Game Freezing and Lost Save

Console Forums [Console] Bug Reports
1

Claire, I have that situation on my PS4, too. I played a few months and now I can’t continue my game. My game froze while saving AFTER the message “game saved”. Now I can’t load my save-file, because it stuck on “cleaning up” phase. I can’t re-play a few months of my progress. :slight_smile: Is it any chances to fix my save-file? And yes, I have this one - I copied save-file of my game to the USB stick and could share this flie to you.

about triggers. Actually I cought this glitch twice (I wrote about it to the support via bug report form, but didn’t receive the answer). First time I could restore my save from the PS Plus cloud, but after the second time - my corrupted save-file whas backed up to the cloud and now I have corrupted file on my console and cloud. So now I can’t do anything to restore my game progress.

I don’t know my triggers, but both of times I just tried to save my game BEFORE sailing away from a new island. So, I have collected all the valuable items to my plot (in boxes in shelf), it was my last phase before leaving. Both of time my game froze after saving on this phase.

Pleeeease, help me! It was a few months of my life!!! :slight_smile: I just can’t imagine to start the game from the scratch with nothing :slight_smile: It was the very late phase of game. A few days more and I could finish the game. :(((

2

Hi @Brizovsky, welcome to the forums,

I’m sorry to hear this issue has affected your save. Thank you for reporting the details of your experience and letting me know what you were doing before this issue occured. While the reports submitted via the support for do make it to the team, it is often quicker via our forums and I am able to respond to you directly too. Can you confirm for me if this issue occured for you before or after the update to version 2079?

Unfortunately because of the nature of this issue, saves stuck in this phase cannot be restored or fixed. Fixes from the team can only work to prevent triggers from happening again. I have more information in this thread here, incase you have not seen it yet - [Known Issue][PS4/XB1] Stuck in "Cleaning Up" phase on load

I know how disappointing this is to lose progress and again I’m sorry to hear this issue has affected your save.

[Edit: I merged your 3 posts into one, please try to keep all posts together in the future if you can. This helps to keep the forum and larger topics tidy]

3

Claire, are you sure that this is unfixable? When I copied save-file to my USB-flash file it was not empty. It has the same size as uncorrupted save-file (I compare it to the save-file from another slot), and when I opened it in HEX editor - it was not empty. There was a lot of information. And the difference was only at the end of file. It was the very small piece at the end with zeroes instead of real information. But it is like 0,01% of whole file. It looks like the file has all information of my objects, but has corrupted only EOF.

By the way, the game stopped AFTER saving the game (it tooks a time!), and AFTER notice “Game saved”. So, it looks like the whole game was saved into the file, but something went wrong on closing file.

P.S. it was before the last patch.

4

Hi Brizovsky,

While I am not a dev, this is the information that has come through from the team. When creating a fix the team will always try to ensure that new saves are not required and that fixes apply to older saves as well. This is unfortunately not the case for this issue.

While it may only be the end of the file the appears to be different, it may still be a key part of the file and those numbers could be different for everyone depending on how the save is coded.

5

So, Claire, this is disaster. This is really a huge mistake of your devs. And I can’t believe that anyone really pro developers could make this stupid mistake. For example, in the game Frostpunk, once I get an error while saving the game (I turned off console while saving). So, save-file was corrupted and I lost this progress. But! I had another save-file, which I made earlier. And I could replay only 30 minutes of my game. Not the whole game! In the other side - you had only one save-file in one slot. If this save-file get corrupted - whole game lost. Brilliant! Great idea, BeamTeam!

Another example: I played a few months in Subnautica (similar game of yours), and devs made a mistake, too. My game was crashed while saving the game. I was scared, but after restart the game I saw, that my save file was not corrupted. Because developers was prepared for this. I lost my last progress, but I had whole progress before previous saving. They overwrite old save-file only after they checked a new one. So, they make a new save-file, checked if it’s ok and only after that - they rewrite old file with the new one. Thus, even after the game crashed during the save, they didn’t erase my previous save-file with a corrupted file. Thanks to them. And not thanks to your developers. Why all another dvelopers could provide this situations, but yours - can’t? I think this is a rhetorical question.

I can’t force myself to replay a whole game, which I almost complete and it tooks from me a FEW MONTHS! The Platinum Trophy was almost mine! But you stole this trophy from me. I will never re-play Stranded Deep because of awful emotions, which you gave me. And I will never buy another game from BeamTeam again. Because of your Junior developers. You should fire all your developers and hire a real professionals, which can provide for a situation with an error during saving and not allow to destroy several months of the player’s game.

