Region Files incorrectly Reset / Chunks wiped out

[Brain75]

TL;DR

after updating steam version to 1.0 two different instances of my alpha 21 game got corrupt.

solution:wipe out the registry entry.

 

I have 2 games going simultaneously, for the last several months I have had a Ravenhearst game going on the old pre-release version. On 6/25 I started a new version 1.0 game. I know how to keep the 2 games completely separate. Ravenhearst lives on my E:\ drive and steam knows nothing about it. vanilla lives on my D:\ drive in all the standard normal default steam stuff (%steam%\steamapps\common\7 Days To Die).

My issue is that all my old saves had their region files reset as soon as I started a new version 1.0 game. my version 1.0 game is set to identical "Disabled" on chunk reset. Worse than that it seems that with version 1.0 it is ignoring chunk reset setting and resetting them anyhow. I can restore an old save (I zip the whole save folder up once in a while due to the last 9 years of issues) and provide logs.

Note the logs seem to hamburger between each other cause you don't write logs to the game directory, but you mush both instances into one common place - the %appdata% folder.

6/25 log (the first instance of version 1.0):

Mono path[0] = 'D:/Steam/steamapps/common/7 Days To Die/7DaysToDie_Data/Manag - Pastebin.com

6/09 log, a typical ravenhearst night:

Mono path[0] = 'D:/Steam/steamapps/common/7 Days To Die/7DaysToDie_Data/Manag - Pastebin.com

 

Edited July 17 by Brain75
TL;DR (see edit history)

[Brain75]

full version of 7DTD/Ravenhearst is as follows : 7DTD - A21.2b37 (reads as Alpha21.2 (B30) in screen, Ravenhearst 9.2.2b23. can not figure out how to upload screenshot here

Player.log from today after restoring old save from before issue:

https://pastebin.com/Gnf2x6cY

[SylenThunder]

You have to wipe the old version data before you start playing a new version. There is a nice big blue banner regarding that here.

 

So your first log, everything loads and looks normal except for the age of your CPU. That is going to cause you troubles real soon. Anyway, you load in, create a save using a pregen map, sit in it for a bit and exit normally.

 

Second log. You've gone back to a21. I hoped you were not using the same save path, but that was not the case. So you've roasted your previous profile data by loading V1.0. This one errors and crashes before getting anywhere really, so not a lot to process.

 

Third log. Now it's loading the mods, and the source of your problem rears its ugly head.

2024-07-03T13:26:15 414.094 INF Computed 376 chunk groups containing a total of 6017 chunks. Largest group contains 363 chunks.
2024-07-03T13:26:18 417.450 WRN Cannot set RegionFileManager storage limit to 0 bytes as it is below the minimum value of 20971520 bytes. The miniumum value will be used instead.
2024-07-03T13:26:18 417.451 INF Started thread SaveChunks C:\Users\Bill Gates\AppData\Roaming\7DaysToDie\Saves\Rave 9.2.2b23\Rave 2024.02\Region

 

Now the thing it is referring to here is a value stored in the profile for the save game. SaveDataLimit. Yours has been set to 0 because of the way you did things. 

Here is the code for that value from the dedicated server config.

	<property name="SaveDataLimit"					value="-1"/>				<!-- The maximum disk space allowance for each saved game in megabytes (MB). Saved chunks may be forceably reset to their original states to free up space when this limit is reached. Negative values disable the limit. -->

 

So basically, you have corrupted the profile so that it is set to use zero disk space for storing the save data. And so it resets the chunks to free up disk space.

 

The purpose of this setting is primarily for server owners to control how much space is allowed to be used on the disk for the save. Mainly because a long-term co-op game save could score upwards of 30GB of disk space.

Since this setting is stored in a file you aren't able to edit, your only recourse is to pull from one of your zipped backups. When you do, be sure to run old games on a custom save path.  This is covered in the Support FAQ. I do it all the time because I run saves from Alpha 8 all the way to current. I just have a shortcut and a separate save folder for each build.

[Brain75]

Thank god for good mod makers.... Ravenhearst has a default serverconfig.xml included in the mod package. by copying that from the ravenhearst folder to my $appdata%\roaming\7DaysToDie\Saves\ folder it looks like things are back to good.... too bad that makes 1.0 offlimits.. TFP devs should have used a new file instead of changing the format of an old file - backwards compatibility.

[Brain75]

Well I thought that worked, and it worked for my multiplayer game I host (not dedicated), but it doesn't fix the single player game (and there is only one serverconfig.xml in the root of saves - not like there is one for each save game...) what is the name of the file this is stored in? (I used an advanced search utility to search all txt and log and xml and cfg and ini for the phrase "SaveDataLimit" and that is the only file I found....

Edited July 4 by Brain75
clarity (see edit history)

[SylenThunder]

The server config file is only used for servers. It isn't used when making your SP and local MP games. Your save settings for SP are stored in one of the sdf or dat files in your save. You cannot edit them to change the values, and the value you want to change is not one that appears in your UI.

[Brain75]

After uninstalling 1.0 and scouring my hard drives (C and E) for the config file, I came to the conclusion it is NOT in a config file - this one is in the registry. I deleted the entire branch and let 7DTD recreate the reg entries like 1st startup... got to turn the music down, choose monitor, set resolution, etc - everything as if it was clean... and I think  --- THINK --- that fixed it. (there was no file with a timestamp newer than the 25th / the start of my 1.0 game) anywhere .... so TLDR - wipe the reg. (and shame on the devs for putting anything except the uninstall key in the registry - registry is for windows only, don't bloat that up with stuff that will never be cleaned out)

[Brain75]

Update:After 10 days playing both single player Alpha 21 and multiplayer (I am the host) Alpha 21, no issue has re-appeared.  Deleting the registry was the correct solution.

[Jugginator]

The 7dlauncher executable has a cleaning tool that does that too, under the settings.