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.