problem with switching between projects

So today I was working on my project (which is apparently stored in a zip file?) and because I wanted to look at a tutorial about switches I saved it and closed it.

But when I wanted to go back to my project VX ACE couldn't even open it because there was nothing for it to use in the projects folder.

I tried to solve it by creating a folder for my project and then unzipping the zip file and moving everything into the folder (and my earlier technical problem might have something to do with this or not).

Then I got all sorts of problems with VX ACE not wanting to start up again and having to de-install and almost having to start the entire project over until my boyfriend found a way to open vx ace and open the project.

Just a little back I saved my project (at least I think I did) and went back to the tutorial project editor because I wanted to see how the smoke was done. But when I wanted to go back I opened the earlier file and I had lost some of my previous work.

So for future reference's  sake: where is my project editor saved and if I go to another computer, what would I need to send myself to be able to open the project editor and such.

I may not explain it very well, but I do hope that you understand what my problem is?

Projects are NOT stored in a zip file. If you're looking at a zip file, you're looking in the wrong place.


Sounds like you might have compressed your project then run the exe, and are now trying to edit that instead of your original one. If that's not it, then no, I'm afraid I don't understand. You might need to give us a screenshot of the project folder so we can see what you're looking at.

so I made a printscreen of the projects folder as it is and one of the folder I created for this particular project

This is the normal projects folder



this is the particular projects folder



Before I made this particular projects folder all it had in the projects folder was the zip file.

What I believe happened is that you had opened the project from the zip itself without having extracted the contents beforehand. This created a temporary directory with the contents of the ZIP archive located somewhere in C:\Users\{YourUsername}\AppData\Local\Temp from which the editor utilized files from. Since this deviates from your usual project folder at D:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common\RPGVXAce\Projects\, the next time you opened RPG Maker VX Ace, it could not be found.

Now, all that said - your previous changes made to the project may or may not be recoverable. Seeing as how the contents were extracted to a temporary folder, your data may not be there anymore - but it might be. To find out if your data is still there, follow these steps.

1. Navigate to C:\Users\{YourUsername}\AppData\Local\Temp - make sure to replace {YourUsername} with your Windows user account.
2. Once there, in the upper right of Windows Explorer, you'll see Search Temp. Enter in this text in bold and hit enter to commence a search - .rvproj2
3. If any results have been found, then great! Right click on Game.rvproj2 and select the Open file location option.
4. You should be presented with the contents of your project folder. Copy these files over to your usual location. You should now have access to your project with the changes you had made from within the editor now.

If you are unable to recover your files, then it is likely they are lost for good unless you have specialized software for data recovery of deleted files and understand how to use them, but this is beyond the scope of this forum post and likely isn't worth the trouble or time if you aren't already familiar with how to use such things.

In the future, whenever you encounter a ZIP/RAR/7z/etc. archive for a RPG Maker project, you want to first extract the contents into your projects folder before making any edits so that this problem isn't encountered again in the future. Hopefully you are able to recover your files in this case though!

Ok :) Thanks for answering my question.