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I bought Little Inferno as a present for Christmas. After five hours of play, she had got quite far in the game, but when she logged in just now her save file had vanished. It was just three New Game slots. She tried restarting the program but had the same problem. Has anybody else experienced this problem? Can anybody think what might have caused it, and how that data might be retrieved?
Some additional information that may or may not be relevant:
The laptop she was playing it on used to have a problem with suddenly shutting down for no apparent reason. It was presumably an overheating issue, and it went away when she got a cooling tray for it - it didn't happen again after that. However, since she started playing Little Inferno, it has happened every time she has played, at some point or other. I assume it's because the game is taxing the processor more than it's used to, so that the cooling tray is no longer sufficient to keep it from overheating.
However, I'm not sure how relevant this is, since the first few times it shut down in that way, the save data was fine. It was only the last time it happened that when she booted up her laptop after it shut down, all the save data was gone. Could a laptop shutting down suddenly erase ALL of the saved data?
The laptop crashing at exactly the right moment could possibly corrupt the save data, in which case the game might notice that and simply erase it. Then again, I have no idea how or when Little Inferno saves so this might not be the issue.
Unfortunately I can't personally suggest anything. Hopefully one of the developers has a solution though.
if you open the little inferno app data folder (start menu, run, then type %APPDATA%\Little Inferno into the box and press OK) what are the names of all the files you see? it's possible there is a temp file in there which could have the save data in it if the game was in the process of saving when the computer reset.
@puggsoy: I don't know if this helps, but Little Inferno seems to save almost continually - there didn't seem to have been any progress lost during any of the other shutdowns.
@allanblomquist: The only files in the save folder (which seemed to be Appdata\Roaming\Little Inferno) were imagecache.bin, profiles.bin and settings.txt.
Does anybody know whether Little Inferno is one of those games that arbitrarily keeps saves in more than one place? Could something have caused it to change where it was saving?
unfortunately the game always saves to that 1 place so if those are the only files then i'm not sure how else it might be recoverable.
when you say the computer shuts down, do you mean that windows nicely closes all running programs and logs you out and then turns off the computer in an orderly way as if you had chosen to shut down from the start menu? or do you mean that the computer screen just turns black and the computer instantly resets? knowing the nature of the shutdown might help me come up with some ideas about how this could have happened.
also, in that settings.txt file there is a line that says vsync = 0 by default, but if you change it to say vsync = 1 instead that should reduce the load on the graphics hardware and that might prevent the overheating from happening again.
"do you mean that windows nicely closes all running programs and logs you out and then turns off the computer in an orderly way as if you had chosen to shut down from the start menu? or do you mean that the computer screen just turns black and the computer instantly resets?"
Neither, but closer to the latter - the screen just turns black, but it doesn't reset, it just shuts down. A friend of mine who knows a fair bit about computers says that isn't normal, but its owner can't afford to have it fixed, so it's something she just has to live with.
"in that settings.txt file there is a line that says vsync = 0 by default, but if you change it to say vsync = 1 instead that should reduce the load on the graphics hardware and that might prevent the overheating from happening again."
Thanks, we'll try that!
About the shutting down: I'm having a similar issue, but not with Little Inferno. It just shuts off completely in one go like you said, but it only happens (as far as I've experienced) with higher-end games like Team Fortress 2, Assassin's Creed II, and Fallout New Vegas. This appears to be an overheating issue since I've only noticed it till now with these demanding games, but I can't confirm it since I haven't played any other games for the same amount of time recently (this usually happens after at least an hour of playing). Still, the PC does feel very hot when it does this, plus it's only been happening recently (in the last week or two) which might mean that the CPU fan might be clogged up.
Anyway, I'm ranting a bit: my point is that I've got a similar issue and that in my case the signs point to overheating, so that might be your problem.