[15.40] Blueprints are lost

[FasterJump]

Hello,
I have 2 versions of factorio on my computer. The first on is 15.39 installed with the ".exe installer", the second one is 16.40 installed with the "zip package".
Playing in one version then in another resulted in the lost of all my blueprints library!! And achievements, which I care less.

How can I get my blueprints back? I spent hours making them...

[eradicator]

If they don't show up in the newer of both versions they've probably been overwritten. If you're on a new enough version of windows you migth be lucky and windows might have a "shadow copy" of the old files left. Right click blueprint-storage.dat and see if there's anything there. If not you could try one of the hundrets of "free" file restoring programs. But to be quite honest chances are grim at best that you can get them back.

[FasterJump]

Thanks for the "shadow copy" idea. Unfortunately it didn't worked.
I won't try the restoring programs. I broke blueprints trying to fix achievements, i don't want to break windows trying to fix blueprints
I suppose i'll get over it.

I'm still wondering why the game overwrite a [recent, up to date (0.16) and bigger] library file with an [older, not up to date (0.15) and smaller] library file. Not to mention that both version of the game are installed on different directories. I am very upset.

[Zavian]

One thing to note is that the .exe installer and the .zip installer save user data in in different locations. I think the .exe installer is in %appdata%/Factorio, whilst the .zip installer saves everything within whatever directory you create when you extract the .zip. So the .zip version won't see the blueprint library of the .exe installer or steam version, or even another .zip version that you extract to a different directory. Same for achievements. So it's quite possible that both blueprint libraries are fine, just living in their separate directories. (Also note that whilst the 0.16 version should be able to read a 0.15 blueprint library, I wouldn't expect a 0.15 version to be able to read a 0.16 library).

[posila]

If you use installed or Steam version next to ZIP version, they don't overwrite each others files by default (the logs confirm, the default behavior of installed version writing to %APPDATA% and zip version to its own folder), so using two different versions is not what caused it.

I broke blueprints trying to fix achievements, i don't want to break windows trying to fix blueprints

So what happened? What steps did you take to fix achievements before you noticed blueprints are gone?

0.15 merged blueprint library captured in save into global blueprint library on load, this behavior was removed in 0.16, but you should be able to recover your 0.15 blueprints just by loading your 0.15 save.

[FasterJump]

Thanks for the answers, here are some more details.
I didn't link steam to my factorio account and do everything from the website.
I updated the .zip version of the game using the in game update button from 0.16.17 to 0.16.40
When i tried to fix the achievements, I launched the 0.15 exe version, loaded an old save, and checked my achievements. I instantly had 4 poping out (like produce 10k circuits / hour), so i though the achievements was erased again. I quit the game, open the 0.16 version and check my blueprints. Only those that I created in 0.15 was there, the ones that I added in 0.16 was missing.
Luckily, I managed to find a copy (backup) of my blueprint file that I created not too long ago, so the losses are minimal.

I made a simple test : Log in 0.16 zip version, add a blueprint to the library, exit the game.
The file blueprint-storage.dat file that is modified is not in the ".zip" directory, but in the %appdata% folder.
Maybe it's because I copied the config files from the old to the new directory when I created the 0.16 folder? I wanted to import my old settings like key binding and achievements.