[Cannot unlock ships - Save does not progress]

[Christmasham]

I've been loving the game so far, using the retail version {Non-steam from the Humble bundle store}, and I was hoping that I could be one of the first few people to unlock all of the ships {Including B's}, and I was doing well, infact I unlocked ever ship apart from 3 B ships, after unlocking about 3 ships in one run, I satisfyingly turned off the game, when I re-launched it I found that although I still had some previously unlocked ships, the ships I had most recently unlocked were not there, I was annoyed but didn't think too much of it as I'd probably easily be able to get them again, so I did, and once again they did not appear, I tried to read up on it and this lead me to look at the save files of my games, prov.sav and continue.sav, I'd been here before but this time I noticed a new file, prov.new.sav, I didn't know what it was but obviously the game must have created it, so I didn't want to touch it, I also noticed that for some reason the prov.sav had a half life 2 symbol, I actually didn't notice this until a while later, I didn't know what it was supposed to run off {as it was running off hl2.exe atm} so I put it to launch off FTL.exe, this didn't help, so I asked my buddy who also had the game and he told me he was running it off 'windows shell common dll', after a long search I found the file which was supposedly: shell32.dll and set it to run off that, and so I thought i'd fixed it, I decided to launch it up again and get the kestrel B cruiser as a test, It was easy to do so and so I quit and then re-entered the game to see if I had kept the unlock, I hadn't, being really pissed off by now as none of my efforts seemed to work, I deleted my Prof.sav and experimented with the Prof.New.Sav, both files seemed to be identical, and no matter how many times I deleted it, it kept coming back, my buddy said he doesn't have the 'new' one, so I asked if I could have a copy of his, he sent me it and I replaced both my Prof's with his one, and again my unlocks didn't register and another Prof.New.Sav appeared, I thought simply reinstalling would help, so I did, but despite a good refresh the prof.sav didn't default itself, it stayed on the recommended open with - which I had moved to Shell32dll, it no longer has the option to change the director (Shell32dll), I really want to get back into the game, don't think I'll die without it but, you know, what else can I do all alone when I'm bored, in my bedroom, at 10 o clock at night, I read that I'm also supposed to post this on the other site, I shall do so, but I'm hoping I'll also get some attention/help from some players, cheers.

[boa13]

prof.sav contains your achievements and unlocked content. There is no need to try to associate it to the game executable, or to try to bind some double-click action to it. The game will come automatically read and update this file.

Of course, the "sav" file extension is used by many games, so it is not surprising that it was associated to some other game on your computer. This is not a problem. As long as you don't double click on the file, that game will not come in the FTL directory to read this sav file. And if you do double-click, there are chances that game will simply not understand the content of this sav file and leave it as-is. Hopefully.

The fact that a prof.new.sav remains in the directory is a possible indication that the current prof.sav file is locked somehow. Typically, when saving, a program will first write a new file, then move it over the old file. That way, if there is a problem writing the new file (disk full, for example), the old file remains intact.

What could lock your prof.sav file? I don't know for sure. It could be FTL itself, that has crashed at some point and disappeared from the screen, but remains in memory with a lock on the file. It could be that other game, when you double-clicked on the file. It could be Windows itself, now that you have created a strange shell32.dll association.

There is also a possibility that this is a file permission issue. Maybe the authorization to remove files has been suppressed from the directory? Maybe you have installed the game as an other user than the one with which you are currently running the game? You hard drive is not full, isn't it?

What you can try:

• Reboot the machine so that any program that had a lock on the file is terminated for sure;
• Check the write permissions on the prof.sav file itself, and also on the directory that contains the file; correct the permissions if need be;
• Alternatively, rather than messing manually with permissions, make a copy of the file, delete the directory, create the directory (be careful to use exactly the same name), put the file back there; the new directory will most likely be created with appropriate default permissions.

For your information, there has been at least one report of the game crashing and the prof.sav file becoming corrupted. If you value your achievements (who doesn't? ), keep backup copies of that file.

[Christmasham]

Thanks for replying, It's getting late now so I'll leave it for tommorow to try what you've listed, I hope all goes well and I'll update once I've tried, I somewhat doubt theres any permission problems as I'm the only user (With administrator permissions), but that's all, thanks.

[Christmasham]

Hi there again, I tried today what you suggested but I'm afraid none of it helped

I checked firstly to see if there were any permissions problems, but there didn't seem to be any, I then decided to make a copy of the prov.sav and send it somewhere else, and delete the directory, I remade it, but it didn't made a difference, so I deleted it once more and let the game itself, remake it, again, I tested getting an easy-to-do achievement, and when I relaunched the game the achievement was not there, even more confusing is:

when I tried to delete the directory entirely and not put the prov.sav back in, and play off a blank canvas, I still had all of my ships and achievements that I had previously unlocked (before I ran into this problem), it was to my understanding that prov.sav contained all the ships and achievements - right?
so if what I'm thinking is correct then why do I still have all my ships? I truely am confused, if anybody else could help me with this topic or - even if anyone else is having this problem it'd be a little more reassuring, I can't see any clear way of fixing this atm, reinstalling the game doesn't help, I'd somehow have to refresh or reinstall my entire computer? but, I'm sure theres a smaller, easier way to fix this, somewhere.

Cheers,

Henry.

[boa13]

Did you restart your computer before you tried all that? That's a really important step in case a program has a lock on the directory or the file itself.

[Christmasham]

Ofcourse I did , I don't keep my Computer on over night, but the restart was to no avail unfortunately, I'd like to also confirm I don't have a full hard drive - I didn't mention that before.

Cheers

[Icehawk78]

Ofcourse I did , I don't keep my Computer on over night, but the restart was to no avail unfortunately, I'd like to also confirm I don't have a full hard drive - I didn't mention that before.

Cheers

A couple of quick questions:

1. What is your exact operating system? [Windows/Mac/Linux, which version, and 32 or 64 bit?]
2. Which version did you buy/install? Humble Bundle, GOG, or Steam?
3. Where is the exact location that your prof.sav is located? (ie /home/username/.local/share/FasterThanLight/, C:\Users\Username\My Games\FasterThanLight, etc)
4. Can you post a screenshot of the window you see if you right-click on prof.sav, and view the file properties?

Thanks.

[Christmasham]

Fixed, Third times the charm I see, After a third re-install it seems to be working now, I was surprised that despite the fact that I had deleted my prov.sav I still had my ships, so, this time I deleted all of my prov's (backup), and all the directories, every FTL related thing I could find, and it seemed to work, I asked my friend if I could have a copy of his prov.sav, i'm a little set back now but, at least I can play, I'm not sure why this happened, for the developers/anyone interested in what fully happened, heres what happened:

Game save randomly stopped saving

prov.sav switched to open with hl2.exe

prov.sav couldn't be set back to default so re-install was the only option

reinstalling alone didn't work

deleted all backup copies of prov.sav, and all FTL related files, reinstalled - worked.

Cheers for the suggestions and help, seems like my problem is fixed!