Update to Beta, lost all BPs, super mad.

[Warteks]

So I didnt realize there was a sync to cloud option, i mean, who would. After stumbling around with different saved games trying to figure out what in the hell are going on with my blueprints, and finally figuring out how to save them to the master BP thingy. Yay me right? So I update to .18, well not enough players for my taste, back to .17x and low and behold, all my blueprints are gone, AppData/Roaming? no, SteamApps/Common/Factorio, hey a blueprints backup file? does that work? hell no. So after everything, my saves i could care less, update changes are cool but not critical gameplay changing, the ONE thing i cared about, my hours and hours and hours of BPs, are gone. Oh and yes i can load all my saves, amazingly I can see every other BP anyone else ever had, but not my own? this is the first major fail i can speak of for factorio and it really saddens me. thanks for that.

I just got done with a review for this game too, now i gotta edit it and say: make sure you backup your BPs. And anyone I suggest this game to, that'll be the next thing that falls off my lips. I shouldn't have to do that. Reminds me of old days of EvE Online where they just up and dropped your overviews. Just waste of my life.

[Honktown]

Have you played on any servers lately? If you have other peoples' blueprints, maybe they'd have yours...

[Warteks]

This is a great idea but to be honest i dont think i've seen the same players twice. And yes i saw the caps OTHERs before you edited it out

[Honktown]

This is a great idea but to be honest i dont think i've seen the same players twice. And yes i saw the caps OTHERs before you edited it out

It was a clarification that wasn't needed - presumably you were playing on your own server, idk

[Klonan]

So I update to .18, well not enough players for my taste, back to .17x and low and behold, all my blueprints are gone

Updating and downgrading is not really an intended usecase

[BattleFluffy]

This has burned me before too. I solved it by just always sticking to the latest experimental release. :p

I agree it shouldn't be an intended use case to downgrade blueprints to an old version. That's just not a good use of development time. However maybe it will help players to move between versions more easily if a backup of the blueprint file is made each time there's a major version change (eg named blueprints-0-17). Would that be simple enough to do? Or is there some other reason why that's a bad idea that I didn't think about ?

[bobucles]

A big save file is basically a pile of blueprints ripe for the picking. If none of your games actually used those BPs, were they even worth anything?

[BlueTemplar]

If he had lots of blueprints, getting them all back is likely to be a lot of work, especially for the tiled ones ?

Though it sounds like at least some of the blame lies here on Steam ? (A synchronization system without backups/rollbacks is a dangerous thing...)

[Warteks]

All of these points are correct. I believe the blueprints backup file was rewritten when i went back in version on steam. Steam just redownloaded the folder basically, though all the save games are still there yes. Yes I do have some very large save files from multiplayer games. Yes I had a lot of personal blueprints too that I created along the way, not just using other's, and yes some of my BPs were used in several games but not sure which. I am in the process of digging through all of this (theres a lot of blueprints from games with like 40+ people), but some of the ones I made were still in use and I was able to copy and make new blueprints. In the end yeah its gonna take me a while to get things back together, I have no interest in just copying every blueprints from other players, just a mess of stuff.

My initial frustration has cooled off and I appreciate the staff responding, even if it told me what I already figured out. I guess I was pointing out how unnecessarily convoluted the blueprint process is and there should always be some form of external file that persists reguardless of version. I would imagine outdated blueprints would have a (!) alert or something in that nature when loading them from the book, as each blueprint would have a placeholder in the header for game version at save time. Like the name, and the icons.

[planetmaker]

A big save file is basically a pile of blueprints ripe for the picking. If none of your games actually used those BPs, were they even worth anything?

Oh yes, they are. You can combine blue prints such that it becomes very tedious to tear it down to the parts. You can stamp them down and make adjustments to the exact situation. And you might have blueprints which apply to certain, but transient situations. Like blueprints geared for starter base - which are not present in any of your savegames anymore once they evolved past the starting phase.

[Ranger_Aurelien]

Did you have "Synch BP to steam" checked in the menu? If not I can understand they would be deleted from the programs folder with the other game files if you uninstall/reinstall.

[Saiph]

The biggest "fail" is nothing to do with Factorio. It's down to a player who spends "hours and hours" creating items in a game, and then expects everyone else (Factorio, Steam etc) to look after them for him while he upgrades, downgrades, and generally messes around with his installation.

You should always make your own backups. If you don't, you're guaranteed to get bitten at some point.

[coppercoil]

The biggest "fail" is nothing to do with Factorio. It's down to a player who spends "hours and hours" creating items in a game, and then expects everyone else (Factorio, Steam etc) to look after them for him while he upgrades, downgrades, and generally messes around with his installation.

You should always make your own backups. If you don't, you're guaranteed to get bitten at some point.

You are correct, players should make backups. BUT. Factorio could take care about players who didn't think about that. Factorio could make a backup for the player by default, just another checkbox in the option window. It’s easy to program and it solves problems.

Yes, sometimes people are not so smart, but developers are smart, so every application could make some good things without asking.

[Honktown]

I'm still wondering why Factorio would take it upon itself to delete the blueprint storage. It doesn't delete anything else even if it's an exe-stopping error. I can't think of any other files the game randomly overwrites/deletes except for logs.

[Loewchen]

I'm still wondering why Factorio would take it upon itself to delete the blueprint storage.

It don't think it does. For the old version of the game a new version blueprint file is just a corrupted file and since it has to store blueprints in that file it moves and renames it as backup and after moving it back and renaming it again it should still work in the pre downgrade installation.