Lost a week's worth of work

Bug Reports Studio Bugs
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#1

Hi-
As the title described, I lost about a week’s worth of work, where the last autosave was Wednesday Sep 18th 11am EST. When studio disconnected me earlier today (Wednesday Sep 25th, around 3pm EST), I rejoined the game and found that the game reverted.

I have checked version history, but alas that is the problem (see image):
image

I did double check local files for any autosaves there, but no luck either.

This (image below) has been happening all week in the output, but I foolishly ignored it.
image

Is there anywhere else I can check? Any other backup locations I missed? Please let me know.
ALSO- If the cause is because of the 500 error, how do I fix it?

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#2

Hello, we are investigating this issue now

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#3

Update:

I just updated studio, and everyone else in team create also updated to the latest version released today. We all left team create, then only I rejoined. I was met with this new error:
image

But the original error no longer appears. When I check version history, its tracking properly again.
image

I will post any more information here if necessary.

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#4

Thanks for reporting the issue and apologize for the frustration. Could you help us by checking to see if there are auto-recovery files created for the place? You can do this by going to “File → Advanced → Open Auto Saves”.

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#5

This was the second place I checked, and no there weren’t any there either unfortunately.

I also checked with other team members if they had a backup, and no one did, to my dismay.

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#6

Update 2:
I noticed this was coming up in the chat fairly often but not as frequently:

image
image1009×44 9.35 KB

The errors listed in text form for posterity (mainly search results):
Server Save Failure: HTTP (500): Internal Server Error
Error: could not upload place. File too large
Server Save Failure: PublishService AssetUpload failed. Info: UploadStatusPolling max polling retry reached

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#7

If you download a copy of the place, what is the size of the file created?
Some posts I’ve seen suggest that the size limit for uploading is about 128MB. Is your file around this size?

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#8

I would’ve loved to have known this; yes we have gone past this file size.

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#9

This isn’t going to recover your lost data (ran into an even worse issue years ago), but I always make local backups just in case now. Ever since I had the issue where I would lose random chunks of my game and then had to spend hours/days tracking down what was lost at random. :face_exhaling:

Also, I had no idea there was a file size limit (well, I knew one had to exist, just didn’t know what it was). How big is your game now if you make a local backup?

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#10

Currently the file size is 135MB; I can definitely trim it down though so I’ll do that for a bit.

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#11

Hi TigerCaptain, thanks for helping validate auto-recovery files.

The original issue was that the place file was too large for save and the error was not descriptive in the Output logs. We fixed this to be more descriptive hence the Output logs now show a better worded message “File too large”. We believe we can do better here, and have a couple of improvements in progress. But until then we recommend keeping the Output logs tab open to track save issues.

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#12

One thing you could do to get the place file size down is to set the collision fidelity on all of the mesh parts in your game to box or hull.

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#13

We’ve been repeating for years now that printing critical feedback messages to the console is wildly unacceptable; it downplays the importance of them, hides them from the user, and causes accidents. Studio should have the capability to throw toasts or dialogs for information that absolutely needs to be seen by the user. Is this finally enough lost work to have a solution prioritized?

5 Likes
#14

Yes, this, it’s also worth noting that many developers (especially non-scripters) do not enable the output in their view and hence will never see these errors.

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#15

I spent a good amount of time trying to find some “official” answer on this and I find answers ranging from 100MB to 1GB, so basically no one really knows. :worried:
I read about someone that published a game with a 156MB place size, etc. Basically years of people bumping into this limit (whatever it is?) and posting here about the issue without any help or solution.

#16

I have to ask, why changing the setting on an object affects the binary file size?

#17

I am unable to find where the official place file size limit is documented, is there an official limit? The forum is full of post where users claim the size limit is all over the place, some even claim up to 1GB in size. :thinking:

#18

Final update:

The main culprit was a team member’s plugin (3D text) that inserted copious amounts of meshes that had Archivable set to true. Every time this member joined team create, the plugin would re-add every font + letter combination in its library, and each one was a mesh. This essentially caused the file size to get up to 230MB file size at one point.

Since then we removed the plugin and removed the added meshes + duplicates, and the file size was reduced to 30MB.

6 Likes
#19

I have to ask, why changing the setting on an object affects the binary file size?

As part of optimizations, there are items that are pre-computed. The pre-computed data may have an impact on the size.

#20

I am unable to find where the official place file size limit is documented, is there an official limit? The forum is full of post where users claim the size limit is all over the place, some even claim up to 1GB in size. :thinking:

The official statement from this post is still true unless we make a future official post. Here

Anything above this limit may work but it is not guaranteed to not run into issues.