PLEASE HELP! PROJECT DELETED ITSELF

[lightningburrito]

Hi, please dont worry about spelling mistakes in this, im typing this extremely fast and not looking for typos, as it appears that my game has deleted itself. I took a break from working on my project about 20 days ago. I came back today to start working again, and its gone. I opened Renpy and its just gone. I looked for it on my desktop, and couldn't find it anywhere. I started freaking out and im really scared. I put a lot of time, effort and money into this project and if I can't get it back I dont know what ill do. So far I found a file with the same name under "Local Disk C -> Users -> My name -> AppData -> Roaming -> RenPy -> backups." However, it doesnt have any images in it like I was using, and a bunch of script files. I'm not sure what to do. I also found this. "Local Disk C -> Users -> My name -> Desktop -> renpy-6.99.14-sdk -> tmp ->" Except this file doesn't have anything in it except for a notepad doc that is titled navigation.json . Please help me I can't lose this project.

[Imperf3kt]

Where did you place your projects directory? It is possible that Ren'Py was updated or modified and has simply lost the link to the projects directory.

[lightningburrito]

My projects directory was just my desktop, I had a folder on my desktop containing my game and everything and its just gone. I really dont know what happened.

[Chekhov]

About 6 months ago I deleted my entire desktop with a series of three accidental keypresses. I would recommend in the future not keeping your project just on your deskop, as it's the most vulnerable place for such a mistake.

Second if you put significant work and time into something, it's worth making backups to prevent that.

As to your current situation, have you tried doing a windows search to see if it's elsewhere? Have you checked inside the recycler bin (maybe it was deleted just off the surface?)

Is the project the only thing gone from your desktop? It's possible that you're logged in with a different user or somehow other windows user shenanigans took place. If you got to C:\windows\users\ (may differ according to windows version) you have a list of different users and they all have their own desktop. Have you checked all desktops?

The next two options are using deletion recovery software (even when you delete something, it's not really removed from the hard disk, it's only cleared for getting new info. This means that everything that happens, including surfing here might destroy more and more data, so it's worth doing that as soon as possible, but with low chance of success.

Then finally there's the option for expensive recovery. There are devices that are able to retrieve data even if it's been overwritten. This is a slow and expensive process and typically costs something like $500 dollars and is best done by an expert. They can even retrieve data from burned or waterdamaged hard drives sometimes.

This is the best help I can think of for your situation. My sympathies.

[lightningburrito]

I checked and its not on any other users desktop... However, as I said I was able to find a folder called backups in Ren'py, it doesn't have any of my images that were in my game file and has a bunch of strange documents on it. But when it says "Date Last Modified" It was the date of when I last coded. I think I found this file, although I don't know If I should change the directory to that because, what if I have to extract it or something. I just really don't want to do something and if it goes wrong not be able to undo it. Thanks for your lengthy reply as It was actually quite helpful. If I have to resort to expensive recovery I will, but if there is any way where I don't have to, that would be great.

[Imperf3kt]

While trying to fix a different issue, I remembered that Ren'Py stores a copy of all built games.
Go to your install location for Ren'Py, and look for a folder called tmp.
You should find a copy of your game in the exact state it was in, when you last "ran" it.

[lightningburrito]

Hi! I found this file, but it looks slightly different then what it normally looks like. Instead of images there’s these weird files with random letters and numbers. Maybe it’s just how RenPy saves my images. So now that I have this what should I do.

[Imperf3kt]

Without knowing what you see, I couldn't say what it is or what you should/can do, sorry.
Can you send a screenshot of your entire screen showing where you are looking, and what file/s you are seeing?

[lightningburrito]

https://youtu.be/D75PhY8mrUE

I made a 20 sec video on everything I see just to make it easier for you convenience.
Thanks a lot by the way, this means a lot.

[Imperf3kt]

Those are basically cache files. You don't want those.

Try looking in this area:
C:\Program Files (x86)\renpy\tmp

[trooper6]

I went and found the backups file on my Mac and checked to see what was in there. Lots of backup .rpy files! Woot! But...no images or audio files. So I feel like the OP is going to have to go into some sort of recovery program.

For future reference: Make backups of your projects...and actually make regular backups of all your computer files.

Also, in my experience, files don't just spontaneously delete themselves...so I'd look into what happened so whatever it is doesn't happen again.

[lightningburrito]

Okay great! I still have the images as I shared them online, so now that I found this file how do I get it back into RenPy? Do I just drag it into my desktop? Or do I have to extract something? Or am I missing something altogether? Anyways thanks for the help all!