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Discussion GMS2 closed and deleted all projects in directory!

Warspite2

Member
Title is correct, all 12 of my projects were deleted. I went to delete asset cache and delete ide cache, I have used this in the past without issues. I went to save my current project but selected the yyc file of the game by mistake. I don't believe it saved or done anything. Then I put in the actual name of the project normally and saved as normal nothing else happened so then I ressumed working. Then I was in the middle of the project working in the IDE as I normally do then all of a sudden a window came up which said my project will be deleted. It was my current projects name and all I could do is close that window which I did. Then gms2 closes and reloads then no recent projects were listed. So I closed gms2 and reopened it again, still no recent projects. So then I looked in the folders of all my projects in the gms2 folder under documents where all the projects save. There I was greeted with one of the most horrific feelings ever as a developer, I seen every last project folder only had either a sprite and/or extension folder and looking further they were empty, all of them!

Please tell me there is a backup folder somewhere? I am certainly not finding it and at this point I am terrified and praying I have recent backups of my main games. In my 3 decades of using software I have never seen anything like this before. I'm ok with loosing my current project because I normally keep backups of a current project. Why on earth did it literally delete every last one of my other projects?? None of those were even open, some not opened for months. It's like it deleted the projects instead of the ide and asset cache. I am going to look more but folks I am afraid this is real. Seems like a freak odd thing that may have never happened to anyone? I just got my hellish scare for halloween and its looking like there is no way to recover it. I am going to do a windows restore to an earlier time and see if I can get all these projects back but that is a long shot. The recycle bin of course there is nothing in there either. Anyone ever heard of something like this? I have never had anything like this happen with gms1.4 nor gms2.

This was IDE 2.2.0.343 and runtime 2.2.0.258

Edit: Woot! Thankfully using Windows previous versions saved me here, by right clicking inside the folder and selecting the previous versions tab at top. I seen all of my projects there to restore back and felt like having a celebration right then and there. :) I will stress to others be extremely careful with using delete asset cache and delete ide cache. I noticed when I used it in the past, it don't actually notify you if it is done or not. So I am thinking what happened here is it may have still been deleting and when I saved my current project in the projects folder it possibly switched to that directory and caused everything to be deleted. Now I am creating my own backup folder and will save two copies of my projects from now own after this scare. Again, use those options with extreme caution or not at all. I need to sign off after this, I am darn near traumatized. :eek:
 
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TsukaYuriko

☄️
Forum Staff
Moderator
If your projects are under source control, try reverting your local projects to the latest revision. If they aren't... they should, and things like this are why. It is highly advised to use source control with a remote repository for all of your important projects to protect them from data loss.

You can check whether the file recovery software of your choice is able to recover all or a part of the files you've lost. Due to how this type of software operates, I suggest trying this out before anything else, as any activity on your PC will lower the chances of successful recovery. Manual backups aside, that's about it. There are no automatic backups.

I can't provide an answer why this happened in the first place, as it's certainly not by design. I've never heard of a case like this one. Please file a bug report and include as many details as possible (exact error messages will be helpful; error messages should always be accurately cited).
 

Mick

Member
Maybe a file recovery tool could help you recover the deleted files? You would need to install that to another drive so it doesn't overwrite any of the deleted files.

Edit: @TsukaYuriko ninja'ed me with the recovery software, anyhow, it should be installed to another drive if you don't already have such a tool.
 

Warspite2

Member
I'm thankful that good ole Windows 7 had my back here, this comp is actually still running it. I have Windows 10 running on my other two pc's which I am sure has the previous version option as well but I never used it on 10. @TsukaYuriko I will definitely look into the source control. To anyone else who have ever lost critical folders or files, never forget to use Windows previous versions option.
 

Nocturne

Friendly Tyrant
Forum Staff
Admin
Where are your projects stored and what are the two cache file paths set to?
 

Warspite2

Member
@Nocturne Here are my directories...

Game projects... C:\Users\Tim\Documents\GameMakerStudio2 (after this incident I changed it to G:\GMS2_Projects which is my 3TB drive)
Temp... C:\Users\Tim\AppData\Local\GameMakerStudio2
Both Cache and IDE are here... C:\Users\Tim\AppData\Roaming\GameMakerStudio2\Cache

I believe it would help to have a notification saying deleting files and then another when it has completed doing so. I am thinking when I resumed work on the project it may have still been deleting files and could have switched working directories to my game project directory, which caused those projects to be deleted.

Anyway, thanks for the responses guys and i'm glad I was able to recover all the projects. Like I said this was a first for me, i've never seen anything like this happen before in gms1.4 or 2. I started using Game Maker as a hobby way back in I want to say either 2002 or 2004. Then I started using it more commercially and very heavily from 2012 through now. I have 18 games on google play and a game on Steam with 4 dlcs and all of these games were made with either 1.4 or 2. Several of the games have thousands of downloads, one is on its way to 10k and another 50k. So it was definitely a crisis situation when I thought I had lost all of those projects.
 

YellowAfterlife

ᴏɴʟɪɴᴇ ᴍᴜʟᴛɪᴘʟᴀʏᴇʀ
Forum Staff
Moderator
I've had a similar issue once in 7 years of working with GMS1.4. Several projects were at E:/GameMaker and cache/temp were in E:/Temp/GameMaker/Cache and E:/Temp/GameMaker/Temp accordingly. At one point automatic (on-close) cache clear wiped the directory where the project in question resided. I could never reproduce the issue or even establish it being caused by GameMaker itself.
 
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