(Solved) Project stopped opening

Hello. I was working on my game about 15 minutes ago. It was working fine. Now it won’t open. Could this be because GDevelop just updated? Other projects open. It also gives me some messages when I try to open it. The first one says:

“The project file appears to be malformed, but an autosave file exists (backup made automatically by GDevelop). Would you like to try to load it instead?”

Then if I click OK or Cancel it says:

“Unable to open the project.
Check that the file exists, that this file is a proper game created with GDevelop and that you have the authorizations to open it”

I can see the file in the folder so it must exist, right? I should have authorization to open it because I was using it 15 minutes ago and I created it. Is there anything I can do?

1 Like

Hi,
Check that you are trying to open the right file. Some projects use other json files and they can get mixed up :blush:
It’s surprising that both files would be corrupted.
What you can do is move the json game file to your desktop to keep a backup and rename the autosave file (remove the .autosave) then try to load it in GDevelop.
Next solution would be to share your game file with us and we’ll look inside to see what’s wrong.

OK, thank you. How do I share the game with you?

Either zip the whole project, or if it’s big, only the json file, and send it on easyupload.io or similar.

I sent you a file with Google Drive. When this originally happened I opened an old copy of the game and worked on that instead. Then this problem happened again. I noticed that the files that don’t open say they have 0 bites and the ones that do open have some number of bites. I don’t know how they can have 0 bites.

The file you sent is completely empty, so I can’t do anything with it. :confused:
So, you think GDevelop emptied your file? :open_mouth:
Can you confirm what version of GDevelop you use, and your operating system?

Do you still have the file for which GDevelop said “it appears to be malformed”? If so, share it.
Did you open the file in a text editor at some point to edit it yourself?

Hello, yes I think GDevelop somehow emptied my file. It has happened to me with this game and an older copy of the game.
I’m using macOS Sierra version 10.12.6 and GDevelop 5 version 5.0.0-beta95.
I didn’t open the text editor between when the game was working and when it stopped opening. I just left the computer for a couple hours and when I came back it wouldn’t open. I don’t know how to use a text editor anway.
I don’t seem to get the “it appears to be malformed” message anymore so I’m not sure which file that was.

There is also another problem happening with my game. One of my global variables says it is a structure variable but it has no child variables and I can’t assign it a value. When I try to delete it I get a blank screen:


I’m not sure if this is related to the original problem.

Currently I’m just using an older copy of my game and redoing all the stuff that I lost when my project stopped opening. At least I still have the images that I made. Now I’m just saving my game with a new name periodically so if one of the files stops opening I’ll still have another one that was recently saved.

Thanks for reporting!
I was able to reproduce the blank GDevelop when deleting a global variable.
It shouldn’t be related to the other issue, but I’ll forward anyway, and we’ll see what the devs say :slight_smile:

Oh OK. Hopefully they can fix it. Thanks.

The ‘variable crash’ should be fixed for next version, but the devs are not sure it can be related to the other issue.

The malformed file can be because the file isn’t in utf-8, but it can be one million reasons too.
Try to reproduce the bug.
If you catch it in video it’s better.
If you have again this error forward the game.json

Ok, thanks. :slight_smile: