Recovering up after a BSD

Hello!

So, during regular game of CDDA my computer decided to crash catastrophically, resulting in a Blue Screen of Death (BSD) with an error “SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION”. This has happened once before, also during a session of CDDA. I wasn’t doing anything particular when the crashes happened and I’m not even sure if they were caused by the game itself.

After the last crash the game was unable to load my save file, with the error “Segmentation fault”, which is very similar to:

I’ve discovered that my save file is half empty, which would explain why the game is struggling to load the character.

I’ve decided to cheat my way back to where I left off - I know how to get the skills and items back using the debug, but unfortunately I’m unable to spawn in the same bunker as last time (since the world itself would load with a new character selected). Every time I spawn with a new character, I’m in the same bunker. And every time I kill that new character using debug, I spawn in a new shelter, not being able to get back to where I was. I assumed it was possible to get back with the info posted here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/cataclysmdda/comments/7gbn4p/spawning_in_the_same_shelter/

So, right now my hope is gone as is my character. And I’ve only just started playing, having maybe 10-15h invested in that save file. Do you think it is the game itself that caused the BSD or does it have to be something else? Is there any way for me to use the world that I have to spawn back where I left off?

Thanks for help and any info in advance!

BTW: This is my first post here and I’m very new to the game, so sorry if I got something wrong!

BSoD is more likely a hardware issue, test your ram with something like memtest, and maybe check the voltage to your motherboard in your BIOS, too. If it’s very low then your power supply is too weak for what hardware you’re running, or is damaged and either can cause sporadic crashes, especially under a heavy load.

Hey, thanks for the answer!

I do not believe the memory or power supply to be the root of the problem - I’ve checked the voltages set for RAM and CPU as well as memory and everything seems to be in order. Moreover, if the PSU was suppling too little power, then the computer would crash regularly under heavy load, which doesn’t happen (e.g. in benchmarks or heavy games like Warzone and so on).

Are you able to suggest any advice in recovering the state of the game from before the crash, like getting to the old spawn?

Yeah, that’s odd, CDDA uses a ton of CPU and RAM so if it’s crashing your PC I’d expect hardware problems there.

If your old spawn isn’t corrupted, then you can do a long-range teleport from the debug menu to get there.
Any map files that are missing will have their contents regenerated when you approach them, but corrupt ones may crash your game. Back up your save before going there, because if it’s corrupt you might be able to extract some of the contents and splice them into a new map tile to get your stuff back. Map files are json, which is just formatted text files, so it’s not super hard to work with, you just need to ensure you don’t break the formatting.

I’m not familiar with SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION, but a Google search and some digging in the Microsoft documentation states that it’s most likely either a bug caused by your anti-virus software, a defective driver or external hardware.
So, it’s very unlikely that this bug was caused by the game itself, but not impossible.
Do you use the (third party) launcher? It’s common that some anti-virus software (wrongly) identify it as a risk, and this might cause some problems.

You don’t have to spawn exactly where you were. You could also just use the debug function to teleport yourself back to your place, if you still know where your base was (this, however, only works if you have set the game option to keep the world, and not reset it on character death).

If you don’t know where you were, you could send me the save file and I can see if I’m able to extract that location.

Alternatively, if you use the launcher (and have it setup to do so), it might still have a backup of an earlier save.
If that’s not the case, maybe your Windows (assuming you’re running Windows in the first place, it’s always helpful to post your operating system for such questions) has backed it up for you. You could go to your save directory, rightclick it, and select “Restore previous versions” to check if there are any files that would fit.