The Disappearing World problem

[Sleeves of War]

Okay, not sure if this has been pinned down at this point, but I've just discovered the source behind the "Disappearing Worlds" problem. Or at least I think I have.

I bought a new Hard Drive for my 360 a couple of days ago, having filled the old one up. After I migrated my data over to the new drive, I was rooting around in my storage to clean out some clutter, and I happened to notice that Kodu had created two different save files, identically labeled, one of them 11mb and the other 35mb. I took note, but didn't think much of it.

Today, I decided to give Gamesharing another try (And no, it still doesn't work for me from home - the one time it has worked I was at a friend's place using his connection), and when I booted up Kodu, I experienced the Disappearing worlds problem:
-Every one of my Downloaded Worlds was missing
-I had only one of the six or seven worlds that I have created in the My World's section
-It was a much earlier than current version

So I exited Kodu and went into my Storage and moved the smaller (11mb) "Kodu Save" file off of my Drive and onto my Memory Card, leaving only the larger (35mb) Kodu save file.

I then reloaded Kodu, went to Load Worlds, and viola... everything was there. My current versions of my worlds, and all of my downloaded worlds, as they should be.

So while I cannot say that this is always the case, apparently what had happened is that, for whatever reason, at some point when I saved the world I was working in, rather than adding that data to my existing Kodu Save, Kodu instead created a new *separate* save that contained ONLY the data for the world I had been working on (This I would imagine is the data I "lost" when I had been working on the world a while back). And then when I loaded up the game most recently, for some reason it decided to load up the "lost" save rather than my real, full save with all of my worlds and downloads on it. When the errant save was removed, it had only one save to load, the right one, and everything was as normal.

So, if you experience the Disappearing worlds problem, exit Kodu and try this:

Go to System Settings - Memory - Choose your storage device (in my case, the Drive)
Go into "Games" - Find "Community Games", all of the data for all community games is contained therein
You will have a "Kodu Game Lab" file, the actual game, and at least one "Kodu Save" file - your data.
If you have multiple "Kodu Save" files, you will need to remove the "wrong" one(s) leaving only the correct file. For me, this was obviously the largest one, as it will probably be for most people, but I can't say for sure. If you don't have a memory card or some other option for isolating the file, you may be forced to delete the one you think is wrong... I'd be pretty sure I was right before trying this.

Then you should be able to reload Kodu, and it will have only one file to choose from - hopefully the right one.

Hope this helps some people with this problem; as I said, this was my experience and I can't say for sure that this is what is happening for everyone. But it's worth a try. If this helps you (or if it doesn't) leave a note here so that we can see if this is the pervasive problem or just an issue that I had.

-Sleeves

[tronixweb]

Quite an interesting observation, sleeves.!

I had something odd happen - and I wonder if this will also help some who think they are missing a world. I went to save my newer project like 5 times (incremental saves) within a few minutes. Later that evening, I went to load one of the saves back in and none of them were there!! I flipped out, only to find them hanging out in the "ALL" category, mixed in with all the downloads, game samples, and tutorials. Weird

[El Bishi]

Interesting...I'll forward this to one of the devs.

[HaloX]

Wow - thanks sleeves.

Same experience here -- I checked my game saves, I had one that was 2mb, another that was 13mb (and a corrupt save which I deleted). I moved the 2mb one to my memory unit.

I relaunched Kodu, chose the harddrive as my memory, and started making a game - worked for 4 hours on it. Once I was done, I exited the game and tried to reload it ... and it was GONE.

I went back to the systems settings and found that Kodu has made a NEW 2mb game save. I isolated it and launched Kodu -- this time my NEW GAME was there (but ALL of my other creations were not).

Hmmmm ... I'll either have to slow down my development of games ... or buy like 20 memory units to keep all the saves seperate.

HaloX

[Markzilla]

Confirming this is the problem, as I just encountered an error because of it.

I just lost my latest and greatest game -The last 5 versions of it- to a 5mg secondary save file. I can't choose to load up the save file, and the very early versions of the game are terrible. It would take hours to rebuild.

Hopefully, the patch includes a way to recover these "lost levels," because I'm a little bit annoyed at not having a memory unit to back up the save file to so I can upload it.

[bananasplit]

srry if im wrong but i had this problem for the first time yesterday and all i did was go back to the dashboard and then back into the game and it was there again.

[Verno77]

srry if im wrong but i had this problem for the first time yesterday and all i did was go back to the dashboard and then back into the game and it was there again.

Perhaps these are 2 different problems. I have the same problem, but I can't return to the dashboard and go back into the game to fix my worlds.

[Markzilla]

They might be related, but they aren't the same problem.
I've had both occur on separate occasions.
They might be caused by the same thing, however.
I can't simply go back to the dashboard this time.

[reimerguns]

some times my files dissapear untill i go to load game a second time or share for a bit

[sss513655]

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