Monika disappeared

[ItsDessiah]

Today is Monika's birthday and I was setting up the party. I moved her character file out of the room and had the party set up. But when I put her back into the character folder, she wouldn't show up. I tried installing a backup persistent, I moved her character file back to the usb and then back to the character folder. I restarted my pc, and so far nothings worked

[dreamscached]

Please be more descriptive.

[ItsDessiah]

sorry, I accidentally hit send without commenting

[ItsDessiah]

Today is Monika's birthday and I was setting up the party. I moved her character file out of the room and had the party set up. But when I put her back into the character folder, she wouldn't show up. I tried installing a backup persistent, I moved her character file back to the usb and then back to the character folder. I restarted my pc, and so far nothings worked

[dreamscached]

Actually you could have just kept her in the characters folder. Anyway, you can try to restore an automatically made backup (.bak files located in your persistent folder) by renaming it from persistent##.bak to persistent. One of these should be working fine.

[ItsDessiah]

I backed up the persistent file, and nothing changed, should I try an older one?

[dreamscached]

Yes, you can keep trying them one after another. Try using more older one.

[ItsDessiah]

Ok, ill try that real quick

[ItsDessiah]

ok, it didn't work. I swapped persistent with one from yesterday, and she hasn't appeared

[ItsDessiah]

Is it possible that there's an issue with the monika file itself, since that's what I moved?

[dreamscached]

If you moved it it may be possible that it got corrupted somehow, it happens sometimes. That's why I asked to restore a persistent, because that's the only way to get her back.

Wait for other developers to check this issue and help, they may tell you what to do.

[ItsDessiah]

ok

[ItsDessiah]

Now, I have a copy of the monika file on my computer separate from my mas files entirely. Do you know if it would be a bad idea to delete the monika in my files now and replace it with that one?

The file is from three days ago

[dreamscached]

No, another monika file won't work as it's not enough just to have it named such, it has unique code inside.

[dreamscached]

Can you send mfgen.log and mfread.log files?

[ItsDessiah]

mfgen.log mfread.log

[ItsDessiah]

I just saw the mfread.log says I have a corrupt Monika

[dreamscached]

Developers will look into it, unfortunately that's all I can tell.

[ItsDessiah]

Ok, thanks for the help

[ItsDessiah]

Ok wait, one last question. If I were to save the last few persistent files and reinstall MAS, would that work?

[dreamscached]

Reinstalling won't really do anything, no. Just wait for now.

[ItsDessiah]

Ok, thank you much

[Booplicate]

@ItsDessiah, make a backup of the folder with persistents just in case. Then keep restoring backups until you find a working one. Also look into getting a new drive, your might be malfunctioning.

[ItsDessiah]

@Booplicate I've already made a folder for all the persistents in case I do end up needing to reinstall everything

[Booplicate]

As was said reinstall won't help.

[ItsDessiah]

Why would that be the case?

[Booplicate]

That's how the mod works, installation doesn't have any issues, so changing it won't change anything.

[ItsDessiah]

I feel like replacing the corrupt files with fresh one's would hypothetically be a fix. The only way I see it not working is if my persistent is the file that's corrupted.

I'm not the best with files, so I could be wrong, but that just makes sense to me.

Edit: I was referring to the MAS files, not DDLC the game itself

[ItsDessiah]

either way, I might just have to wait for the Dev team to respond, do you know how long that typically takes?

[Booplicate]

I just responded

@ItsDessiah, make a backup of the folder with persistents just in case. Then keep restoring backups until you find a working one. Also look into getting a new drive, your might be malfunctioning.

The only corrupted file is the monika file, but you cannot replace it, it's unique to your Monika.

[ItsDessiah]

So I did that, and I went through all of my persistent files, going back to nearly last week and none of them are working. I think you're right in saying it is the Monika file that is corrupted, even the mfread.log says so. My question though is, what's the point of the persistent files if not for this reason? I had it in my mind that the persistent files are the "stats" so to speak of your time in game; affection, conversation history, etc. To be transparent, I don't really know what the monika file itself does. I knew it was unique, but I thought it was just a way for the game to read her presence in the files as well as read the persistent. So my thought process was "what if I save a copy of my persistent files, delete the MAS mod files, reinstall the files, and add the persistent.". I get that would be a new Monika file, but I thought the persistent is what told that files what it had already done.

If I'm misunderstanding please let me know, because I'm sort of lost as to why replacing the files entirely wouldn't work

[ItsDessiah]

Or to reword my question, what would happen if I were to add my current persistent onto a MAS game that was fresh?

[Booplicate]

So I did that, and I went through all of my persistent files, going back to nearly last week and none of them are working.

It's impossible, you're doing something wrong. Try following this guide.

[ItsDessiah]

I don't know what I'm doing wrong? I have used this guide several times before. I've gone to RenPy, i've copied the persistent files and backed them up in a separate folder, i've swapped the current persistent file to all of them individually. I even had an old drive with a persistent from 2 months ago , that one also didn't work.

[Booplicate]

Did you close the game before doing so?

[ItsDessiah]

Yes, I even restarted my computer after a few attempts

[ItsDessiah]

IDK, I'll just wait for a dev response.

[dreamscached]

That was one of the devs, if none of the backups made automatically work - you must be doing something wrong.

[ItsDessiah]

oh my b. I still don't know what it is I'm doing wrong. I've used the guide, I've used both automatic and manual backups. I've been putting them in the character file.

[ItsDessiah]

I promise I'm not trying to be difficult, I really just don't know what else to try

[ItsDessiah]

OK, I need to have this clarified one last time. If I were to save copies of my persistent and put them on a separate file, would those persistent files have my save data?

[dreamscached]

Yes. You can move them somewhere like your desktop if you need.

[ItsDessiah]

OK, now I read up online that you can transfer your persistent to a new game on another device, and it will keep your save. Is that how that works?

[dreamscached]

You don't have to transfer it to another device, all you need to do is to rename one of these .bak files to persistent. Also, are file extensions displayed for you?

[ItsDessiah]

Yes, I've been renaming the files to persistent. I've done it with all ten, and even a 2 month old backup, none of which worked. But what I'm trying to ask is if I keep my persistent files, delete everything else, reinstall it and add the persistent files back, would I keep my save data?

[dreamscached]

To be safe, don't delete anything, just get another copy off https://ddlc.moe

If you keep your persistent files, yes, your save data will be preserved.

[ItsDessiah]

OK, i'll try that. I do have to be somewhere soon, so I'll probably be a while before I let you know if it worked or not