Map loss

N0VA

L1: Registered
Oct 16, 2016
23
4
So recently i have been working on my map koth_progresso, (though its more an experiment map)

So today i went to load up hammer because i wanted to play around with player clipping
upon opening the .vmf however, my entire map was gone. as if i pressed "new" instead of "open"
I double checked to make sure i loaded the right .vmf and even restarted hammer twice,

Any idea what could have caused this? or is there still a way back?

As a beginning mapper this is EXTREMELY de-motivating.

Thanks in advance
~Nova

EDIT: i have managed to find myself an autosave folder, though the map is kinda "damaged" it has most of the things i had saved last time
 

killohurtz

Distinction in Applied Carving
aa
Feb 22, 2014
1,016
1,277
This has happened to me a handful of times, and it seems to be a result of something going wrong while saving the map - I had one such incident happen because my PC bluescreened right as I hit Ctrl+S. As far as I'm aware, this bug is irreparable. The best ways you can be prepared for it are to do frequent internal versioning (re-save with a different filename whenever you do something significant), keep your autosave interval short, and do vbsp-only compiles occasionally (you can decompile these, though the resulting vmf won't be exact). It sucks, but there isn't much else we can do when the software is this old.
 

N0VA

L1: Registered
Oct 16, 2016
23
4
Thanks for your help, indeed i have autosave enabled as i knew it would come in handy,
2 things about the map has changed,
1: the respawn entity changed to a green gordon freeman (i have ABS resource pack installed
2: some game entitys (tf_gamerules etc) have turned into gray blocks, while they previously had textures.
 

killohurtz

Distinction in Applied Carving
aa
Feb 22, 2014
1,016
1,277
The engineer model and the tf_gamerules icon (among many other entity icons) were part of ABS's FGD, so it probably just needs to be reinstalled.
 

N0VA

L1: Registered
Oct 16, 2016
23
4
(this probably my last reply to this, i hate spamming a solved issue)
Will it hurt my map in any way?
texture loss, setting up outputs agian, etc?
 

killohurtz

Distinction in Applied Carving
aa
Feb 22, 2014
1,016
1,277
No, the vmf should be just like you left it. It's as if the map was a book that Hammer "forgot" some of the words to, and the FGD is the "dictionary" that will let it understand them again.
 

Idolon

they/them
aa
Feb 7, 2008
2,105
6,106
(you can decompile these, though the resulting vmf won't be exact). It sucks, but there isn't much else we can do when the software is this old.

I have my advance compile options set to save a backup of the map on every compile, which has saved my bacon on a number of occasions (my computer crashes a lot).