WA - Scrambled Save Data?

[Fungus]

I launched Wonderland Adventures and encountered a very peculiar problem that I've never had before.

For some reason, the data in *all* of my save files became completely scrambled in various ways, either softlocking me or making the game impossible to 100%, e.g., putting me in inescapable positions, deactivating adventures that I hadn't beaten yet, reducing the number of stars I had, skipping event-activating dialogue, etc. Also, most of the maps reset to some extent.

Thankfully, I had only reached the Wondertown Sewers, so having to start a new game wasn't *too* brutal.

Has anything like this ever happened to anyone else?

[nasko222]

Can I have the save folder?

[Fungus]

Can I have the save folder?

Ah, I'm afraid I've since overwritten all of the save files that I used during that aborted playthrough, so I don't think that would be of any use(?).

Mostly I'm just curious if this is a known issue and if there's anything in particular that can cause it.

[nasko222]

uh no... not at all. I am curious if its reproducable and abusable in speedruns LOL

[garirry]

I did some quick testing and judging by what you said I am fairly confident that it's a case of missing wlvs in your save file. The game uses a fairly inefficient saving mechanism that involves copying the entire hub and current/previous adventure from the save file into the "Current" folder, and vice versa when saving. If any files do not exist when trying to load the save file, they will simply not be copied over. Normally, the game would crash when you attempted to go into the level in question. However, if you already have a "Current" folder, which you almost certainly do because it is never deleted, anything that's missing will simply be replaced by whatever was there in your previous session. For example, if you started a new game, then loaded a save file with no wlvs, all the levels will be reset. The only exception is the level where you currently saved at, because that is copied separately, the game crashes if it cannot be loaded, and it is overwritten upon leaving the level.

As to why it happened, I can't say for sure but it could be a problem with your drive with certain files failing to be written, or that cannot be accessed. Does it take a long time to load the game? Possibly, as well, if you copied the game folder a lot (for example from one drive to a USB to another) sometimes files can just not copy due to weird filesystem nonsense, but that's probably not as likely.

[nasko222]

its worth noting that WA1 doesn't have appdata saving, and MOFI v1.00-v1.01 have AppData fail to access glitch on windows 10 (but these versions are super rare so that chance is low)

[Fungus]

I did some quick testing and judging by what you said I am fairly confident that it's a case of missing wlvs in your save file. The game uses a fairly inefficient saving mechanism that involves copying the entire hub and current/previous adventure from the save file into the "Current" folder, and vice versa when saving. If any files do not exist when trying to load the save file, they will simply not be copied over. Normally, the game would crash when you attempted to go into the level in question. However, if you already have a "Current" folder, which you almost certainly do because it is never deleted, anything that's missing will simply be replaced by whatever was there in your previous session. For example, if you started a new game, then loaded a save file with no wlvs, all the levels will be reset. The only exception is the level where you currently saved at, because that is copied separately, the game crashes if it cannot be loaded, and it is overwritten upon leaving the level.

As to why it happened, I can't say for sure but it could be a problem with your drive with certain files failing to be written, or that cannot be accessed. Does it take a long time to load the game? Possibly, as well, if you copied the game folder a lot (for example from one drive to a USB to another) sometimes files can just not copy due to weird filesystem nonsense, but that's probably not as likely.

Hmm, that sounds about right.

Something I've noticed on my current playthrough is that if I load an older in-adventure save file and then abort to the overworld, the adventure will be deactivated but my star-count will not have increased. So I guess the game is loading the overworld .wlv from my more recent saves (after beating the level), then?

Also, the game only takes 1-2 seconds to load for me (unless you mean loading a save file, which is pretty much instantaneous) and it's freshly installed, so I haven't moved it around at all.

[jdl]

What version of the game do you have? You can find this information in the bottom-right corner of the display settings window, which is the window that opens before the actual game - also called "Wonderland.exe". The latest is v1.06.



If you don't normally get this window before the game launches, that probably means that you bought the game from somewhere other than Midnight Synergy directly, and you'll have to go into the installation folder and open the exe manually.

[nasko222]

Also if you have a version of the game that's not v1.06 be sure to tell me please for my archive

[Fungus]

What version of the game do you have? You can find this information in the bottom-right corner of the display settings window, which is the window that opens before the actual game - also called "Wonderland.exe". The latest is v1.06.



If you don't normally get this window before the game launches, that probably means that you bought the game from somewhere other than Midnight Synergy directly, and you'll have to go into the installation folder and open the exe manually.

Yep, it's v1.06!

I purchased it from the Midnight Synergy website directly.

[jdl]

The only thing I can think of besides some sort of obscure saving glitch or drive issues would be an antivirus.
I used to use McAfee years ago and if I didn't add certain programs to the excluded files list, then McAfee would hog my harddrive when the programs would try loading or saving files. I would suggest adding wg.exe for all 3 WA games (and the Editor) to your antivirus allow list/excluded files list to rule out antivirus software if this ever happens again in the future.