Saved Games Crash

Age of Empires II: DE II - Report a Bug
1

:arrow_forward: GAME INFORMATION

:point_down: These details are CRITICAL; DO NOT skip them or your issue may not be reviewed.

  • GAME BUILD #: Age of Empires II Definitive Edition
  • GAME PLATFORM: Steam
  • OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 10

:arrow_forward: ISSUE EXPERIENCED

:point_down: DESCRIBE THE ISSUE IN DETAIL (below). LIMIT TO ONE BUG PER THREAD.
Loading saved games created prior to today causes the game to crash from loading screen. I can create new games and they don’t crash (so far), but none of my old saved games will load anymore.

:arrow_forward: FREQUENCY OF ISSUE

:point_down: How often does the issue occur? CHOSE ONE; DELETE THE REST!

  • 100% of the time / matches I play (ALWAYS)

:arrow_forward: REPRODUCTION STEPS

:point_down: List CLEAR and DETAILED STEPS we can take to reproduce the issue ourselves… Be descriptive!

Here’s the steps to reproduce the issue:

  1. Load a saved game created prior to today.

:arrow_forward: EXPECTED RESULT

:point_down: What was SUPPOSED to happen if the bug you encountered were not present?

I would be able to play older saved games.

:arrow_forward: IMAGE

:point_down: ALWAYS attach a PICTURE (.jpg, .png, .gif) or VIDEO (.mp4, YouTube link) that highlights the problem.

No pic. It crashes to Windows desktop.

:arrow_forward: GAME FILES (SAVE / RECORDING)

:point_down: Attach a SAVE GAME (.aoe2spgame) or GAME RECORDING (.aoe2record) of the match where you encountered the issue. Link it below if using an external file service.

*Won’t let me upload

6 Likes
2

I’m also having this issue, at least with recent saved games

3

I have same problem, with today’s update the game crashes every time I try to load a savegame

version: 101.101.50292.0.0

4

Same issue with my yesterday saves (I’m under Ubuntu with Proton, but your messages seem to indicate that’s not related !)

5

That’s not a bug, that’s normal.
The game just changed, the old savegames are invalid.
It was always that way: A new version brakes old savegames.

6

No, this is not “normal”. With the now auto-updating games through games platforms (we can’t control each update and cannot rollback to a previous version), you try to say that every minor update to any game can break the game saves. I have never seen that or that was documented things, sometimes with utils to migrate files. That’s not normal at all and it’s clearly a bug or at least a laziness of the developers (I’m a developper too, I know how we could be lazy !).
Moreover, the game crashes without any error displayed: it’s a bug. Because if “A new version brakes old savegames” as you say, they can detect if the save is in a good format or not before load it and warn the user of this fact instead of crashing. You can call this a feature if you want but an application should never crash !
To summarize: when a program crashes, it’s a bug.

2 Likes
7

So your saying that all saved files in this game are just for the small respite between each update and no point in ever saving if they become null and void after a new one comes? Yeah, then the whole save system becomes obsolete.

Btw, same issue happening to me. Rather not have to start a campaign that took me 2 and a half hours of my life to get to said point all over again. And my other save files as well. ¯I_(ツ)_/¯

8

You still can use savegames for 2 things:

  • To make a checkpoint in a campaign/scenario mission, to load the next day to finish the mission, or to load right away if you lost.
  • To make a multipayer savegame, if someone crashed and told the others by voice early enough, in order to actually save

You can not use savegames to load them after a long period of time.
I don’t say that ideally it should be like this, but it will be technically way to expensive to change it.

9

That’s my case. But the next day was an update day.

Clearly not and a it’s a bad reason of a lazy developer. And as expensive it can be, the game should not crash in any way, even more so without indication on why it crashed.

So, what the purpose of saves if they not reliable ? No program loses your saves because it was updated. What’s your opinion if programs like Word or Excel unilaterally drop your yesterday documents saves ?

10

Literally the night before, I was almost finished with a campaign, but wanted to play multi with my bro, so decided to finish it the next evening. Come back to an update just for my game to crash.

Their goes a chunk of my life I’m not getting back. Their is no reason a save file should corrupt like that. Obviously not a feature or they’d let us know before that all our saves and replays will be nonfunctional.

2 Likes
11

It is well known and self explanatory, that a new patch breaks savegames.
It is also the case with many other games. And if they don’t crash right away, it may be a cause for later crashes.

I highly recommend to turn off the auto update function in steam for every game.
Even in games like Counter Strike, where updates won’t brake savegames, because the update can lock your network traffic.
So you basically played multiplayer with your bro, while you had other services possibly starting file downloads?
Bad boy.

12

I’ve been playing pretty consistently since May of last year. Always play single player skirmishes against AI. I’ve never had this problem before. Haven’t there been other updates in the past 14 months that should have impacted my saved games?

2 Likes
13

First time this has happened to me since I first got the game. Various updates have happened since, and only happened to me once, while some have it happen twice or maybe more times. If it’s for sure going to not work anymore, I feel it should be more consistent for everyone.

2 Likes
14

Same is happening to me with previous saved games.

15

Same here. The update has downloaded and every time I try to load a single player saved game the game crashes to desktop

16

@PrayedCord6 , @lexicondv_5388 , @PCM4st3r , @darksabreFR , @XxYvonso , did the hotfix fix this problem? :thinking:

Personally I have lots of saved games for various reasons and this is a crucial issue for me. I haven’t updated my game so far because of this. :disappointed:

Saved games (unlike replays) used to survive updates and I really want that to continue. :sweat:

17

Yes it did, I can now load old saves. I’ve not seen any update, when this hotfix was pushed ?
Many thanks to the development team !

1 Like
18

YESSS…! Thank you for your reply! And the devs for their work. <3
Now I can finally update my game.

The hotfix didn’t get its own post on the ageofempires homepage, but was added as a 12th point on the update patch notes (see Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition — Update 50292 – Age of Empires). The same happened on the forum, the update thread just got a post with the hotfix news.