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[yeahjim]

For the first time in years, I found myself screaming "No! No! Oh Jesus @#%$, no!" at my monitor, watching as my firstest, awesomest fortress became completely flooded with water for no reason. Now, my understanding is that this is a bug of some kind, that the cave river shouldn't spontaneously flood the whole map. Oh well - I'm playing the alpha version and that's what I get.

I know that roguelikes pride themselves on their one shotness, but savescumming is the only way to survive the inevitable crash. I'm not quite sure how to go about it... that is, I don't know which files I need. Took a quick look around the forums and I don't see the topic stickied or anything. Can someone help me out? I'd hate to lose fortress number two to a similar bug without a way to recover the damage done.

[Walker]

The way to backup a game is copy your save directory and regionX.sav file to another place on the computer.  To restore delete the files in the sav directory and copy your backed up version into it.

1. Copy regionX directory and regionX.sav to other other place on your computer.

2. Play game.

3. Game crashes.

4. Delete regionX dir and regionX.sav file in sav dir.

5. Copy the backed up files into the sav dir.

Hope that helps...

[Eiba]

quote:My firstest, awesomest fortress became completely flooded with water for no reason. Now, my understanding is that this is a bug of some kind, that the cave river shouldn't spontaneously flood the whole map. Oh well - I'm playing the alpha version and that's what I get.

You've discovered a new bug if that's actually what happened...
World floods may be incredibly common for first time fortresses (mine included), but they're always technically caused by user error...

Also, as for your actual question- you can do it the above user's way, I find it simpler to just save/continue playing frequently and exit via the ctrl-alt-delete task manager when something gets screwed up. It's not like anything's overwritten just by loading up a fortress...

[N0ught]

The waters should recede, if it is indeed a seasonal flood. Otherwise, I'd say maybe a cranky dwarf flipped a lever he shouldn't have when a door that should have been been closed wasn't...

[yeahjim]

Thanks for the info guys.

I'm pretty sure it was just unfortunate wackiness, but of course I could be wrong. It was my first real attempt at a fortress, so I didn't bother with levers in the first place. I just glanced to the right and saw that the cave river was flooding... everything. There was no escape or recourse and I don't know what I could have done to have caused it. The river ended up engulfing the whole map in a slow, symmetrical, creeping, blue blanket of dwarvish death.

[rylen]

quote:Originally posted by Eiba:
<STRONG>
Also, as for your actual question- you can do it the above user's way, I find it simpler to just save/continue playing frequently and exit via the ctrl-alt-delete task manager when something gets screwed up. It's not like anything's overwritten just by loading up a fortress...</STRONG>

Toady has called that a bad idea, source of some "inflate -3" errors, and likely not to match up exactly with a directory you've copied away and are copying back.

Rylen

[Eiba]

quote:Originally posted by rylen:
<STRONG>

Toady has called that a bad idea, source of some "inflate -3" errors, and likely not to match up exactly with a directory you've copied away and are copying back.

Rylen</STRONG>

News to me... I've been doing it for ages with no signs of any issue...
What exactly is it supposed to cause? I'm not exactly sure what an "inflate -3" error is or the rest...

[Slartibartfast]

quote:Originally posted by Eiba:
<STRONG>
News to me... I've been doing it for ages with no signs of any issue...
What exactly is it supposed to cause? I'm not exactly sure what an "inflate -3" error is or the rest...</STRONG>

The way I remember it, Toady warned it could cause the save to be corrupted.
If I remember other people's interpertations right, it should only be a problem in Adventure mode, where the game changes some of the savegame files during play, which could lead to corruption if crashed.

[yeahjim]

I'm still having trouble with floods. A door was pushed open by a farmer who was in a floodgate farming area, just as the water from the flood hit that spot. Water flowed from that spot, through various undoored nooks and crannies to every inch of my fortress. My whole fortress got flooded and would have been lost if not for the quick lever pulling of an otherwise useless noble. I'm not going to pile on even more suggestions to an overburdened Toady, but it seems like water is too dangerous to be trusted to dwarves.

In any case, I had another question related to water, deadliest of liquids.

How do you get your dwarves to stop drowning, just when the cave river normally floods? It seems like 1 of 3 times the cave river floods, a dwarf will get washed off a bridge and flail about like an idiot while land is two squares away. I just lost my legendary stonecrafter from this. Do you have to seal off each door leading to bridge areas prior to the flood?

[Momaw]

>> I'm still having trouble with floods. A door was pushed open by a farmer who was in a floodgate farming area, just as the water from the flood hit that spot. <<

Do this:

code:

.............
.............
#####+#######
....._.......
.............

Channels stop floods; a single tile of channel right in front of the door on the flooding side will prevent the flood from ever coming through the door, regardless of whether it's open or not.  I've made several "no walls" farms, where the area to flood is simply outlined by channels.

[LordBucket]

Building your fortress to the inside of the river will minimize this. If you add a nice statue garden, only haulers will ever need to cross the river.

Bucket Man

[ March 07, 2007: Message edited by: LordBucket ]

[yeahjim]

Damn, that was fast. Thanks for the advice. I'll make use of it.

[Slartibartfast]

Also, build secondary redundant bridges so dwarves falling off of one bridge can drift/swim to the next one.

[Entropy]

I dont have a door to my farm, just a bit of channel instead.  At first I used to have both, and would lock the door before flooding, but if there isnt any reason for a dwarf to be in there, its a waste of time.  Later on I hit upon having my seed pile there with a channel separating it from the farm plots.

Anyway, super extra wide bridges help a lot for saving drown-happy dwarves.  Sometimes Ive resorted to bridging everything downstream for about 20 squares.  

Locking the doors really doesnt help much because there always seems to be someone along the river - be it a fisher or just someone wandering around.

I build entirely beyond the river so there is minimal crossing, but it still gets a lot of traffic.  Trappers, fishers, and lumberjacks all legitimately run outside, but a lot of dwarves still go to hangout and vomit (must be bulimic). I've two gigantic statue gardens and a zoo, but they dont help.