unstable game deleted my tames.

[Yutyrannusfan14]

First, my argy got deleted after pressing download on the obelisk terminal. Secondly, after transferring my crystal wyvern, the game crashed and when I came back on it was completely deleted, I looked everywhere I could. Is there any way to get them back? I play on Xbox one single player and I can’t find an option to revert back to an old save file.

[Pipinghot]

56 minutes ago, Yutyrannusfan14 said:

First, my argy got deleted after pressing download on the obelisk terminal. Secondly, after transferring my crystal wyvern, the game crashed and when I came back on it was completely deleted, I looked everywhere I could. Is there any way to get them back? I play on Xbox one single player and I can’t find an option to revert back to an old save file.

The path to the saved directory will look something like this:

..\ARK\ShooterGame\Saved\SavedArks

I'm not sure where the ARK directory gets installed on XBox, but once you find "ARK" then the rest of it will follow.

 

Under that "SavedArks" directory there will be sub-directories for your various maps, like so:

../SavedArks (for The Island)

../TheCenterSavedArksLocal

../Aberration_PSavedArksLocal

and so on.

 

Inside of the directory for each map there will be a few save files. For example, under my directory for Scorched Earth I have the following

../ScorchedEarth_P.ark

../ScorchedEarth_P_13.05.2020_08.25.31.ark

../ScorchedEarth_P_AntiCorruptionBackup.bak

../ScorchedEarth_P_NewLaunchBackup.bak

 

Each of those files is a different automatic backup with a different time stamp. When something goes wrong you can go back and find the most recent backup file and copy that over your current .ark file. Or, let's say it happened a couple of days ago, look for the last file that was closest to when the problem happened and use that file.

 

[DirkInSA]

14 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

Inside of the directory for each map there will be a few save files. For example, under my directory for Scorched Earth I have the following

../ScorchedEarth_P.ark

../ScorchedEarth_P_13.05.2020_08.25.31.ark

../ScorchedEarth_P_AntiCorruptionBackup.bak

../ScorchedEarth_P_NewLaunchBackup.bak

I am not convinced that single player creates those "timed" backup copies - with my settings I only have the base map, anticorruption, and newlaunch files. And the first two are unfortunately overwritten at each entry to that map. Sure on a server (and maybe if running a non-dedicated server - I cannot speak to that) the timed saves are created, but not in my installation of single player (which is Steam PC, not X-Box).

I THINK , single player "stuff", perhaps including Obelisk uploads, are saved in
..\ARK\ShooterGame\Saved\LocalProfiles\PlayerLocalData.arkprofile
(I cannot find any other file that might be shared between maps on a single player installation)
But again - there is no auto backup of that file on my installation.
 

So in short @Yutyrannusfan14 - I am afraid that your kit is probably gone forever.

[Pipinghot]

4 hours ago, DirkInSA said:

I am not convinced that single player creates those "timed" backup copies - with my settings I only have the base map, anticorruption, and newlaunch files.

For what it's worth, I'm not sure what triggers the extra timed backups in single-player. The only thing I can say with certainty is that I have them under multiple maps and I've never used my PC as a server, neither dedicated nor non-dedicated. I don't even play the game in single-player, but what I do is use single-player periodically as a place where I can use admin commands to experiment with ideas for building, trying out mods, etc.

Under my Aberration directory, just as one example, I have multiple timed saves which correspond to the time period when I was using my single player to experiment with a lot of ideas for Aberration. So it's entirely possible I did something to trigger those extra saves by accident, since I don't play the game in single-player I've never investigated what causes those files to be created or not. I know I have them, I know I didn't use my PC as a server, but I honestly don't know what I did to make these files happen.

4 hours ago, DirkInSA said:

So in short @Yutyrannusfan14 - I am afraid that your kit is probably gone forever.

@Yutyrannusfan14Dirk makes a good point, you might not have those extra files, maybe I unknowingly did something to trigger extra files in my save directories. If that's the case you still have other options.

Part of what makes SP in ARK better than a lot of games is that you have admin control over your single-player game. You can use Console Commands to create/spawn just about anything you want to.
1) You can use the "SpawnDino" command to spawn a wild dino of the level you want and them tame it like a wild one.

2) You can go into invisible mode, find a wild dino you like and use the "ForceTame" command.

