I actually cannot believe this. After jumping through hoops to even get CAW running, it decides to randomly not load the one world I've been working very hard on, and also thought it'd be funny to fry every single one of my backups.

I am stumped. Seriously, I saved the world and exited CAW, went downstairs to get a drink and returned seconds later to find out that the files are corrupted. I have no working backups and I don't know what to do. I figured since I was running an old version of CAW I'd have problems, but this is totally unexpected.

Any ideas what to do? I mean, it loads other worlds, but just not the one I put effort into! I tried moving the folders to the desktop and what not, but no luck.

EDIT: Okay, I opened a backup from last night, and it worked. WHY does CAW do this to me? Sorry for the time wasting!
EDIT #2: Okay, it's busted again. I hate CAW.
EDIT #3: ....It is working. I think I figured out why the backups are hit and miss: the main world file is definitely corrupted, so if you open it first and it inevitably fails, it triggers a chain reaction of failure of backups or 'peer pressures' them into failing. If you close CAW, then open a backup first, it should work which will give you the opportunity to do a clean save, which, in my case, actually worked.

Sorry again for the time wasting, but here's an option for desperate CAW users like me!

Last edited by Alan_Gast : 2nd Jan 2012 at 07:45 PM.

Hmm, this is all very dodgy- it sounds as though something is causing the saves to fail, or to not write correctly. It does sound from the other problems you are having (like the effects missing from metadata) that perhaps the version of CAW you are running in combination with your EPs is not too stable, so I would definitely recommend to keep lots of backups!

There's an ini file somewhere in the CAW install files where you can tell it how many backups to keep, you might like to try increasing that so it keeps more.

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I realise what is corrupting the file but don't know why - it is because I am saving in 'edit in game' mode. It simply corrupts the world file, and I have no idea why! Since I'm using the older version of CAW where 'edit in game' is busted, I need to use the '.cmd' method of it opening it. I'm actually just appalled at the fact I have to go through so much trouble to try and make a world, and that my work is just worthless now. Thanks, EA! I guess I'm just going to give up. Thanks for your help, though!

Also, I thought I should say, I'm using a digital copy of the base game. Would that explain any missing effects or anything?

Anyway, I've just decided to go ahead and install Pets. I won't be using any Pets content in the world, but it would seriously make things less complicated!

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EDIT: I've installed Pets and installed the new CAW and the effects panel is there, and edit in game is no longer corrupting the files. Thought I'd let you know.

Last edited by Alan_Gast : 2nd Jan 2012 at 11:40 AM.

Ah, that's a shame that it took a new EP to make it work, but I can understand why EA won't test the CAW tool for lower gameversions/ EP combos. I'm glad you got it working, Alan_Gast- hopefully we will see another excellent world from you soon!

Eeep - that means a lot coming from you! It's a shame EA has to be so myopic, though. Oh well, at the end of the day I got it working, so I'll just focus on freeing memory on my computer, hehe.

Thank you so much!