Characters disappearing on game load

I have set up a simple autosave system for my game, but I'm getting an issue where characters are sometimes disappearing when the game is loaded. It happens maybe 10% of the time, has happened to a number of different characters, including the main character. The character will return when one of their random animations is triggered, or, in the case of the main character, when the walking animation is triggered...

Any ideas?

Anything in either of the log files?

P.S: is this for save files generated in a compiled build or via a game run by the editor in which you have potentially edited something in the editor since the save file was created? If you are loading from save files that were created prior to making adjustments to your game then it is possible that there might be some strange / random bugs that could occur due to the xml data in the save file not matching up to the data stored in the ved / vis file(s).

ahhhhhh, yep was running from editor...bug not replicated as yet in compiled game... fingers crossed...

The best approach to using quicksave / autosave files during the development phase is to delete them on game launch so that you only have save files for the current session. Bit of a pain if you are wanting to test things further into the game, but you can always setup a developer interface to quickly change scenes, characters, conditions etc.

So it turned out this issue was indeed down to running updated versions of the game with old save files... So now I'm wondering, will this also become an issue when patching the published game? Or is there a way to avoid this...?

I think it will depend on what the patch entails. If it's new content that has been added then it shouldn't matter too much. I think the missing stuff should be taken care of by the default data in the compiled vis file.

Also exporting everything as individual packages as opposed to compiling everything to the main vis file should reduce the risk of causing bugs due to outdated save files.

Something that could potentially cause an issue is if you edited / removed / renamed existing conditions / values / characters / scenes, etc. as the xml data would be trying to read & apply changes to something that no longer exists. For example, if you were to delete a scene & then remake it, then everything from the scene itself, to everything you added to the scene would have new ID values, which means that all the saved data (in an existing save file) related to that scene would no longer be valid, so the engine may resort to default values set in the vis file, even though the person playing the game may have already done everything in that scene. What I've just said is a theoretical example, but it is something that could potentially happen.

OK, thanks for the info, Lee