Doom Builder 2 Deletes Wads

Doom Builder 2 is something I've used for about a year now. I started a new wad and made 2 levels in it over the course of about 3 days. Today I finished E1M2 in it, I pressed save, tested it, then closed Doom Builder and my laptop. About 3-4 hours later I started my laptop, and before doing anything else, opened Doom Builder. I opened the wad, but the format was blank, and E1M1 and E1M2 were also missing. I started the wad in ZDoom and it was just the default levels now. This has happened to me a lot over the past year, does anybody have a fix?

Well, the last official version of DB2 is r1553, which was published 6 years ago.

Over time it was found that some things in the editor did not work as intended.

At that time MaxED took over development of the editor and created GZDoom Builder.

But, while MaxED added many useful features, mainly the GZDoom specific features

were added to the ZDOOM feature set and some bugfixes, the complexity of

the editor caused some more things to go awry. The last official version of GZDB was

version r2787, about a year ago. Then ZZYZX took over the development of GZDB

in the form of bugfixes and named the editor GZDoom Builder - Bugfix, now at

version r3041. You can imagine that development from r1553 to r3041 is a huge step.

Independently from the above, Anotak gave us DBX, which fixed many, many bugs

which were in DB2.

So, my recommendation is to use either GZDBBF (which is available in 32 or 64 versions)

or DBX.

7 hours ago, Kappes Buur said:

So, my recommendation is to use either GZDBBF (which is available in 32 or 64 versions)

or DBX.

Yeah I figured Doom Builder 2 was quite aged. I got Doom Builder X now so I hope it doesn't do that again.

Doom Builder creates backups of each wad, up to 3 of them. Are they all blank? I have never had this problem but I've had to restore from backups before for other reasons.

1 hour ago, iori said:

Doom Builder creates backups of each wad, up to 3 of them. Are they all blank? I have never had this problem but I've had to restore from backups before for other reasons.

I didn't actually realize that. (Okay so this is weird but) 2 were blank, and 1 of them only had E1M1. Regardless I'm sort of done with that project considering they were rather amateur levels. But I have had this problem where Doom Builder deleted entire megawads of mine with around 18 or 19 levels in them, which is why I made the post, to find a fix. I just moved to Doom Builder X and am hoping it works just fine.

If that happens to you multiple times, but to no one else, then maybe the problem is on your end. For example make sure to not have the WAD open in any other tool.

With any editor, a good general rule is to make yourself some backups. Here's how I do it:

I make a directory structure on the hard drive, as \Project name\Working. So, for a new project "MyWAD", I'd make:

\MyWAD\Working

I use that folder for my first edit.

Next time I go to edit, in Windows Explorer, I copy the Working folder, and immediately Paste it, and end up with this:

\MyWAD\Working
\MyWAD\Copy of Working

Then I, rename the "Copy of Working" folder to today's date, in YYYY-MM-DD format, making sure to fill in leading zeros for months 01 thru 09, or days 01 thru 09. This ensures that alphabetical or numerical sorting on filenames always works properly. So I end up with:

\MyWAD\2018-12-21
\MyWAD\Working

By the way, if I do multiple edit's on the same day, I add a "_01", then "_02", etc. So, for 3 edits on the 21st, and 2 edits on the 22nd, I'll have:

\MyWAD\2018-12-21
\MyWAD\2018-12-21_01
\MyWAD\2018-12-21_02
\MyWAD\2018-12-22
\MyWAD\Working

Most editors remembers the Working folder, so it's really an easy system to use. If the editor decides to delete or corrupt my work in the "Working" folder, it is easy to revert to the last good version. And if I screw up something that was good a few days ago, I can always go back to that day, and get my old work back.

Once the project's done, you can reclaim the hard drive space by cleaning up the (date) folders, leaving "Working". But, I leave the old folders until the project is done. You never know when you'll want to go back to an old version, for something.

I recommend using this system for *any* project - it's saved my bacon countless times! Don't let sketchy apps destroy your hard work!