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Topic: Repair/check tool for game files

This happened to me lately and I have no explanation so far (possible fs corruption), but I found the game crashed after leaving it AFK for a few hours (family life). Afterwards I could not start the game again.

I am running in Wine/Linux and so far I had 0 trouble with the game. However after the crash described above I got a stupid error and the game produces crashlog dumps (even when I copy the files to my work laptopt with Windows). I replaced the exe file with a new one from perpetuum setup, but go the same problem. My conclusion is that one of the gbf files is corrupted.

Is it possible to create a check/repair tool (or does it already exist?) that looks at the stored game files and checks them for consistency at the very least ? I guess I can remove the Local.gbf file without problem (mostly losing settings) but if the main gbf is corrupted, I have no way to find out without reinstalling the complete game.

I don't know if I should post this in Bugs or Feature requests, so mods please move the thread if I picked the wrong place.

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Re: Repair/check tool for game files

you can only "repair" the map data.

easy way is to always copy the big GBF file after patch (most users have a second install anyway), so you can restore it whenever it gets corrupted.

theres no need to delete the local.gbf as its really only your settings.

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
Whining - It's amazing how fast your trivial concerns will disappear
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Re: Repair/check tool for game files

Annihilator wrote:

you can only "repair" the map data.

easy way is to always copy the big GBF file after patch (most users have a second install anyway), so you can restore it whenever it gets corrupted.

theres no need to delete the local.gbf as its really only your settings.

well it happened to me in other games tha the local settings file(s) was corrupt and the game refused to start. anyway thanks for the hint. I'll definitely do the backups before/after patch.

but the corruption actualy happened a day after patch day.

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Re: Repair/check tool for game files

Delete the GBF file and run the EXE. It will then download a new GBF that should fix this issue.
It would be nice to have a fixing tool but keep in time that both static and dynamic data is held in the GBF (Robot models vs terrain data)

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Re: Repair/check tool for game files

Alexander wrote:

Delete the GBF file and run the EXE. It will then download a new GBF that should fix this issue.
It would be nice to have a fixing tool but keep in time that both static and dynamic data is held in the GBF (Robot models vs terrain data)

aha, would be good to split it. I mean the download size will also decrease since I have to redownload only the dynamic one.

I am gaming on a 10GB/month limited connection, so redownloading the current 1.4Gb of game data is not the first option I want to try :-)

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Re: Repair/check tool for game files

Also if you have more than one clients, and only one has some problems (crashing, not starting the game) you can copy the GBF file from one to the other.

<GargajCNS> we maim to please
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Re: Repair/check tool for game files

The download is around 400MB.
This game uses a lot of bandwidth so playing on a limit is not going to be pleasant. You also can't be sure that the dynamic changing data is broken. For whatever reason it could be something else that's broken during a read/write cycle.

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Re: Repair/check tool for game files

Alexander wrote:

The download is around 400MB.
This game uses a lot of bandwidth so playing on a limit is not going to be pleasant. You also can't be sure that the dynamic changing data is broken. For whatever reason it could be something else that's broken during a read/write cycle.

I suspect that the GBF file is a type of filesystem the game uses, so usual FS inconsistencies on improper closing do apply. at the very least, the game should be able to check this and report it. or store a checksum after each successful close and reread/compare on next load.

Will test it with a forced kill today to see if it happens again.

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Re: Repair/check tool for game files

Norrdec wrote:

Also if you have more than one clients, and only one has some problems (crashing, not starting the game) you can copy the GBF file from one to the other.

I do only have one client unfortunately.

  • BKK
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Re: Repair/check tool for game files

hope you didn't have tricked the games protection and run one client twice with a multiple accounts. because thats where the game support ends.


offtopic: volume based internet still exists??

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
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Re: Repair/check tool for game files

Annihilator wrote:

hope you didn't have tricked the games protection and run one client twice with a multiple accounts. because thats where the game support ends.


offtopic: volume based internet still exists??

it's mobile broadband or somewhat equivalent ... even the rich USA telecoms do restrict data rates there :-))

anyway, end of story was following:

Copied fresh perpetuum.gbf (which worked at work), game did not start. Removed Local.gbf, game started.

Conclusion: the client does not sanitise it's own settings files on loading. Bad design.

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Re: Repair/check tool for game files

Hugh Ruka wrote:
Annihilator wrote:

hope you didn't have tricked the games protection and run one client twice with a multiple accounts. because thats where the game support ends.


offtopic: volume based internet still exists??

it's mobile broadband or somewhat equivalent ... even the rich USA telecoms do restrict data rates there :-))

anyway, end of story was following:

Copied fresh perpetuum.gbf (which worked at work), game did not start. Removed Local.gbf, game started.

Conclusion: the client does not sanitise it's own settings files on loading. Bad design.

Eww. That's terrible. LOCAL settings corrupted.. Ewwwww!

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Re: Repair/check tool for game files

Alexander wrote:
Hugh Ruka wrote:
Annihilator wrote:

hope you didn't have tricked the games protection and run one client twice with a multiple accounts. because thats where the game support ends.


offtopic: volume based internet still exists??

it's mobile broadband or somewhat equivalent ... even the rich USA telecoms do restrict data rates there :-))

anyway, end of story was following:

Copied fresh perpetuum.gbf (which worked at work), game did not start. Removed Local.gbf, game started.

Conclusion: the client does not sanitise it's own settings files on loading. Bad design.

Eww. That's terrible. LOCAL settings corrupted.. Ewwwww!

it's not about the local settings. it's about the game not giving any indication what is wrong.