Computer crashed mid-save, corrupted files - is there any hope?

Of course I was in the very last step before I was going to be done with this part of the project...I had saved, and maybe five seconds after the save my computer crashed. Unfortunately, it looks like VX was still in the process of saving, and my project file and data files were corrupted. I already tried copying the files over to a new project, but it seems that too much was damaged. I've pretty much run out of options, and while I have backup versions, losing this most recent version would mean losing 180+ hours of work, and I had been planning to release my game this week...Can anyone think of any other ways to fix the file or recover the data or am I just up a creek without a paddle here?

Would there be any way to pull event data out of the map files? I've tried copying them over to a new project folder but I think MapInfos.rvdata2 is also corrupted since it was giving me errors. I'm hoping that maybe the data still exists somewhere and it can just be copied over so I don't have to redo every event.

Thanks in advance.

easeus software for data recovery.
I doubt that you had the program open for 180 hours without saving. You may just have a few files corrupt.
You could go through the slow process of starting a new project and copying over one file at a time to see which ones are corrupt and which ones are not.

Thank you, I'll give that software a try and see how it goes. You're correct that the program had not been open for over 180 hours. I had tried starting a new project and copying files over but a lot of the files were apparently corrupted. It got to the point where it seemed to be indicating that the MapInfos.rvdata2 file was damaged too so I just stopped there. Not sure if it would be worth it to keep going at that point, since if the MapInfos file is corrupted it's not likely that my events were saved, right? That's where the bulk of my recent work was.

What you can do is, when you open the project, check to see what files it's telling you are corrupted, or move all the data files out of the folder and introduce them one by one until you leave out all the corrupted ones. I had to do that once in Ace. Made me have to do some work to get it all back, but it was better than losing everything.

Unfortunately, the way the database works is it is always open, so when you save it updates the database. So anything can be corrupt. About all you can do is move the files one at a time to a new project, try to run it, and see what happens.

As for mapinfo, you can restore that by just creating as many blank maps (17 x 13 maps with no data in them) as you had in the old project. Then you can copy your old maps over the blank ones (PLEASE make sure RPGMaker isn't open before you do this step, and give it a few minutes since you last saved in it too before trying), and see which ones it can recover.

Unfortunately it looks like the data recovery software won't work, most files are unrecoverable and the ones that it was able to recover won't really do me any good. Thanks for the suggestion though.


Ok, so just so that I'm on the same page and doing this right. Say I have Map150 in my backup folder, and in the corrupted folder. Both versions of Map150 are the same map, but the "corrupted" Map150 has more/newer events on it. Can I just copy over and overwrite Map150.rvdata2 and the up to date version of the event would be on the map in the backup? Failing that, I would need to make new blank maps in my backup version so I can copy the old maps to overwrite the blank ones? Don't they have to have the same names? And what happens with MapInfos.rvdata2 in either case, does that need to be copied over as well for my event data to be included?

Thanks for your help.

Mapinfo tells the computer which map files exist in the project, and yes you can only overwrite files with the same name.
That is why you would have to create blank maps in the new project until it gets to the map 150 and creates that file, and then you can overwrite it with the one from your other project. But never copy the mapinfo file - that does not contain any other data and it needs to reflect which maps are in the project (created by adding new maps) or you'll get inconsistencies and errors.

Thanks for the response, I'll give this a try. Is there any way to manually adjust map numbers or will I have to start a blank project in order to get the map numbers to go back to 001?

Update - it looks like transferring the map files to a new project worked, all of my events are safely in place. I will have to re-name and re-organize my map files, but the bulk of my work is safe. Thanks for all of your help, everyone, you're lifesavers! :)

Mods please feel free to close this thread.

This thread is being closed, due to being solved. If for some reason you would like this thread re-opened, please report this post and leave a message why. Thank you.

Though, next time just edit your previous post instead of posting 2x in a row like that.