mission editor isn't saving my mission projects...finds older version instead

[pbpullman]

I've searched and so far can't find a solution here. What has been happening is when I open a mission I've been building, work on it some more, then re-save it... after a certain number of re-saves things start to go wrong. For example, recently I added a few new units next to a building, and when I want to test the mission, I hit the "fly" button and when prompted if I want to save changes, I often hit "NO", since when I quit the simulation it just goes back to the editor. Sometimes I find that hitting the save button a few times in a row works, but not always. The last time I did this and exited the mission editor, upon opening the mission editor again I found that all my new progress wasn't saved, and instead I got an earlier version. So all my work was lost and this of course is very frustrating. What should I do? Save the mission under a different name every so often? Select "yes" when prompted if I want to save changes before a test flight, even though I might later want to discard those changes? Some other trick?

[Speed]

First of all, make sure that you only have ONE instance of the ME open. I've seen cases where people, minimizing the ME to do some sound editing or find some picture or do some research, actually re-opened the ME instead of maximizing it when they were ready to work on the mission again. Now they had TWO copies of the ME open, editing the SAME mission. Now, after finishing editing the mission in the second instance of the ME and closing that instance, if they weren't careful they would then save the mission in the FIRST instance of the ME too, overwriting ALL the changes they had made in the second instance of the ME. Then, when they reopened the mission later, the user was like, "WHAT THE !@#$, IT DIDN'T SAVE ANY OF MY CHANGES!!!!!!!111" and got really furious at the mission editor. I've seen people lose HOURS of work to this mistake. :(

 

To combat this goof, and this is ALSO just a good idea in general, I always make a new save of the mission like every 15 minutes. Like I'll have Kashuri CAS_1, fifteen minutes later, I'll save it as Kashuri CAS_2, and so on. This can lead to 100 or more saves of the same mission, but at least I'll never lose very much (if any) work if I make the mistake described above, and sometimes, I'll actually need to revert to something that I deleted many versions back. You can always go back in later when you really are done and delete the extra saves.

Edited March 15, 2013 by Speed

[pbpullman]

Thanks Speed. While I haven't noticed the capability of actually opening 2 instances of the ME and minimizing one, what I have started doing is when I'm done working on a mission and want to test it, I simply save it and exit the ME entirely, then open the mission from the "Mission" link. Trying to save a few seconds by running the simulation from within the ME, then coming back to it and making more edits is what has been getting me into trouble. Also I am following your suggestion of making incremental saves under new mission names. So practicing these two habits, I'll be very surprised if I lose any work ever again.

[IADC]

Similar Issues

 

I feel your pain as this has happened to me on several occasions so yes now I always save the mission under a new version 1.1 1.2 1.3 etc after any significant changes. However there is another issue that plagues me. This is to do with sound files. During the build I will insert my sound files only to come back at a later point and find the sound file is no longer there. How do i know this? I have saved my mission builds with the included sound files, tested the mission to see all works ok which it does. Save the mission and note the file size. I continue to build the mission and add more sound files noting the mission file size each time I do this. At some point one of my sound files stops working, when I check the mission file size I note its reduced in size by approximately the size of the sound file that's missing.

 

To remedy this which is the most annoying part, I have to delete the sound to all trigger, exit the mission editor, exit the game then come back in again to add the sound file. If I don't do this it will not put the sound file back in the appropriate place.

 

The last thing I have to do before I save and publish each mission is to check each sound to all trigger to make sure it works. There is always one or two that don't.

[Adi]

I have just come across this myself. I only have the one ME open and I'm only working on one mission, going in and out of 'fly mission' testing the tweaks. I know I'm saving it because it asks me to save every time I hit the button.

Every now and then my mission name reverts back to 'New Mission', instead of the name I saved it as.

Not a biggie, just keep your eye on the bottom left for the correct file name before you save it. If you check your 'New Mission' save, you should be able to pick up where you left off.