My character is gone! Help!

[JoeLegner]

I had a great game going for about a week. Last night I typed Control+X to save, and restarted my computer (Mac). Game version is 4.2.0.

Today I opened my terminal and typed Angband as I normally do to start the game, and it says I am at level 1!

My character was probably about Level 28. I have a great kit of artifacts and weapons.

Can anyone help? Is there a log or something that I can post?

[Selkie]

Are you sure you didn't hit the command stroke that kills your character? Sometimes I hit it by accident and it scares me

[JoeLegner]

I don't think so, because the character is not on the scores list at all. Plus I think the kill yourself button requires you to type '@' to confirm. No way I did that - I was sober. haha.

The previous character I had that died at Level 33 (damn gravity hounds) is shown, but not the most recent one that I have been playing for a week or so.

[Selkie]

In that case, it sounds like you should be straight on the phone to trading standards demanding your money back.

[backwardsEric]

I had a great game going for about a week. Last night I typed Control+X to save, and restarted my computer (Mac). Game version is 4.2.0.

Today I opened my terminal and typed Angband as I normally do to start the game, and it says I am at level 1!

From the way you start the game, it sounds like you're using a custom version of some sort. With the native Mac front end, you'd normally double-click on the application and use the menu bar or command-o to then open your previous save file. How did you install what you have? Do you know where it's placing the save files?

Without knowing more, here's some stabs in the dark at what might have happened:

• After the restart, did you log in to the account you were using before? If you're on as a different user (or it's somehow confused about where your home directory is) then that would explain why it didn't find the former character (assuming the version you have is putting the savefiles in something like ~/.angband).
• Did you upgrade the OS along with the restart? At least with Catalina, that can relocate some files in the system directories and perhaps your installation of Angband was affected. If there was an upgrade, check for a "Relocated Items" folder on your desktop.
• If Angband was configured to store the save files in a temporary directory like /tmp or /var/tmp, it's possible that the restart purged the contents of the directory.

[whartung]

Naturally you have Time Machine set up so you can recover your lost file, right?

[JoeLegner]

Naturally you have Time Machine set up so you can recover your lost file, right?

Sadly, no, I did not know about that feature. I've been a Windows guy my whole life unti this machine. The files I care about I have in a Google Drive folder that gets backed up to the cloud and also an external HD.

I guess now I'm going to be configuring Time Machine.

[JoeLegner]

Great ideas - thanks for answering. I installed Angband using Homebrew. Maybe that's the problem. It saves to ~/.angband/Angband. I didn't log in as a different user, and my OS did not get upgrade.

I just don't get it. If a file got removed, why would all the other scores still show up? It's just that one character that's gone.

I tried sudo find / -name 'angband' and found multiple files by that name, but upon further inspection they all seem to be soft links to the Homebrew bin folder containing the angband executable.

I think it's a lost cause. So demoralizing.

[backwardsEric]

There is an installation option where file with the high scores can be shared with multiple users. I was under the mistaken impression one could use that option while each user's save files were stored in a private directory.

You might try

sudo find / -name scores

that would locate the directory where the previous scores are stored. The save files should be in "save" subdirectory that is a sibling to that. I only say that because, when I tried to mimic Homebrew's installation steps, configure said it was placing the save files within ~/.angband/Angband, but the save files ended up elsewhere.

The name of the save file is linked to the Unix user name, so if that name changed somehow, that would be one way you wouldn't see the old save file when starting the game.

[Pete Mack]

If you are using randarts, there *will* be a corresponding file in your save directory.
$ find . -name randart* -print

[whartung]

Did you try doing a find on your characters name? Since that's how the save files are named?

And, yes, Time Machine is amazing. I find it truly boggling that Windows doesn't have something comparable. Stick a $100 USB drive in the side of your computer, configure it, and leave it alone. Magic just happens.

It's saved my bacon many times. Recovered systems with it.

And, I don't want this to fall in to a black hole of back up strategies, and the inadequacies of Time Machine there in. For what it does, and how it works, it's amazing.