3) For species that can't be tames as adults you can use "GMSummon" command to spawn it in already tamed.

These won't create dinos that are exact recreations of the ones you lost, but they make it really easy to fix glitches with the game. There's no need to allow the game to steal your time from a glitch when you can use a console command to get back what you lost, and then you can go back to playing the game normally.

https://ark.wiki.gg/wiki/Console_commands

[GrumpyBear]

One website I found that seems to work for me 

https://arkids.net/command/spawnexactdino

You can build a command to make the exact dino in case you lose one, you can rebuild it exactly if you know the stats and colors already.

 

There's also Ark Smart Breeder.   Since you are an xbox user, you can take pictures of your dino inventories or simply input the info manually. 

It can rebuild those animals with this same command the website is allowing you to tailor.   

For us PC steam users, its super super easy since all the info from our dinos can be exported directly from the game.

SpawnExactDino "Blueprint'/Game/Genesis/Dinos/Shapeshifter/Shapeshifter_Small/Shapeshifter_Small_Character_BP.Shapeshifter_Small_Character_BP'" "" 1 420 0 "59,59,62,62,62,58,57,0" "0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0" "7-11 slushy mix" 0 0 "" "" "" 0 0 "81,74,19,7,91,83" 94859099090837202 0 0 20 20

 

[Yutyrannusfan14]

5 hours ago, GrumpyBear said:

One website I found that seems to work for me 

https://arkids.net/command/spawnexactdino

You can build a command to make the exact dino in case you lose one, you can rebuild it exactly if you know the stats and colors already.

 

There's also Ark Smart Breeder.   Since you are an xbox user, you can take pictures of your dino inventories or simply input the info manually. 

It can rebuild those animals with this same command the website is allowing you to tailor.   

For us PC steam users, its super super easy since all the info from our dinos can be exported directly from the game.

SpawnExactDino "Blueprint'/Game/Genesis/Dinos/Shapeshifter/Shapeshifter_Small/Shapeshifter_Small_Character_BP.Shapeshifter_Small_Character_BP'" "" 1 420 0 "59,59,62,62,62,58,57,0" "0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0" "7-11 slushy mix" 0 0 "" "" "" 0 0 "81,74,19,7,91,83" 94859099090837202 0 0 20 20

 

I’ll consider trying this :0 thank you!

[Yutyrannusfan14]

18 hours ago, DirkInSA said:

I am not convinced that single player creates those "timed" backup copies - with my settings I only have the base map, anticorruption, and newlaunch files. And the first two are unfortunately overwritten at each entry to that map. Sure on a server (and maybe if running a non-dedicated server - I cannot speak to that) the timed saves are created, but not in my installation of single player (which is Steam PC, not X-Box).

I THINK , single player "stuff", perhaps including Obelisk uploads, are saved in
..\ARK\ShooterGame\Saved\LocalProfiles\PlayerLocalData.arkprofile
(I cannot find any other file that might be shared between maps on a single player installation)
But again - there is no auto backup of that file on my installation.
 

So in short @Yutyrannusfan14 - I am afraid that your kit is probably gone forever.

Damn I really hope that’s not the case  thank you anyways though!  

[DirkInSA]

---EDIT --- Ignore this information - it is a setting where the server flushes the game state to disk periodically - instead of only at game "shut-down". There is another setting somewhere that sets the copy of save files .....

 

--- EDIT 2 ---

OK @Pipinghot now I am REALLY curious about how your single player game does auto time save file copies. I have now spent a good bit scratching in both the various ini files, and even had a bit of a squiz in the ShooterGame & ShooterGameServer .exe objects. And I have found nothing that is useful. So how did you do it

 

15 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

For what it's worth, I'm not sure what triggers the extra timed backups in single-player.

So @PipinghotI took effort to go do some "diff" across my single player ini files and the files that exist in my sever PC. And I found it !!!!

In GameUserSettings.ini

under the [ServerSettings] section ....

AutoSavePeriodMinutes=15.000000

And away you go. For those peeps that do really use single player - this might well be a good setting to include (although every 15 minuets is maybe a bit excessive). I, like you, only use single player as a testing sandbox, and do not really play to progress there ... But nevertheless this may be of help to someone somewhere.

@Yutyrannusfan14 this will not help you with your current issues - but it knowing the general "troubles" of Ark, it may have merit in being set to come around future glitches.