob... Ohh I feel the altzheimers kicking in... But really, that's pretty nice of ya. Thanks so much for that I will definitely try it out (once I re down load win rar of course hehe)

Edit: That batch file is pretty simple but really clever (I can't believe I actually remember this stuff ) Well done!!

In Reply to MsDink

You are quite welcome, and I do appreciate the compliment.

If you don't have an RAR or Zip program, use XCOPY (included up to Vista) or Robocopy (from Vista on). You can accomplish pretty much the same thing with Xcopy that I do with RAR, just without the compression.

I too cut my teeth on DOS and still keep up my command line skills. It comes in handy when fixing other people's computers. Really!

Nah its cool , my computer died and took the entire HD with it a while ago and I never redownloaded it. Forgot about it to be honest I wanna try out that batch file hehe so - I shall get it once broadband kicks in again *sigh* way too much downloading...

I have to agree with MsDink, this looks like quite a handy little batch file. I played around with it and got it working just fine. It does take a lot of time to compress large DMODs though. I think I will edit it so that it only backs up the .DAT and .ini files, that should be enough to recover everything that WinDinkEdit can break, and it saves time.

Also, instead of using ..\dinkedit\windinkedit.exe You can also use ..\dinkedit\windinkedit.exe -game <directory>. This way WinDinkEdit opens <directory> when it opens (another timesaving thingie).

This is a great way to spend a couple of hours for someone like me who has never worked with batch files before... (Spent mostly on trying to work out how 7zip's command line works )

What you want to do is 7zip everything up and then have your batch file only add updated or newer files to the archieve from that point on. So, if you changed the map file it gets backed up, and if you write a new .c file in the story folder it gets added, but all the other files are not readded because they have not been changed.

I am glad that you enjoyed working with your first batch file. It is not all that hard, really. There is a lot you can do with batch language, and a lot you can't do but want to. *chuckle*

Meta = come now, you know how "technologically challenged" I can be - if I can make working batch files you KNOW you can ) And as Symian says - they're fun
Edit: Tip = stay away from the \format C:\ command hehe