Steam just forced an update for FG and I have lost EVERYTHING!

[Trenloe]

Try searching for a file called db.xml

[Nylanfs]

Also I can't recommend Everything search enough for large drives or complicated directory structures.
https://www.voidtools.com/

[Slagmoth]

Ok, so near as I can tell when I disconnected all the drives to boot from the USB so that I could install my dad's copy of Windows 10 Steam didn't like that at all. So when everything was reconnected at some point and I opened Steam and ran FG something was amiss, so it prompted an install to another drive. I must have remembered my settings incorrectly because I had moved some of my steam games to other drives and must have not moved this one as I had intended. Which now that I think about it, the new default location is where Steam installed the fresh copy.

Long story short... I found my old files on E instead of F... Now I have two options, I can move the folders for the campaigns to the new location or I can redirect Steam to point back to the old one but it would appear that my crisis has been averted.

As I often say as a developer, it is almost always a PEBCAK error and this was certainly one of those issues.

Thanks for all the help everyone. I will be more careful and mindful of how Steam expects things going forward, might have to rethink my folder locations to make it easier on it.

[MooCow]

Congratulations on getting all your files back. Losing a huge work like that, sucks.

[seycyrus]

... Now I have two options, ...

Your first option should be to make a backup of your campaign folder.

[Slagmoth]

Your first option should be to make a backup of your campaign folder.

Yeah, I had already done that. Two of them in fact.

[Trenloe]

To be honest - unless you absolutely love Steam and have to launch FG from within Steam then I would avoid it. All Steam does is have a bootstrap that points to a standard FG install. As we're now learning, from your experience, that Steam forces an update if its bootstrap doesn’t work, I’d say it’s better to just go with a "normal" FG install outside of Steam.

But, glad that you haven’t lost your data! I don’t think I’ve ever known the FG process to wipe out campaign data before, hence why I kept asking questions! :-)

[Slagmoth]

Just to be clear for those that come across this in the future when dealing with a Steam installation and the issue that I had:

A while back I had started migrating my Steam installs to another drive, I forget the reason I didn't do all of them but Fantasy Grounds was still on the initial drive and not the one I would eventually be moving it to with the others. Because I had disconnected all of my drives to install Windows 10 to another hard drive for my dad when I put everything back something didn't jive for Steam and it didn't see the existing installation in the default location. It then prompted a full install to the new default location.

This did not erase any of my data but because I had not remembered my changing the default location I was literally just looking in the wrong place for my campaigns, which I probably would not have realized or searched for without Trenloe's prompting as it seemed totally implausible until I realized that I had changed default locations for Steam (it had been that long ago).

I realize that this is likely an edge scenario and hope that it doesn't happen to anyone else but if it does I hope this thread points you in the right direction.

[Slagmoth]

To be honest - unless you absolutely love Steam and have to launch FG from within Steam then I would avoid it. All Steam does is have a bootstrap that points to a standard FG install. As we're now learning, from your experience, that Steam forces an update if its bootstrap doesn’t work, I’d say it’s better to just go with a "normal" FG install outside of Steam.

But, glad that you haven’t lost your data! I don’t think I’ve ever known the FG process to wipe out campaign data before, hence why I kept asking questions! :-)

I appreciate the questioning, as a developer even if I don't know the answer to something simply asking questions helps another developer find the right direction and possibly consider things they hadn't before. And it did seem rather odd that Steam would do that (obviously it didn't) and this also explains why it didn't show up on a deleted files list as well.