Good luck.

6

Hi Brixovsky,

I understand this issue is frustrating for all players affected and appreciate your feedback about the issue as well as your decision not to continue playing Stranded Deep.

However if you change your mind or wish to continue to participate in the forums, I ask that you please adhere to the forum rules when doing so. I have no issue with negative feedback about the game and the issues that have occured for players, however remarks about the team working on the game that could be seen as insulting or accusatory are not allowed and are against the Rules and Guidelines of the forums.

1 Like
7

Clare, do you really think this is professional behavior? I thought professionals were capable of admitting their mistakes. All you can do is apologize. This is what little kids do. This is not adult behavior. You (not you, but your developers) made a huge mistake and you have ruined many players’ months of play. Players who pay you money, by the way. In particular, you and your developers get a salary from this money, Claire. Not from your boss. From us. Players.

And what happened is not an accident. Not force majeure. This is the negligence of your developers. Why all other developers think in advance about the system of saving the game in such a way as not to spoil the players’ lives by any errors? They come up with a multi-stage system of protection against accidental damage of the save file. And you didn’t do any of that. You just did the work of a blunder. And you haven’t even been able to admit that you screwed up big time.

Keep apologizing, Claire. But now in front of other players. That’s all you can do.

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Summary

@Brizovsky While I can certainly understand that you are frustrated, have you ever played Call Of Duty titles? There is absolutely no comparison in customer service! Activision and affiliated companies have hundreds (perhaps thousands) of developers/employees working on their titles, yet each year they struggle to release a subpar game that is completely unplayable for the first several months. Please keep in mind that this game has only 2 developers. 2! Considering this, and the extremely reasonable cost of Stranded Deep in comparison (most 2-bit platformers cost as much), perhaps they deserve a little more understanding and recognition for their efforts from the community. With any new update, especially with one as massive as the addition of online multiplayer, there is an inherent risk of things going awry. In each case, they have likely sacrificed much of their personal time, as they have released fixes quicker than I could imagine possible. Other companies, like Activision, leave game breaking issues wholly untouched for not just weeks, but months and years at a time. They could have just left the bugs alone, like you said they have already sold plenty of copies I’m sure, but instead they choose to continually engage with the community via a liaison and have actually improve a multitude of aspects on a game. And instead of charging for every update as DLC like many other games, they seemingly have been doing so for free. It seems to me their only motivation to spend so many gruelling hours, combing through so many potential issues, is to provide the best customer experience possible. I’m not sure when you bought the game, but when I did it was only a single player game, but still worth every penny of the extremely reasonable price. I did take a few week break when the interaction bug happened, and the toolbelt bug caused me to have to start a new file, losing a great deal of progress. Within weeks they had already isolated the issue and fixed it, but in doing so there is always a chance something else can accidentally go wrong. But I have found that upon starting a new save file (which I know can be disheartening), everything is easier the next time around. I could name dozens of titles that every single time they release a new update, you have to start a brand new game just to experience the new concepts. Frankly, in my opinion the Stranded Deep team has NOTHING to apologize for, though they have done so quite frequently. I have no doubt in their ability to correct any mistake that arises during the growing process, and continue to improve player experience as they have already done so much since the game was first released. Please try to see both sides of the situation, and look at the bigger picture as compared to other titles and their respective prices, some of which can amount to hundreds of wasted dollars for the consumer. The best we can do is provide clear information about any issues experienced so they can in turn use this helpful information to improve the game further. @Clare Thank you and the team again for all your hard work! I am absolutely certain that time will continue to show the dedication and perseverance of the Stranded Deep team above many others. Also, I know I probably shouldn’t have mentioned a specific terrible company in the beginning of this post, but they are the absolute worst in my personal opinion.

I have experienced some disconnects here and there, but have fortunately managed to avoid complete crashes. It does seem that any files that were compromised by the save crashes will likely be irretrievable, the best we can do is find peace of mind in the fact that every time we have to create a new save we are that much more efficient at surviving because of all that we have learned! My heart does go out to the hours lost, but growing pains are to be expected with any such transitions to expanded gameplay options, in any game!

Also, I forgot that when watching the credits, there were most definitely other individuals and companies involved with this immensely successful game being ported over to consoles. Didn’t mean to leave anyone out, huge shout out to all those involved!

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday (whichever you may celebrate or not) and look forward to an exciting new year of potential content additions!

