Priority - Fix the corrupted save game issue that's plague this game since launch.

[Pudsley]

I've noticed there many threads dating back to 2019 complaining of this and I've seen streamers locked out of their zoos because of this.

I held off on buying the game due to issues like this until earlier this year, finally I bought it and then got around to playing it about three weeks ago.

I've invested at least 50 hours in a zoo that has no animals in it, I've simply been building barriers and paths and walkways and filling them with water in readiness for animals and facilities and staff to build up to opening and making money and the saves just keep corrupting.

It happened two days ago when both the autosave and the final save before closing the client both load for a while and ctd the game.

I managed to load an earlier save from the previous day, only lost 10 hours, I was annoyed but carried on and redid everything. This time though I made saves every bloody hour. I come to the game today and all 8 saves plus the autosave are corrupted. A waste of a precious week off, as you can imagine I'm over the moon.

Obviously something I'm building is causing the game to not load correctly (but it runs until you shut it which means you're crappy coding is allowing something to happen that the game can't load later. I've not modded the game, I've not even imported blueprints, have no animals int he park, no customers. I'd just compelted all of the mind numbing framework for the park and was ready for the fun part (animals and guests trying to make money) and now it's all been for nothing.

Pro tip, if your save points re prone to corruption then for the love of god put in additional autosaves, if it made one every 30 minutes up to say 10 autosaves (maybe this number could be changed in settings after you implement it) then at least maybe I could find the exact issue.

This needs sorting because as it is this game is not fit for purpose. I would advise against deleting this thread as I'll take that as an attempt to hide the issue and then I'll just post it on review sites and steam etc.

Also, I'm a 30 year's experience, pc gamer, network and software engineer (not games software unfortunately) and I'm running a bulltproof monster of a rig, 32gb ram, i9 10900k, 3080 GTX, SSD's etc.

 

[ElectricMonk]

I feel for you, but Many of us have never had any save issues and I haven’t seen many others talk mention it on the forum.

 

[NL_Mutso]

I've noticed there many threads dating back to 2019 complaining of this

I think for almost everyone this was solved in January/February 2020. But after that didn't see any complaints with corrupted savegames/files.
I'd recommend sending your savegames to Frontier support?

 

[Cocolori]

Issue with all these kinds of posts (and presumably fixing them) is that they appear to be very idiosyncratic. I'm lucky in that I haven't lost a save ever and I can count the crashes I've had on one hand. Occassionally I've had bugs etc. especially after updates but none that have been too bad. (for example I currently have the climbing frame calculation bug in one of my franchise zoos so have to reset the climbing enrichment every time - annoying but not game breaking).

Your experience isn't my experience of the game and I guess their ability to fix any bug like this is going to depend on it's reproducability. All I can suggest if it persists and is seemingly prevalent in one save file then send the file to the community@frontier email address as well as using the issue tracker to report as much on your specs as you can. I imagine you probably already have done that.

I understand how frustrating it must be, especially for the detailed builders, to encounter these issues but I have no real sense of how common they are since people not experiencing them won't usually post about it (except me I guess).

Also sort of fascinated by your play style as it is the total opposite to mine. I play franchise, think vaguely about the first couple of habitats in my zoo, might have some plans for the style but usually my first few habitats are placeholders to make some money. My oldest franchise zoo is now pretty much complete with the species I want and the rough layout but the aesthetics are still pretty bad so I am very slowly (when i can bothered as I'm not very detail orientated or talented at building) making it look better and getting rid of all the frontier blueprints I plopped down to start with. Sometimes I envy those of you with much more methodical approaches but sometimes I'm happy I get to 'do the fun bit' with the animals etc. up front.

 

[Pudsley]

I think for almost everyone this was solved in January/February 2020. But after that didn't see any complaints with corrupted savegames/files.
I'd recommend sending your savegames to Frontier support?

Unfortunately it seems this is still a pretty prevalent issue for a lot of people as per the people experiencing this in December 2020 on the below thread...

Save keeps crashing

After hours of work my current save keeps crashing while loading. I updated my drivers tried to recover by loading a prev save but keeps crashing. All other saves work perfectly fine. Laptop is not the issue. Very good gaming laptop with latest hardware. Is there any way to fix the save file or...

forums.frontier.co.uk

There's also a ton of reddit threads on the matter indicating that whilst fairly rare it is very much a recurring problem.

I'll try and submit a proper report to frontier and offer them the pile of corrupted saves as not doing so would make me a hypocrite as I would not be offering them the opportunity to rectify the issue in future patches.

Unfortunately my gameplay style in *the amount of time I want to sink into building my zoos) is not compatible with an unreliable game client, I simply cannot afford to waste my precious time off.

If it was just a matter of the odd save getting corrupted I could handle that, just save more often but it is actually an issue with the game allowing us to build something in our zoo's that cannot be loaded properly from the save, meaning unless you identify that issue the zoo is now scrap, it cannot be continued.

At the moment I'm repeating the steps (potentially wasting more of my time) in the park building and saving every 15 minutes. After the save I'll close the client, load the save and see if it works, maybe I can narrow down what is actually causing the issue.

