"The game could not be saved"

matt_morgan · Post by **matt_morgan** » August 10th, 2004, 8:59 pm

Hi. I'm playing a solo game, the "heir to the throne" campaign. I was in the middle of The Princess's Revenge segment, where you're trying to hold off the undead for a while, when all of a sudden I couldn't save anymore. When I tried manually, I got an error message

the game could not be saved

and when the auto-save kicked in, I got a message that the auto-save failed and I should save manually (didn't write that one down unfortunately).

I kept playing, and the only other weird thing I noticed was that when I went to the help. traits/introduction/gameplay were all repeated about 150 times, and then followed by about 150 instances of the word "About." Eventually wesnoth crashed and when I restart it, it looks normal.

Apart from learning my lesson, that as soon as it happens I should quit wesnoth and restart it, anything I can do about this?

This is Wesnoth 0.81 on Mandrake 10 (i386) from the rpm provided on the wesnoth.org site.

Thanks,
Matt

Star Gazer · Post by **Star Gazer** » August 10th, 2004, 9:57 pm

Well, this is curious. I've had this exact same problem with my Mac in OS10.2.8 ever since I've been playing BfW, but I get enough playing time for it to be merely irritating.

I thought it was either due to too many saves causing confusion in the save folder or, because my Mac uses a faster processor than standard, I wondered if it was caused by some wierdness in the over-clocking arrangement, as it sometimes falls out of Classic mode, too.

Is there anyone else out there that has experienced BfW losing its ability to save?

Elvish_Pillager · Post by **Elvish_Pillager** » August 10th, 2004, 9:59 pm

Star Gazer wrote:Is there anyone else out there that has experienced BfW losing its ability to save?

Yes. No idea what causes it.

Post by **Dave** » August 10th, 2004, 11:39 pm

Tell me, does this only happen if you play Wesnoth for a very long time?

It really is very strange. I am guessing a file descriptor leak somewhere, but I can't find out where :-/

Does anyone know if there are any tools for GNU/Linux to detect file descriptor leaks?

David

Mkgego · Post by **Mkgego** » August 10th, 2004, 11:40 pm

Maybe you have saved so much games that you cant save anymore...so delete some saved games and then try it...

scott · Post by **scott** » August 10th, 2004, 11:49 pm

Are you a save-load player? Maybe it's save frequency in 1 session. MS Word v.X for mac has the same problem, so don't feel bad.

matt_morgan · Post by **matt_morgan** » August 11th, 2004, 2:21 am

Interesting questions. Responding to them:

1) I have, at times, had many more saves piled up than I had at the time the error first occurred. So I don't think it's a problem with having too many saves. And, just in case, I deleted a bunch of them (in the OS, not through the game's delete function) to see if it would help, and it didn't.

2) I am an inveterate save-reload player. It's my first time playing and I'm just really attached to some of the units, so when I make a mistake and lose an important one I pretty much always reload. So that is a definite possibility!

Thanks,
Matt

matt_morgan · Post by **matt_morgan** » August 11th, 2004, 2:25 am

Forgot to answer one question:

3) Yes, Iwas playing for a very long time. I was "working" at home today and so wesnoth was running pretty much all day. From about 8am until about 2pm I played it probably an hour's worth (but it was up the whole time) and then after 2pm I was playing it pretty much the whole time. It probably quit saving about 4:15pm.

Between the length of time I played, and my habit of saving constantly and reloading frequently, I really had tons and tons of saved games (many of which I deleted from within the game, as the day went on). So a file descriptor leak seems like a good bet.

Invisible Philosopher · August 11th, 2004, 9:38 am

Yes... When I played Wesnoth for long peroids of time and sometimes saveloaded, I occasionally got this problem. I don't anymore, now that I don't saveload or play Wesnoth as much. But, I think my problem might have been running out of disk space.

I don't remember... Mac OS X sure takes up a lot of disk space with swap files as you do things, though.

Star Gazer · Post by **Star Gazer** » August 11th, 2004, 10:05 am

I'm laid up with cracked ribs at the moment and I'm afraid that I am pretty much addicted to BfW, so I do play for hours on end, and also save/load frequently to try out different variations on tactics, and to 'push the odds'!

I don't think I would have disk space problems, as I've still got about 150GB free.

I do clear out old saves regularly now, and I suspect that may help, but Dave's comments about the file descriptor problem is intriguing.

The way it occurs gives me a gut feeling of it suddenly losing track of the save files, just like when young children put their hands over their eyes and say the world isn't there anymore!

Is there a possibility of the location where the directory for save files are stored being over-written if it gets too big?

The pain-killers I'm on make me a bit addled at the moment, or I might try to wade through the code and see if I could spot it. It would be good to sort this before it gets released.

Meanwhile, it really is getting to be a great game, the new campaign in 0.8.1 is an excellent challenge.

Keep on truckin'

Post by **Dave** » August 13th, 2004, 2:50 am

After looking into this, I believe I have solved a problem: yes, it was a file descriptor leak.

It would most often be reproduced after playing for a long period, and I am guessing that its prominence on OSX was due to that OS typically having less file descriptors available per process. (Just a hunch)

David

ahwayakchih · Post by **ahwayakchih** » August 13th, 2004, 8:04 am

Dave wrote:After looking into this, I believe I have solved a problem: yes, it was a file descriptor leak.

Yeah!

Dave wrote:It would most often be reproduced after playing for a long period, and I am guessing that its prominence on OSX was due to that OS typically having less file descriptors available per process. (Just a hunch)

Yes, i was trying to explain that on IRC channel before. On BeOS it was probably even more often than on OSX (i'm guessing by reading comments here), because max fds is set to 256 IIRC. I also noticed that "no more fds" happens faster if i load games a lot, and even more if maps/scenario use more units (so more files to open).

Star Gazer · Post by **Star Gazer** » August 13th, 2004, 9:56 am

Excellent, well done chaps - is it a resolvable problem?

(For the moment I will try to save/load less!)

Post by **Dave** » August 13th, 2004, 11:06 am

Star Gazer wrote:Excellent, well done chaps - is it a resolvable problem?

Yes. It is fixed in CVS.

David

Rigor Mortis · Post by **Rigor Mortis** » January 25th, 2006, 4:07 pm

I am getting "The game could not be saved" now. I haven't used the game in a couple of days, and I am a moderate saver. I have plenty of HDD space.

One thing that I did notice was that I used the map editor for the first time, and now the game doesn't seem to save. Could these be related?

I am using version 1.0.2.

The Battle for Wesnoth Forums

"The game could not be saved"

"The game could not be saved"

Mmm..interesting...?

Re: Mmm..interesting...?

save frequency

oh, and one more thimg

Same problem..