Resident Evil 2D - 2 Steps Forward, 1 Step Back

So it finally happened. I finally lost a chunk of work due to not having a backup.

At the beginning of this semester, after talking to my tutors we decided that I should produce some UE4 in engine content to go with my documents - after all, that's more exciting than just a word doc. I got off to a good start! I created the point and click movement system, I created a system of moving up stairs in the background (which was harder than it sounds), I coded m mouse cursor to change depending on context, and I got the player character to rotate depending on whether the mouse was in front or behind them. And then UE4 decided that I should actually have to do that all over again.

I'm actually not sure what happened. First of all I went to open my project only to be told that my map failed to load as it was an asset. I tried multiple fixes but none worked until I tried bringing in an old autosave. That seemed to bring my map back! Then I tried to build the lighting and everything froze up. I decided to retrace my steps of bringing in the autosave map, but this time I'd try to play it without building the lighting, even though everything was dark. This is when I was told that several blueprints couldn't compile, as variables were missing in my player character blueprint. As it turned out, my player character blueprint was also missing.

This was an even bigger problem as essentially all my coding was done in that blueprint - code in my character was triggered when I clicked on different objects which would refer back to the player character. Weirdly enough in the file explorer on windows, the uasset file for the player character was still there, it simply wasn't showing up in the content browser in UE4. I spent a full day trying to get it working again - I tried fixing up the redirections, copying the blueprint to another project, making a copy within the original project, and a few more things which I can't fully remember to be honest. Nothing seemed to make it show up in UE4, only in the file explorer.

I'm putting down what happened to being my PC messing up during saving. My desktop is about 6 years old which you'd think wouldn't make a difference, but it can really struggle opening up modern software. Usually it'll freeze up but eventually pull through, but I suppose I shouldn't have assumed that everything would be ok.

So basically, I'm now coding it all again, creating backups this time. Luckily I could migrate across most of the BPs for everything that wasn't the character to a new project so that saves some time. I can almost remember everything I did, and I reckon recreating it shouldn't take longer than a day or two. I'm also solely working on my laptop now - it's slightly newer and though the GPU isn't as powerful, the CPU seems to be better so it struggles less with new software.

I guess the silver lining of this is that by recreating the BPs, the process will get in my head more, which should make me more efficient with BPs in the future. Not that it isn't a massive pain to have to recreate stuff I was very happy with - but oh well. I'd better get on with it!

See you in the next one!

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