Oolite Bulletins

Can someone please help me. I was playing Oolite and getting to a quite exciting Ship Changing point in the game when my computer crashed. Now when I load the game I don't get any of my saved Commanders showing on the Select Commander screen. Its probably a simple fix for anyone with the expertise but I'm afraid its not the case for me. Thanks in advance AM.

If you open the .GNUstepDefaults file in a text editor (file is under oolite.app/GNUstep/Defaults on Windows, not sure about other OSes),is there a line like this present?If there isn't or it points to a path other than the one where yuor savegames reside, you can edit it manually to point to the right folder.

Just to add: don't use Notepad - Wordpad will do, or any proper text editor. Oh yeah - welcome aboard, Commander!

OK checked as advised. The line was there, I altered where it pointed so it now points to the save file folder as in your post (for some odd reason my saves were just going to the oolite main folder). Then I copied all the save files to the save file folder. I am still getting nothing on the select commander screen. Any other thoughts?

Try restarting Oolite with the shift key held down 'til the spinning Cobra appears (I can't recall if that's needed with .GNUstepDefaults, but hey).

Can you please post the contents of .GNUstepDefaults here?

Not sure if it helps if I post what that file says but will do it anyhow.

{
NSGlobalDomain = {
};
oolite = {
"James T Kirk-humbletrash" = 4712;
"Jameson-humbletrash" = "-11960";
"Navigator-humbletrash" = "-26552";
autosave = YES;
"gamma-value" = 1;
"save-directory" = "C:/Oolite/oolite.app/oolite-saves";
window_height = 705;
window_width = 1366;
};
}

Also thanks for the welcome and the help attempts.

Hi AncientMariner, welcome in this forum!

Which operating system do you use? Under Linux look into your ~/oolite-saves folder.

Find .oolite-save files, even on your whole disk. Then copy to a pendrive or up to the net, for example into dropbox.com. I installed the dropbox client and put a sybolic link into the Dropbox folder to the oolite-saves directory so all of my savegame files instantly synced to the net in the background when I press save, moreover without any press at each lauch due to I turned on autosave in the game options screen.

I suggest to use auto-backups due to I lost three hard disks with all data in the past years (fortunately I make backups from all of my data since I lost a 5.25" floppy in my childhood). If you do notknow when, just ask.

Meantime you wrote:

AncientMariner wrote:

for some odd reason my saves were just going to the oolite main folder

Try ctrl+enter on the load game screen to walk around in your folders. Also try make a new savegame and check if your old save files contain similar data than this new one.

Just to be sure that we are not missing the obvious: Your save games have the .oolite-save extension and are currently in C:\Oolite\oolite.app\oolite-saves, right?

Norby's suggestion of trying to save a game now and see where it gets saved or whether it is listed is a good one too.

OK I started a new game saved it and closed Oolite. When I re loaded it I still had no commanders to select when using Load Commander.

Check your Latest.log. Does it contain any lines like this? If yes, and everything else seems OK, then your saves are corrupt.

Ack! He's fixed me with the Ancient Mariner eye and I've no choice but to watch his vacation slideshow! Yes, looks like it was a fine cruise, lots of good snapshots of the local birds!

Welcome to the forum, eternal wanderer, though I'm sorry to hear about your missing saved games.

Just checked and the saves are all in the folder you quoted. Also the new save I just did went there. Just none are showing when I try to load commander. Just to let you know I will cry soon

Didn't see that at all these are last lines of latest.log

21:07:03.785 [exception]: ***** Exception checking controls [pollDemoControls]: NSRangeException : Index -5 is out of range 6 (in 'objectAtIndex:')
21:07:03.790 [exception]: ***** Exception checking controls [pollDemoControls]: NSRangeException : Index -5 is out of range 6 (in 'objectAtIndex:')
21:07:14.726 [exit.context]: Exiting: SDL_QUIT event received.
21:07:14.730 [gameController.exitApp]: .GNUstepDefaults synchronized.

Closing log at 2015-06-27 21:07:14 +0100.


There are a lot of lines like the first two if that helps?

OK, at least that explains why you don't see any savegames. How exactly do you get to the Select Commander screen? Are you using keyboard or mouse for your selections? Also, would it be possible to start Oolite with Shift held down, try to go to the Select Commander screen, then exit the game and post the entire log here?

If all else fails, I can only recommend a full re-install of Oolite in a different folder.