Hanako Games

Error with loading and saving

#1 by TheHilLady - Jul 21 2012

Yesterday I bought the game Magical Diary. Today I decided to uninstall the demo, thinking I didn't need it anymore. After I uninstalled it I played the bought version. But when I wanted to save the game, it gave this error. It said something like this:
An exception has occured.
And then a lot of code-things and stuff.
And it says the same thing when I want to load a game, but not when I want to resume.

I tried everything, uninstalling the game, re-installing it, again uninstalling it, deleting all the maps of the game I could find, re-installing it again, but it didn't work. There was also something other that I find very strange. After uninstalling the game completely and re-installing it, I can still click the "resume" button and it starts playing where I saved my last game.

When the error pops up with al the codes, there is this button that says "Upload traceback". I already clicked it, and it said that the bug was uploaded or reported or something? But I don't know what that means and what will happen. I just want to play the game again without a problem, so I hope someone knows how to fix this .

I'm going to try one more thing, and that is installing the demo again, maybe that's what went wrong. I'll report about it again after I tried that.


ps. sorry for bad English, I'm Dutch...

Re: Error with loading and saving

#2 by TheHilLady - Jul 21 2012

TheHilLady:

I'm going to try one more thing, and that is installing the demo again, maybe that's what went wrong. I'll report about it again after I tried that.

Ok, so I tried this and it still doesn't work. If I click the demo icon on my desktop it starts the game but there is no resume button. But if I start the game with the purchased game icon it does have one. So that didn't work after all...

#3 by Spiky Caterpillar - Jul 21 2012

It looks like one or more of your saved games is corrupt and Magical Diary is crashing when it's trying to read the list of them.

I'll have a fix for the crash in a little while, but I don't know what corrupted the file(s) in the first place - there's a possibility that there's something wrong with your computer rather than just a bug in the game.

If the computer was turned off without shutting it down properly (or restarted using the reset button), that can corrupt files, especially if it happened while it was saving a game or just after it saved a game.

You can track down which saved game(s) are responsible for the crashes by moving the .SAVE files into another folder until the load button starts working again.

If you find the offending savegame and upload it to me, that might make it easier to figure out what happened. (The upload page is at http://spikycaterpillar.com/savegame-upload.html ). Note that some hardware errors can cause data from OTHER files to be mixed together, so you probably want to make sure the corrupt save doesn't have any data it shouldn't in it first.

#4 by Spiky Caterpillar - Jul 21 2012

I think I've fixed the crash when encountering corrupt saves. To test the fix:
Go to the Options screen.
Click on 'Updater'.
Enable 'Show Beta Versions'
Enable 'Show Alpha Versions'
Click 'Check for Updates'
Update to 1.0.33.

The save that's been crashing the game should now have a red square for a screenshot in the 'Load Game' menu. If you want to upload it to me for further investigation, it will probably be named <page number>-<save number>-LT1.save - so if it's save #10 on page 3, it will be 3-10-LT1.save.

Licence key

#5 by TheHilLady - Jul 21 2012

Oh thanks, I think I know what the problem is. Yesterday my laptop freezed beacause of a other program on my laptop (it does that often), and I had to shut it down while the game was still running. I guess that made the save file go bad or something. But I tried using your directions to update the game, but it says I need a licence key? What licence key does it refer to?

#6 by Spiky Caterpillar - Jul 21 2012

Yeah, that would do it.

The license key should be in the email you got from BMT Micro when you ordered the game.

save file

#7 by TheHilLady - Jul 21 2012

I just noticed I can't find the save files from the game. Maybe that is what went wrong too? I hope that only with the licence key and the update the problem will be solved... Thanks for your help anyway ^^

it works again!

#8 by TheHilLady - Jul 21 2012

Yeaaah it works again ^^ Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you!!!!! I seariously thought for a moment that I was never going to be able to play the game again! Do you still need the save game? Because I still can't seem to find it.

#9 by Spiky Caterpillar - Jul 22 2012

Yay! Glad it fixed the problem.

I don't need the save file anymore. (For reference, if you're searching for saves for anything else you may need to turn on the 'show hidden files and folders' option, since IIRC Application Data is hidden by default.)

yay

#10 by TheHilLady - Jul 22 2012

Ok thanks again for your help! This topic can be closed now ^^