At least then with the save and the information maybe Frontier can take a look and resolve the issue, maybe.

 

[allphasephil]

I'm having the same problem but only with my largest franchise zoo, smaller and medium ones don't seem to have the problem. I've posted it in the issue tracker and have a corrupt saved game and one that loads but can't post them as both are 20 mb and the tracker has a limit of 10 mb so saved games can't be posted. I don't know how they will fix it if you can't post the evidence required!!

 

[12344321]

Happened to me lost 800 hour sandbox zoo

 

[allphasephil]

Think mine was something to do with billboards from 1.5 and now 1.5.2 seems to of fixed my corrupt save problem but I haven't bothered with adding the billboards back in to find out if they're still bugged.

 

[Fruity Zoo]

Hello!
Maybe I can't help you but I can tell you my recent corrupted save story..

My sandbox file got corrupted on the third of April, so after the update. I was really really sad about the fact that I lost my zoo for like forever, I worked 600 hours with only this zoo.

I send the Frontier team the issue with the attached save file (30 MB) my pc specs together, I got the reply that this save game was really corrupted.
Until the 1.5.2 update I didn't even touch planet zoo again because of my zoo.
I found an older save of my Zoo (4 months old) and loaded in, everything was fine on that. After some time I decided to load in my recent file that got currupted, I don't know how but it was working. I could load back into the zoo again!

I mean I don't know how, because even Frontier said the file was corrupted but still I'm very happy that I have the zoo back

 

[Gremlin2424]

I had an issue connecting to the franchise server as the connection drops out every 15 mins, I sent my save file off to Frontier and they said it was because my save file was corrupted I can still load my zoo (150hrs worth of work) but just the game crashes when trying to access the animal market, if I do a quick sell of animals and try and release animals to the wild. I think there must be an issue when we place lots of scenery items as I have loads, but isn't that what the game is made for, you don't want to build a park with only 2 trees what the point.

 

[Roxxsmom]

I had an issue connecting to the franchise server as the connection drops out every 15 mins, I sent my save file off to Frontier and they said it was because my save file was corrupted I can still load my zoo (150hrs worth of work) but just the game crashes when trying to access the animal market, if I do a quick sell of animals and try and release animals to the wild. I think there must be an issue when we place lots of scenery items as I have loads, but isn't that what the game is made for, you don't want to build a park with only 2 trees what the point.

Right, and with franchise zoos in particular, there is no way to go back to an earlier saved file to before it was corrupted either. I had one I had to jettison for that reason. It started crashing every time I started to build a new enclosure. Fortunately, I hadn't played it for that long when it happened, but it was still frustrating.

 

[Rahoor]

hey Pudsley,
I have same issue since jan this year. My main zoo (approx 900 hours gameplay) keeps crashing on loading, not always but out of 50 load attempts it's only 1 successful. (backstory: bought especially for this game my first pc after over 20years of mac) Was in contact with support a couple of times, with no result at all. Basic facts: my hardware is high end, my software is all latest updated with drivers, no overclock (but sometimes it helps to activate it, to get it loaded) I have an older save game, of course I've done similar steps as in the other file and as more as I recreate what I have done, as slower and wackier the new zoo gets during loading process. Once it is loaded, I dont have any performance issues, so I doubt it is that the zoo is too large.
As you have written, something is causing miscalculation during loading, but I still could not figure out what it is.
What I have done so far (when the zoo is loadable) without any change of behaviour during loading:
deleted all water, deleted all workshop elemtens and de-abo in steam, game verification via steam on daily bases, boxed all animals to get sure not a frozen walksicle is causing it, delete both rides I had, deleted all guest spawners / entrances, )
I also checked all this steps with nvidia geforce now cloud service, to get sure my hardware is not the problem. Same issues there. What I also experienced: of course I have a couple of different save game versions from this zoo, when you go to your zoo files/overview I see them in bold with the new saved name BUT in small letter under them you see the original name of your first created save/game name. So they are carrying some information from one save to game to another, instead of creating a new and unrelated save game. So I have the feeling that some more information as the initial name is transferred between the zoo files, means once you have a bug, you wont get rid of it... furthermore: the zero point of main grid is different as when you put blue prints on it. there is no way that you can place a blueprint habitat without the approx. 0,75 earthwall created around it makes no sense to me. Also you can place paths really close over water BUT if you remove the water the game wont allow you to put it back until you have deleted the path what was to close to/over the water.
As I'm kind of addicted to this game, and still think it is great (if it runs), I've started a new project/fresh zoo, here I have now a new water bug, means a lake and a habitat are separated by a glass barrier, but the game dont recognize it as 2 water areas, if I try to remove the water, the game crashes. (also in contact with support without any solution)

further steps I have done: reinstall pz, reinstall c++, played with all nvidia settings incl. debug mode, uninstall alienware command center, loaded older nvidia drivers, checked the alignment of cpu, set game to high process, underclocked the pc, delete all other saves (with backup), tried every possible graphic setting, nvidia 3D setting, and cross checked all of the steps in different combinations.
I am Working since 25 years in movie postproduction with high end software and hardware and never ever had this experience....