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Recovering Broken Games

by Jon (Updated on 2015-10-13)


Disclaimer: Do not use the comments to report or post about your games. Please ask for help on the forums.

What is a broken game?

We define a broken game as one that fails to open, usually accompanied by an error message.

If you are fortunate, a game will fail to open due to a bug in Stencyl. If you are less fortunate, you will have lost some data - usually just a little and can recover the game with some help. This is rare, but it does happen from time ot time.

Either way, ask for help on the forums.

Backing up regularly is the best strategy

Nightly, ZIP up your game and drop it into a backup service like Dropbox. Don't leave your game to fate. Bad things happen unexpectedly. Just do it.

What to do when your game breaks

  1. Don't Panic. Don't blindly reinstall the software. You'll just make things worse.

  2. Don't try to save a game that's been claimed to be broken. Close the app down without saving the game, ZIP the game up in its current state and ask for help on the forums.

  3. If you attempt to roll back to an older copy of your game, file away the newer one, just in case.

Tip: Go to Debug > View > View Folder for this game if you have trouble locating your game on your computer.

What can make a game break?

  • Powering off your computer in the middle of a save.
  • Quitting out of Stencyl forcefully in the middle of a save.

What actually breaks about the game?

In many cases, the main resource listing gets partially written out or corrupted. This prevents the game from recognizing those resources. The resources are all still there, and with a manual repair of the listing, the game can be salvaged with relatively little data lost.

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Disclaimer: Use comments to provide feedback and point out issues with the article (typo, wrong info, etc.). If you're seeking help for your game, please ask a question on the forums. Thanks!

6 Comments

Chris24XD
Questions: What do l do after l back it up (zip it). Also, do l zip the main folder or the .stencyl only?
0 4 years, 1 month ago
nkwade90
hi guy

how and where do i post my broken game how do i turn it into a zip

0 9 years, 5 months ago
GabrielXNZ
Tuve 2 hechos de XMLs corruptos: en ambos casos guarde el juego, luego suspendi la notebook (sin cerrar nada, ni juego ni stencyl), la cual se quedo sin bateria antes de que la vuelva a recuperar. Al encenderla y reabrir Stencyl no pude abrir el juego porque habia XMLs de Scenes corruptos. Eran los archivos de las escenas que habian quedado abiertas.
0 11 years, 6 months ago
johndfg
my kit broke when i was using it to make a game the day after i published it to stencyl.com. ow it wont show up in kits. there is an empty spot where it used to be. how do i do zip? help!

0 11 years, 9 months ago
tlp
My game, mii vs anti mii broke about two week after I published it. Luckily, I had saved all the sprites. For all the other files, however, I had to dig around in Users/tommy/stencylworks.
0 12 years, 1 month ago
rleyfield
Yeah, Could Have Read It Before When My Power Krazy Game Broke. Gonna Go See If It Works Now.
0 12 years, 4 months ago

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