MAJOR CRASH! Sorry this is so long but I dont know what is relevant and what isnt

[Iceman]

To FGU Support:

My main goal in this unfortunately lengthy post is to ensure that if it ever occurs again I am able to easily restore from backup. DESPITE THE FACT THAT I MADE A CAMPAIGN BACKUP ONE HOUR PRIOR TO STARTING THE GAME THAT BACKUP DID NOT RESTORE THE CAMPAIGN PROPERLY AND STILL APPEARS TO BE CAUSING SOME ISSUES.

Using the open campaign link feature I copied over everything after the /Smiteworks entry which includes the complete campaigns folder. One hour later I fired up FGU to play 5E, Scarlet Citadel, a module we have played three or four times previously and without incident. That morning I had been working on the storyline, adding some battlemaps, etc. Of particular note are the pushpins I use on maps to easily link and therefore transition my party when playing a complex adventure. Additionally I always update my TEMP story page to have the most current and relevant info at my fingertips.

There are only two “new” things in this campaign. The first is not really new as we played with it last time and experienced no issues. It is the Advanced Effects Extension available from FG, (The Forge I believe?)
The only other truly “new” feature is that I discovered when opening up the images shield you can select any image you are viewing and make it the background decal for the game. I liked this idea and selected one which instantly populated the background for me and caused no issues that I was aware of at that time.

I notified my players that they could connect and two players did, almost simultaneously. As soon as I saw the chat notification of the second player (“connecting”) FGU suddenly froze for about one second. Then it crashed as my entire computer rebooted. As soon as I was back I fired up FGU and those same people and more began connecting again.
However I immediately noted that the new image I had made as a background decal was now missing. I went on to see that my TEMP story page was “gone” in the sense that it was backdated and not just one missing game session. It was backdated all the way back to our first real game session!

I asked my players to discon and not connect again until I gave the go ahead. I dutifully went to my hour old backup and copied the CAMPAIGNS folder back over the post crash FGU campaigns folder. I restarted FGU but still did not see the background image I had put in previously. I AGAIN did the copy over from the backup and made certain I told it to replace any existing files.
Nevertheless when I asked my players to rejoin I already knew we were missing data. The background image was not there (the least of my worries but I mention it in case it was responsible for this crash. Having said that it was just a PNG image (I believe from Xanthars) and it looked nice and hi res but I don’t know the size of the actual file. It was just displayed with the other tokens and assets, so Im hard pressed to see how it would be the issue).
My players reported that they had been reverted back from level three characters which they had done at our last session back to level one characters. Now here’s another bizarre part. I had imported two battlemaps for use in the game and placed walls/windows on one of the maps. The other one was decorated with tokens and numerous pushpins linking to other parts of the story.
Even though my backup was only an hour old and had all this info, even after restore those battlemaps did not show up. But here is the interesting part. I went to reimport the same maps and it told me they already existed even though they didn’t show up when I searched for them within FGU. So I selected the option to “reindex” or reimport assets or whatever that FGU IMAGE button says. It successfully reestablished my image links so I could search for the stuff I reimported but the walls/windows, tokens and numerous pushpins were still missing.

I suspect the STORY TEMP updates I did are hidden there somewhere but cannot currently be found by FGU for whatever reason. My players also report that they can no longer see numerous EFFECTS that I created over multiple versions of FGU over the years. These are common effects like Sneak Attack and Bless and others that they have used for ages AND STILL APPEAR ON MY GM SHEET! I have turned the visibility on and off and on again but they still cannot see those effects.

We were able to re-level the characters and play a multi-hour game without incident except for all the “missing” data.
And that is why I say that the most important thing is that when I do a backup, the RESTORE process works. And while it appears the various maps and such were restored something within FGU refuses to find them unless something similar to the IMAGES can be done to reindex it after a crash???

If you have an email addy and wish to see the offending console log I have the one that leads up to the moment of the reboot/crash. Any help avoiding this problem would be great but I really need help knowing how to do a correct and effective RESTORE since I always do a backup prior to gametime.

Thank you, and apologies again for the length of this post.

[damned]

Please post a picture of the contents of your restored campaign folder
and one of the contents of your backup copy
Do you have a backup older than the 1 hour old one?

[damned]

Why did you backup FG one hour before the game?
Just curious. If you backup data that is already corrupted then corrupted data is what you will have on your backup.
Generally for an effective backup system you want to backup at regular intervals and you want to keep multiple instances of the backup.
(and backups on more than one media in more than one physical location with at least one backup that is completely air gapped etc)

If you havent reinstalled your operating system or changed your hard disk etc then in most cases you will have several copies of your campaign data (depending on how many sessions you have run) in your campaign folder. Here is the Wiki article on how to restore these: https://fantasygroundsunity.atlassia...n+Earlier+Save

[Zacchaeus]

It sounds like because FGU didn't close out properly it reverted to the session file that would have been created when you first started the session. Since that file would not have included the changes you make that's why they are missing.

[Iceman]

Attached is the current/restored folder after we played yesterday. And then the backup folder.

[Trenloe]

Attached is the current/restored folder after we played yesterday. And then the backup folder.

We need to see the contents of the directory for the campaign you're having issues with - there'll be a bunch of .xml files in it.

[Iceman]

Thank you. That was very helpful. I renamed a DB file I had from three days ago to the existing DB and now have all the work (and STORY) except for the work I did yesterday morning. The true test will be when my players connect again but now that I better understand how to EASILY restore a past session I should be able to avoid any future unpleasantness.
THANK YOU!

[Nylanfs]

Also make sure your live data folder is NOT in a place that gets synchronized. Like Google Drive, OneDrive, etc. Your backups can be there but you don't want to point your live data because of corruptions. Also check the link in my sig for an autobacking bat file.