Topic: HELP! Corrupted Save.

[Full_Metal]

Hi, all! Been gone for a bit as I was busy building my new computer. Now that that's done, I have spore... and a problem.

After my first long interstellar war in space, the game now runs for 5-10 minutes before the generic "Spore has suffered an error" box from windows. I've tried starting other games, and those run just fine. I think my first game has gotten corrupted.

Now, with some games, I could restore an older deleted save from the recycle bin, overwriting the corrupted file. (And lose some progress by doing so but that's better than no save at all.) With spore, I can't find either the spore saves folder, or any previously deleted saves in the recycle bin to work with.

I'm rather fond of my first game. Any techies out there with any ideas how I might find and salvage the file?

[DarkPlasma]

Nope. Spore doesn't go the "delete old savegames" route (actually, I'm surprised that some still do).

I find it odd that only one savegame got corrupted, considering that the whole game uses the one savefile. I'm also surprised it'll run for a while and then crash; the ones I've heard about is where the game runs, but creatures and planets are completly messed up, and I think that was from fiddling with the game files too much.

Also, if you're going to delete that savegame, the good news is that at least the consequence traits you got with that race are saved with that race. So you don't have to play through the first four stages if you want to start it again.

[Kenotai]

Nope.  You'll either have to choose that species in a new game (your accumulated traits will carry over), or you may want to start with another.  Save files are many files intricately linked with one another, so a redo of the whole game might be in order.

Of course, I'm just pulling from my previous work with corrupted saves.

[Blulightning]

..... I'm shocked that no one has noticed this yet.

Spore makes back-ups of your previous saved games.

On XP, the SPORE folder is in Application Data, on Vista it's in AppData.

Inside the SPORE folder is a GAME folder, inside that one should be Game0 and a Game0.old.
Inside the Game0 folder are your save-games which each use the creature's name for the save-file.

Take the save files from the Game0.old folder and put them into Game0 folder.

Hopefully that will restore any corrupted files. If not, you'll either have to wait for a new patch to fix it (probably not likely, but it may happen) or delete the save-game.

Edit: I probably should've warned you. I've never tried any of this.
You might want to make a backup of your Game0 folder before replacing anything!

[DarkPlasma]

Yeah, I only noticed that last night when I decided to start a new Pollination.package.

[Full_Metal]

Thanks, Blulighting.

  ...but no luck for me. I tried replacing the save file, but the old save file has the same problem. (FYI the game I had before where I could replace corrupted saves with old ones from the recycle was Morrowind... which was infamously buggy to begin with. I'm surprised to see such a problem in spore, considering Maxis gave themselves such generous dev time to debug.)

I may try re-using the old species in a new space phase game at some point, but for the moment, I'm going to play a new game because I like trying out different gameplay strategies.

[K3rnan]

I've been away from spore for a little while, playing new games such as Fallout 3, GTA IV etc.  Coming back to the game though, has so far, been a complete nightmare.

I initially found that 99% of my old games either failed to load or had some other problem like certain planets causing the game to crash.  After trying out various 'fixes' found on the forums I could be bothered to read I conceded defeat and deleted my saves and packages and started all over again.  This was no small feat as my buddy list has over 25k creations without adding in the various sporecasts I'm subscribed to, downloading that little lot took the best part of a day!

So here I am with my nice new galaxy and I set about my new race with a lot of the eagerness that I originally had for the game.  Expectations of the upcoming expansion at the forefront of my mind.  After sinking about three days gaming into my new galactic empire I get an 'unexpected error' message.  No problem methinks, restart the game and try again.  This time the game crashes when I enter a different planet.  Restart.  Now the save won't even load.

I replace my 'corrupt' save game with my 'game0.old' and start spore up again, cross fingers click to load up my game... 'unexpected error'... bangs head on keyboard before saying a few choice words.

So my last three days have been for nothing,  I am not sure what to do.  From my last weeks experience any game I make is quite likely to end the same way.  There really is no point in me continuing with Spore in its current state... unless I have missed something, some piece of advice or some 'fix' that will magically solve my problem!

So I turn to you fellow GamingStevers, any advice would be greatly appreciated!

EDIT:  It would appear that ALL saves my game creates are corrupt, every single one.  After starting a fresh galaxy I tried to start Spore again today and got a CTD before it even finished loading, I removed the save and it started and generated a new save but that too crashes the game when reloaded.

For anyone who could help I am using the latest patch and C&C Parts Pack.  If I need to reinstall are there any issues regarding the DRM I need to know?  i.e. Is my activation automatically revoked?

[SakuraNekoGamer]

Nope. Spore doesn't go the "delete old savegames" route (actually, I'm surprised that some still do).

I find it odd that only one savegame got corrupted, considering that the whole game uses the one savefile. I'm also surprised it'll run for a while and then crash; the ones I've heard about is where the game runs, but creatures and planets are completly messed up, and I think that was from fiddling with the game files too much.

Also, if you're going to delete that savegame, the good news is that at least the consequence traits you got with that race are saved with that race. So you don't have to play through the first four stages if you want to start it again.

So you are saying that spore runs off of one save state, and if that one save state gets damaged, corrupted, or screwed up buy a virus or anything, spore does not work at all? I share a computer. I wish there was a way to take all of our creations, uninstall spore and keep creations and progress, and reinstall with all progress already there......

If only...
;-;