9

@Brizovsky, Though I am not a dev, I work as a liaison between the community and the team. I will keep apologizing to players affected by this issue because both myself and the team are aware of the impact it has had on players, no matter how many days that had been put into their save.

As I am not a dev I cannot speak about the internal workings of the save system or the trigger for this bug and where it came from but I do know the team’s recent focus has been on finding the cause, releasing a hotfix and continuing to work on other related issues so this does not happen again as well as other issues reported by the community.

I would also like to remind you, as I said in my previous post, the critique of the game is fine, but insulting devs or staff (such as referring to their actions as childish) is against the rules of the forums.

@ArmchairTuna66, thank you for your support and understanding while the team works to resolve issues. I cannot speak to the setups of other games or the actions of other teams of developers from different companies when working on their games - All games are developed differently, from indie to larger companies - but understand the intention behind your post.

Let’s put this discussion to rest and keep this post on topic as this is very much starting to head off topic and if it continues to drift off topic I will need to close it.

10

@ArmchairTuna66, thanks for your opinion. I really didn’t know about the size of the team. And I never played this game while early access. First time I played this game only after release. More precisely, in the summer of this year. In addition, I also, do not love Activision games and never bought it (except Blizzard games, like Diablo, StarCraft, etc.). But I think you will agree that bugs and glitches that make the game unplayable are not the same as a playable game that erases all your progress at one moment, eventually.

Besides, I know what you mean, when you are talking about some games, which force me to start a new game after new release. For example, such game is Factorio (another great indie-game with small team, btw). But I think you will agree that the inability to experience new game mechanics without starting the game from scratch, but at the same time you can continue playing without these mechanics is not the same when you can’t finish the game at all and HAVE TO start all over again.

So, @ArmchairTuna66 you asked me to see the both sides of situation. I did. But I asked you the same, too. I manage the development of various large products. I am the one who chooses the right algorithms to solve a particular problem as efficiently as possible and with minimal risks. And I know how good products should be made. I really am. It’s not enough to just write an interesting game with interesting mechanics. Also, you should minimize the potential risks in certain situations. This is the responsibility of the developer or development manager. And as a professional in my field, I can tell you that the way the save mechanics were implemented in this game is a crime against the players. Okay, the developers decided that for greater “survival” we will have only one save file per slot, so as not to be able to create branches in our progress. But, what prevented devs from creating an additional save file as a backup for the main one? Which the player will not have access to (it cannot be loaded manually), but in case of damage to the main file, the game will automatically return to backup. i.e. one step back. Thus, each time being saved, the program would overwrite the current save file in backup, and a new progress would be recorded over current save. In this case, if we failed to save (and there are many reasons for this: a power outage, a program failure, etc.), all that the player would lose is only progress since the last save. Not his whole game. This elemantary, but useful solution! And it is possible not to implement something like this, for only two reasons: 1. if you are sure that the failure will never happen (but it always happen!). 2. You are not interested in creating quality products.

So, this is why I can’t forgive the developers for stealing my 13th platinum trophy from me in PSN. It was almost mine. I played a few months (in real life and in-game time) and explored almost all the islands without compass and gyroplane, I didn’t eat fish for 10 days, I was vegan for 10 days. I didn’t sleep 10 days. I found all the plants (but I didn’t have time to plant them and didn’t get a reward). I found all the survival remnants and Wollie. I build a camp fire on 10 distinct islands. I collected two of each land animal on raft, and sailed into a storm, like real Noah (thanks to devs for this achievment, but it was not easy)! And all this - only because I dreamed of this Platinum Trophy. And they stole my dream when it was almost mine. I had almost all trophies of this games, but not Platinum. And now I never will. Only because they didn’t think through the mechanics of saving well enough. Although everything was invented before them a long time ago and there is a “best practice”. You can’t write code in such a way that ONE error or glitch destroys EVERYTHING (even Activision never done anything like this)! They should just use one of the simple solutions that eliminated so much damage to the players. But they didn’t. Because they don’t care. That is why I can’t forgive them.

P.S. Sorry for possible mistakes, English is not my native language.

11

@Brizovsky I can most definitely see your side of the situation as well, and myself being a simple painter and drywall finisher (albeit a somewhat knowledgeable one), I unfortunately have virtually no technical knowledge about the inner workings of creating games and such. As per your language, I would commend you on expressing your ideals quite well. I myself couldn’t yet fathom being able to communicate even slightly in another language. I apologize again for bringing this post further off topic and wish everyone nothing but the best!

12

I appreciate all feedback and points shared here. Rather than closing the other thread, I have moved this discussion to a new topic where it can be kept together.