Real Life Nightmares: The stories of what could have been, but will never be

[simplethinker]

This has happened to any programmer at least once:  You're working on a project when, suddenly and without cause, something happens;  your batteries die, the calc crashes, a friend presses one too many buttons- fate has conspired against you .  Everything you had, gone

We may never know how many projects have been lost.  But here, in this thread, some record of them will remain.  If this has ever happened to you and a large part of your life was lost, post what it was, how it was destroyed, and any lessons you've learned or wisdom to share.


A compilation of ways to ensure you never have to post an obituary in this thread:
- Backup often
- ...that means on a computer as well
- Use groups
- Backup multiple ways (USB, email, etc...)
- Don't rely heavily on commands such as Omnicalc's restoreMem(
- Test ASM programs on an emulator
- If someone clears your memory once, don't give them a chance to do it again.


Total casualties so far [as of 14 June 2009]: 24 confirmed

[noahbaby94]

I've lost some progress on games but usually I have back ups.

[DJ Omnimaga]

the first time I got rickrolled I got depressed and deleted everything I was working on on my calculator including ROL4

nah just kidding, my worst case was Illusiat 2002, a 79 KB RPG that got about 300 hours of work (if not more) within 2 months and was meant to be the first Illusiat game to be split into chapters (5 were planned, but part 1 only contained the intro and one single map). I was 65% complete when mirage os corrupted my archive and I was forced to do a full memory reset. I lost the entire game and didn't touched a calculator for almost 2 months afterward. Unfortunately I didn't have a PC link cable and didn't even have a computer back then so I had no way to back up since my bro needed his calc and couldn,t keep a copy of my game. The day after this happened I seeked for a second calc for backup purposes (since I couldn't afford to spend money on a PC back then)

[Builderboy]

So i had been working on Portal 2 for several weeks, and while this may not sound like a lot, it was quite a large and complicated engine.  I had created most of the levels and was starting to work on the dialog.  Then one fateful day, the two idiots from physics class stole my backpack, took my calculator and did a full memory reset. (Unfortunately they too are programmers, and know how to bypass most security programs)

I wasn't too distraught over this loss, i had written documents to guide me, and i had already created the engine once before, how hard could it be.  (And i invested in the best security program I could find).   So i recreated the engine, better than before.  It took less memory, less variables, was faster, and had more features.  I copied all the levels from the documents I had, and I had gotten even further than I had before.  And then one fateful day... well the same thing happened.  They bypassed my security and deleted all memory.

I too, spent a long while away from my calculator, but I'm back at it, giving it another go, and hopefully this third re-write will be better than both of the previous.
   

[Drak]

I was working on a project one time, Legend of Zelda Online - The Sanctuary of the Old Gods, when I accidentally left the window open. It was so cold outside, and there was a storm brewing. Like a gust of wind extinuising a flame on a candle, jack frost snuffed out the power from my computer before I could save and bu

(edit, added a hyperlink for those unfamilar with what just happened...)

[simplethinker]

I was working on a project one time, Legend of Zelda Online - The Sanctuary of the Old Gods, when I accidentally left the window open. It was so cold outside, and there was a storm brewing. Like a gust of wind extinuising a flame on a candle, jack frost snuffed out the power from my computer before I could save and bu

So you were unable to backup on the computer, and then shortly thereafter something happened to your calculator?

[Iambian]

Thankfully, nothing has happened to me as of yet. Since very few of my projects are built on-calc, I haven't had much of a problem with calc corruption. Back in my "earlier" calc programming days, in which I did build stuff on-calc, I've been blessed with a calc to computer link cable for the entire experience, so I've been backing up. Most of what I did "lose" was at most an hour or two worth of work.

In this distant "future", I personally don't miss anything that I've lost in this way. As for my ASM projects, I keep multiple backups where I deem useful. Multiple backups of my entire development environment has been made to several flashdrives and a few computers (some of them date back so long that I'll look over them just for nostalgia purposes).

Currently, CaDan is protected in part by a not-so-recent email to myself with relation to the project. A copy was made to my 16GB flashdrive and an "active" copy is always in my laptop, sitting both in the dev folder and in the SD card. The idea for using the SD card came from a friend in the math lab, who reminded me that laptop harddrives are notoriously flaky. This one hasn't caused problems yet, but I still keep backups of full source on my SD card.

