Oh no! All my work gone! Help...

[RedBeard]

OK. I'm about to have a heart attack. *staggers, raises left arm to the sky, right hand clutching chest* "Elizabeth, you hear that, Honey? I'm coming to join you!"

 

As many of you know, I had troubles getting Visual bB up and going, but was finally able to get it going late yesterday. So, Hooray! Life-long dream accomplished, right? I worked on it more this afternoon and again tonight. Change this color, save, compile, run. Change that x/y position, save, compile, run. You know, very "trial and error", 'cause that's the way I code roll.

 

Well, I freely admit it wasn't much, but slap a cool picture on the box and I could have sold me some bargain-bin, play-em-once, lousy, market-about-to-crash-from-crap-oversupply cartridges back in the day. You know what I'm talking about.

 

Well about 10:00 pm (translation: 22:00 hours) or so, something burped and it is all gone! I think I hit the X (Close Window) button, but I'm not too sure about that, even. All I know is that when I reopened VbB, all I had was sample code with "[ TITLE ]" in it and one of my sprites, basically.

 

I was able to get my screenshots out of the desktop garbage can, but I cannot find the .BAS file, nor a working .BIN of it. You can see by the screenshot, that there are very few ".BAS.BIN" files from tonight. Believe me, I check all the ones that looked promising.

 

I guess I was wondering if there is another way of getting back some of those files... does VbB keep a ".BAK" file somewhere, for example? Or, maybe a Temp/Working file open like InDesign does, just in case of a crash? I don't know, just some idea? I'm crushed...

 

:wq!

[jwierer]

vbB has 3 options in the settings tab that might have saved your work: Save Open files before compiling, Backup Projects on Open, and an autosave timer. If you were using any of them then you should have at least a partial copy of your work depending on the last time it saved. If you tried compiling at all, it probably warned you about unsaved work so I am sure there is a copy. You're probably just looking at the wrong .bas file since you likely created bunch as you were learning by trial and error.

 

You're just looking for the .bas file and it would just be in the project folder, not the BIN folder where the compiled binary would be found.

 

-Jeff

[RedBeard]

Thanks, Jeff. I will look again when I get home.

 

It was very strange, KNOWING that I had saved several times, then not finding the file. But computers acting strangely doesn't surprise me any more. I gave up that illusion a long time ago.

 

I guess I was hoping that someone would say, "Oh, yeah. You just need to go to the C:\Temp\Whatever directory and Show-Hidden-Files, then look for the file that starts with 'vbb'..." or something. Either way, I'll survive.

 

I remember, many years ago, a computer professor saying to us, "There are two kinds of computer users: Those who have lost data and those who will lose data."

 

:wq!

[RedBeard]

SOLVED!

 

Remember how I always say, "Never underestimate Operator Error?"

 

Apparently, my files were saving into Atari_OLD folder that I created when I started over. Yay! They aren't gone after all! Alas, my program really stinks - but I can work on it...

 

:wq!

Edited November 29, 2011 by RedBeard

[jwierer]

That's good news. Here is a tip. If you right click on the project in the project explorer pane you can toggle the project so it is a default project that opens everytime you launch vbB. In conjunction with the backup option in the settings tab, vbB it will copy all your default projects to a backup folder upon initial launch. That way if you really do screw something up you'll have a backup up to the point you opened vbB.

 

-Jeff

[RedBeard]

An excellent tip! Thanks again, Jeff. I really appreciate the help.

Edited November 30, 2011 by RedBeard

[Pioneer4x4]

I am glad you got some of your work back. And thank you everyone for the tips. I just set mine up a little better to help prevent me from losing work as well.