OMG Help! I can't open my PK3 file now!

[Slayer]

I apologize if this isn't the correct forum.

I was working on my project (it was recently saved) and my PC froze and restart. I literally updated my Nvidia drivers today and immediately after I started having this problem. (but that's another problem)

Now I can't open my file in Slade or as a resource in Ultimate Doom Builder. An error box says the following:

"Unsupported or invalid archive format"

I've been working on this file for days now. Is there anything I can do? I'm so so frustrated.

PK3 File - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KvCFCc9b8pjq9XzVyM725ZWlF0sWPj-u/view?usp=sharing
PK3 file "bak" file - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cno_1GFzYdVpeI8ciDZXZTptdf6j2yA1/view?usp=sharing

Edited January 9, 2022 by Slayer

[Dark Pulse]

I don't know about your BAK PK3, because that's not a complete URL so I can't access it, but your main PK3 is entirely zeroed out, so it's been wiped.

 

If the BAK file works, or if there's a temp file floating around somewhere, you may be able to recover it, but if that BAK file is also zeroed and there's no TMP file to be found (will have to see where SLADE does its temp files), your project just got wiped.

Edited January 9, 2022 by Dark Pulse

[Slayer]

edited BAK URL

 

............i really hope thats not the case.

 

How in the world would a sudden pc freeze/restart WIPE a saved file. That's ridiculous. fuck windows.

 

Not saying what youre saying is im angry at my pc. Im very upset right now. 

[Dark Pulse]

9 minutes ago, Slayer said:

............i really hope thats not the case.

I'm afraid it is. Nothing but 0x00.

 

How it works is pretty simple:

1. Windows gets a request to save the file.
2. Windows saves the file to a very temporary file.
3. Windows zeroes out/allocates the file with the filename you wanted.
4. Windows then moves the temporary file to the now-cleared file.

Something went wrong between 3 and 4. See if you can find any files with a TMP extension within the folder of whatever editor you were using (SLADE, UDB, etc.) at the time or something like that, or find a file from around the time your PC crashed. The fact it wiped BOTH out is kind of surprising, but then again, not entirely, because it was presumably also moving the old version to the BAK file.

 

Try searching your Windows Temp folder (%localappdata%\Temp) as well to see if there's anything in there from around that time with around that filesize. If there is, you JUST might be able to recover it.

 

If not, F for respects.

Edited January 9, 2022 by Dark Pulse

[Edward850]

15 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

Something went wrong between 3 and 4.

Write caching. Files are written to the disk cache before they reach the actual disk. However this process wasn't completed before their system froze, so the cache never made it to disk (or it started to but the NTFS journal wasn't finished, leaving the file in its last "complete" state). It's quite unusual to see the backup file be in this state as well as that's done by a simple rename, but ultimately there's nothing left to be done here but a lesson; don't keep a single copy of your work, and keep off-system backups. Dropbox, One Drive and Google Drive all have desktop shell clients that automatically save data to them when you write to a specific folder (either in your documents for dropbox, literally becomes your documents for one drive, or google drive makes an entire virtual disk that transparently reads/writes data as needed), and they all have snapshots that all you to rewind to previous versions of a file, typically up to 30 days.

Edited January 9, 2022 by Edward850

[Slayer]

I have several TMP files of various sizes (nothing 700kb like my PK3 file) right around that time of a crash.

 

I have my main WAD and maps intact.

 

But I had loads of sprite work I had done.

 

I'm gonna chalk this up as a loss. Unless I discover something with these smaller TMP files.

 

Thanks for your input.

 

Windows Event Viewer show a WHEA-Logger 18 error. 

Reported by Processor Core, Machine Check Exception, "Cache hierarchy Error"

 

And this literally started within 5 minutes of updating NVidia drivers. Not sure if its related.

 

Thanks again for input.

[jval]

50 minutes ago, Slayer said:

Windows Event Viewer show a WHEA-Logger 18 error. 

Reported by Processor Core, Machine Check Exception, "Cache hierarchy Error"

 

Try also to check your hard disk for errors to prevent additional data loss.

Edited January 9, 2022 by jval

[Dark Pulse]

52 minutes ago, Slayer said:

I have several TMP files of various sizes (nothing 700kb like my PK3 file) right around that time of a crash.

 

I have my main WAD and maps intact.

 

But I had loads of sprite work I had done.

 

I'm gonna chalk this up as a loss. Unless I discover something with these smaller TMP files.

 

Thanks for your input.

 

Windows Event Viewer show a WHEA-Logger 18 error. 

Reported by Processor Core, Machine Check Exception, "Cache hierarchy Error"

 

And this literally started within 5 minutes of updating NVidia drivers. Not sure if its related.

 

Thanks again for input.

Going forward, I'd highly recommend that you have your sprites stored as individual files, and add them to the PK3 on an as-needed basis, rather than only having a copy of them within the PK3.

 

This way even if something weird like that happens and you got your PK3 wiped out, you've at least still got the constituent sprite files with which to remake it.

Edited January 9, 2022 by Dark Pulse

[HavoX]

This thread reminded me to backup my work. You should always, always, ALWAYS (X3) make a backup in case Murphy's Law occurs.

[smeghammer]

Bit late, but another option I highly recommend is git version control. Regular pushes of your work to github is a lifesaver.

 

https://git-scm.com/

 

Works just fine for Doom-related dev as well as software dev.

[Kinsie]

Also, if you're working in PK3, I'd recommend not directly editing a PK3 file, as this tends to be a bit more prone to breakage and corruptions and such. Instead, put everything in a folder! GZDoom and Eternity can both load folders directly as if they were PK3s, and this allows you to more easily and efficiently use version control systems like Github for backing up. Then you can just zip everything up when you're ready to release or send to testers.

[smeghammer]

This above. Absolutely agree.

 

Saves buggering about zipping and renaming every time you want to test.

Edited January 20, 2022 by smeghammer

[ramon.dexter]

Umm, git-scm is actually little hard to use for a newbie user. Github is way better as it has a proper GUI (git-scm is commandline only).