Backups include WinRAR'd "past" versions of the program, with a current version sitting as-is.

Celtic III is, in part, backed up by multiple flashdrives, and the postings on UTI. Retracing my steps through the various versions shouldn't be that hard, in the event the most recent one is lost.

In short, even though you'll hopefully never use them, ensure that your backups have backups in all sorts of medium, including USB flashdrives, SD cards, multiple computer HDD's, email accounts, and if you want open-source, full source posted to the forum(s) of your choice. Especially the forums, since you can pretty much go anywhere and work on your program, with or without your dev environment.

If it's an on-calc thing, ensure that you regularly "group" changes (which saved me many times). If you have a cable, transfer those groups out and onto a computer. Never allow anyone to touch your calculator. If someone wanted to borrow your calculator, the following excuse has usually worked for me : "Can't let you borrow this. It's in development." If that doesn't work a stern "No." works after that.

[kalan_vod]

Working on many projects, played someones game (that required to archive some programs). Once finished with the game, I went to do a RAM clear but accidentally hit Archive reset....Lost 12 projects during that time...Haha

[DJ Omnimaga]

ouch I remember that I think it was Zelda DLQ, right? But didn't DLQ actually crashed your calc instead? I remember you badmouthed me about it a long while ago (I think like 3 or 4 years ago) but then I simply pointed out the rule mentionned in the readme saying "I'm not going to hold responsible for any damage this game might cause to your calculator. Use at your own risk." That sucked though because I think a lot of your projects were nearing completion, especially Res and DDR and I was personally looking forward for them a lot.

I actually never found the source of that crash. I never even got a crash during making this game. I think it might have been caused by using MirageOs or xLIB after/before running the game, which had major incompatibility with Zapi asm lib

[Galandros]

I didn't make big projects yet but I always have some group, a backup in the computer.

I have two external hard drives with backups. And sometimes my flash drive with a latest backup when I have hours of work...

e-mail, I don't use... But I though of using FTP. (and access it on many computers on the world with Internet) xD

Omnicalc RestoreMem saved me 1 or 2 times. But not always... It was just a little thing though.

@BuilderBoy: you are in a harsh school for calculator development.
@Iambian: what percentage of people have to hear the "No."?

[Iambian]

(...)
@Iambian: what percentage of people have to hear the "No."?

Roughly in the 1 percentile. When I did serious development on-calc, everyone knew I'd go absolutely crazy if anything happened to what I was working on, so they wouldn't ask me more than once if I gave my "traditional" response. Took a little while before those asking knew that was my form of "No. Quit asking."

Your mileage may vary. Truly depends on how you are seen at whatever school you go at.

Me? Won't get into those details.

[Art_of_camelot]

I've lost a couple of projects, but nothing memorable (as I can't seem to recall anything specific at the moment). Usually this was due to some ASM program or another freezing and causing me a RAM clear. This was back on my old TI-83 before I had a link cable, and archive memory didnt exist.
@Drak: Wait, did you just say Candlejack? You shouldn't just throw that name around casually! Oh Shi...

[DJ Omnimaga]

i never lent my calc to anyone at school to try my game, because i know some assholes could have deleted the entire memory

[kalan_vod]

ouch I remember that I think it was Zelda DLQ, right? But didn't DLQ actually crashed your calc instead? I remember you badmouthed me about it a long while ago (I think like 3 or 4 years ago) but then I simply pointed out the rule mentionned in the readme saying "I'm not going to hold responsible for any damage this game might cause to your calculator. Use at your own risk." That sucked though because I think a lot of your projects were nearing completion, especially Res and DDR and I was personally looking forward for them a lot.

I actually never found the source of that crash. I never even got a crash during making this game. I think it might have been caused by using MirageOs or xLIB after/before running the game, which had major incompatibility with Zapi asm lib

Could have been omnicalc, since I was working with the xLIB program + omnicalc at the time...

[DJ Omnimaga]

Oh ok I see.

Also I never found Omnicalc RestoreMem function to be very reliable. Some people says it saved them many times, but I tried it often before on my SE and sometimes everything would be corrupted with programs weighing at like 50000 bytes and stuff like that