MirageUK

Anybody want to provide an unofficial backup of ASA for me to work on? Getting there with single player but think I need to start looking at bigger test data now to see what I might have missed. Thanks in advance

Should be able to continue work on this at the weekend. Few evenings wasted this week trying to build an upgraded PC for my daughter.... turned out to be a faulty motherboard so returning that today and won't get getting another until Saturday evening so got this evening and most of the day tomorrow to work on ASV for ASA.

FYI just as a quick update I managed to get it reading in all primitive data types - strings, numbers etc. but have yet to get it working with arrays and structures.. and arrays or structures and structures or arrays ....... ARK!!!! Will continue to work on it after work this afternoon and let you know how I get on.

Yeah I will try and keep the "releases" updated on my Github. Source code is usually always up to date with the latest that I've tested but I generally only release the binaries to my Google drive with a link share here on the forums. https://github.com/miragedmuk/ASV

Me neither - but we don't have it fully cracked yet so don't get too excited I have got it reading in the objects and the FIRST property.. just got to see what changes are needed to get it loading all properties then I can get the data surfaced up to ASV to do some visual testing / verification.

@BoRGaMeS - I'm aware but concentrating on trying to decipher and bring support for ASA at the moment.

@Nazfera2 It's going to need somebody with more knowledge than I have at the moment. Feel free to have a go but I'm pretty much stuck until the experts out there decipher the file format. ... update... Gotta love the ARK community - somebody has done a lot of work already on some java code to read in the ASA file format. I'll check it out after work this evening and see what I can port into C#. https://github.com/Kakoen/ark-sa-save-tools/tree/master

Still not sure I'm understanding what it is you need. All players with a "lon/lat" value have a "live" body on the map and are already listed in the Players tab regardless of last activity? Players that are not alive "might" have a death cache body/bag in the Dropped Item tab search if it still existed at last save (wasn't eaten or collected)

What do you mean? The players tab already shows player locations? Bodies / Death Drop bags can also be viewed from the Dropped Items tab by selecting "All Players" and "[Death Cache]" as your filters if this is what you mean?.. although it currently seems to show all death caches, not just players atm. Also the copy commands of that tab appear to be broken so I'll fix that in the next release.

4.6.2.6 now available for download. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ej_M3e1uUDLgR5ZAfHUKKJqSsFdE1jN6/view?usp=drive_link Fixes Ignore any properties ASV is unable to read when parsing game object data (unknown mod data ASV doesn't use anyway) @MroczneZakamarki

Unfortunately ASA uses a completely different file storage and format. I've tried investigating to see if I could spot any similarities that I could pick up on but with no real success. I will keep trying but I'm actually enjoying playing the game at the moment so haven't put much more time into it yet.

Something to do with Dino Storage CCA data? Looking into a fix now.

@LustWare that's something I can certainly look into so it runs "silent". @sTv - Unfortunately my skills alone are not enough to provide support for ASA at the moment but ARK has a big mod community and I'm hopeful that between us all we'll figure something out. If we can manage to read in the appropriate game file data I definitely plan on providing support in ASV at some point. I already found myself wanting to load up ASV to see what was going on with the wild spawns on ASA

You can use paths with spaces without any issue so long as you include the quotes. ArkViewer.exe wild "c:\my input folder goes here\MyMap.ark" "c:\another long folder name with spaces\wild.json"

Welcome to the original world of ARK - where you had to have no life if you wanted the best imprinted Dinos and were up all hours of the night on a timer to feed and imprint your virtual pet babies At least they didn't revert to the old Kibble system - so you don't have to have a full farm of dinos in breeding sheds to get your egg supplies.

Sorry I can't be more help. Maybe see if any host is offering x days free trial or cheap rental for a few days.. trim it down on there then download it

Not sure if there's a linux server available yet but they released a windows dedicated server which can now be accessed via steamcmd and anonymous login afaik.

Unfortunately not - I found it was actually more efficient to run it as a local dedicated server to clean things up over RCON. Then move that into your single player to go in-game and play the map.

4.6.2.5 now available for download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dYHVK4OBpDpro6ccCUGbWv9HMb6KdfBp/view?usp=drive_link Features Now reads from .gz compressed files to save you a step in extracting your backups. Updated FTP and File selection options to allow gz files to be selected. Painting viewer. Only a single picture at a time atm but I may review this later and make it into a proper Gallery type view. The DELETE button will attempt to find any .pnt files not referenced in the save and move them into a new sub-folder for you to delete as you like @darkradeon Fixes Tribe last active - filtered out any time calculations that would result in a future date. @SpenceFoxtrot Structure selection / multi-selection. No longer attempts to parse as Tamed Creature causing a crash. @MroczneZakamarki

.... and so it begins. 30 minutes of gameplay and already investigating the file format Seems to be saved in a SQL Lite database format where the game objects are stored as BLOB (binary data) with key/value pairs in a "Game" table. Time to start work but I'll see what I can work out as soon as possible in any spare time I get.

Bug in my selected structures code attempting to parse from the grid of tamed. I'll fix in the next build. Dates are determined based on the last write file time of the .ark or .arktribe file plus a number of seconds stored in the game data. I'll double check after work but I'm guessing that these "tribes" originally had a different timestamp on the .arktribe file but since it was migrated into the main .ark file the timestamp calculations are incorrect. I will see if there is any other way to determine the original file time of the .arktribe data that it should use.

Just a quick update on my current work in progress: Addition of Painting Gallery: A little more work to do but it will also include option to DELETE ALL .pnt files on disk that are not reference in the game save data. @darkradeon

4.6.2.4 now available for download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1F0jq96nexltiGOZ-n38quxa9fxAgdxko/view?usp=drive_link Changes All dropdown copy/rcon commands now sorted alphabetically. Defensive code added to prevent crash when loading old save format (v9) with unreadable cryopod property data. @SpikeArtisan

@SpikeArtisan I didn't have chance last night and working this morning so won't be able to check it til after work today but appears to be some unreadable data for a stored meghatherium relating to ancestor data. Will investigate after work and try come up with a solution for you. What mods do you use on this save? ..edit.. I checked the location of this "Megatherium" in-game and it doesn't actually exist so appears to be some bad data - unless there are mods other than S+ and Better Storage in-use and I just can't see them in-game. Either way I will add some defensive code to continue loading the remaining file and ignore such instances after I finish work today.

Log files only hint at what went wrong. To determine the real reason I would need a copy of your .ark save file to step through the code and debug what the issue is.