Getting base photos to "stick"

[Asmosis]

Any tips on how to get base photos to appear in the teleport menu?

So far only about 10-20% of my bases photos show up, and it seems somewhat random as most of them are just a base computer placeholder. Some appear the moment i put down the computer, others only after visiting multiple times. Most just display the generic blueprint icon.

[AmberAnvil]

You need to take a photo with the base computer. There's a menu item for that. Then, I normally have to exit and reload to see the photo downloaded in the teleporter menu.

[Asmosis]

Yup have taken custom photos on all the bases to gauge which one has the nicest looking selection of flora.

I'll try opening and closing the game while in the base because warping between them constantly got 50% of them to stick but the other half stubbornly refuse. Honestly at this point I'm thinking i'd be quicker to make a power point slide.

[Zoran]

I have to exit the game to get the base thumbnails to update.
One base, that I brought back from an expedition, does not update, ever.

[AmberAnvil]

I have a couple hundred bases and a photo for every one and they all show up. Just exit the game completely, restart and the photo(s) should be there.

[Asmosis]

Well i tried re-taking the photos, warping to/from the local space station, other space stations, manually flying down to them and back up again, closing the game while at the base and restarting, nothing works.

It's not a major bug, just an annoying one thats been around for ... almost as long as bases have had photos tbh. I'm sure it's somewhere on their list of priorties to fix, just not near the top.

I"m beginning to think it just locks in whether it'll use the picture when you create the base, so only solution might be to delete the bases, close game/restart then create a new base.

[Ozwald]

I think this is related to the servers being down & new photos not being uploaded.

[Johnny in the Clouds]

Originally posted by Ozwald:

I think this is related to the servers being down & new photos not being uploaded.

Yeah you may be right about that with regard to uploaded bases and associated uploaded base thumbnails. Lag can occur even at the best of times.

Also I have found that sometimes it can be helpful to revisit the base computer and simply take a new base photo. However it can be useful to actually reposition the camera (even just a little bit) to force the game to record the new camera position data in the local (or cloud) save file and capture a new base thumbnail photo image. With possibly a large cache folder full of base photos, be patient for a few seconds to give the game engine a chance to record the data and new base DDS image file. That may help the display of base photos to be more predictable.

I think if the game save cache folder has a huge number of base or found building DDS files (in game stored images), that may possibly cause lag when recalling or writing images. Some legacy cache folders from a 2016 save can be over a Gigabyte... Though with a SSD disk speed may not be an issue.

i WOULD BACK UP EVERYTHING BEFORE TRYING THIS, but you could try emptying the game save cache folder of images by deleting the cache DDS files and the game should rebuild the cache images over time. A base thumbnail is captured from the camera position which is recorded in the save file data. Perhaps if a save file is large (like a legacy save) reading and writing might delay capture of the DDS file, just my guess.

The DDS files in the save cache folder a few updates ago, now have a different naming structure for each file, including the Portal Address, Game Mode and Account numbering. So there may be a mixture of old label and new labelled files in the cache until old ones are replaced on subsequent visits to old bases and so on.

IMPORTANT - PLEASE BACK UP THE GAME SAVE FOLDER BEFORE MODDING ANY GAME FOLDERS OR EXPERIMENTING WITH DELETING OR REMOVING ANY DATA IN THE CACHE FOLDER. HAVING A BACK UP MEANS THINGS CAN BE RESTORED AS THEY WERE SHOULD ANY ERRORS OCCUR.

[Captain.Jartyk]

When you take a screenshot of the base in the game, that image is stored as a DDS file in the save folder's cache, and if you upload the base, a copy of that image is also uploaded to the server.
The problem that can arise is if the name of the base contains strange characters, because when the image is saved to disk, the name is also included, and if the name is invalid for a file, it cannot be saved, and in that case there will be no image in the teleport for that base.

Note.
The cache will after a while contain a lot of unnecessary files, because if you change a base, or delete a base, the old image files do not disappear from the cache, they remain there and take up a lot of space.
So I usually clean it up there manually after I change something.

[Johnny in the Clouds]

Originally posted by Captain.Jartyk:

When you take a screenshot of the base in the game, that image is stored as a DDS file in the save folder's cache, and if you upload the base, a copy of that image is also uploaded to the server.
The problem that can arise is if the name of the base contains strange characters, because when the image is saved to disk, the name is also included, and if the name is invalid for a file, it cannot be saved, and in that case there will be no image in the teleport for that base.

Note.
The cache will after a while contain a lot of unnecessary files, because if you change a base, or delete a base, the old image files do not disappear from the cache, they remain there and take up a lot of space.
So I usually clean it up there manually after I change something.

Useful to know thanks! I have two files in fact I can not delete from my Windows PC. I'm certain its is something to do with how they were originally named. Even in Windows Safe mode I can not delete them.

This is the only named file in the cache folder that WILL NOT delete. Grrrrrr!
It has no DDS identifier and it won't let me add one to delete it either.

00302c000a654eo3.Normal.This is ALL mine Muhahahahha...

Do I really have to reinstall Windows to delete a single corrupt file that seems invisible to the Operating System : ( Madness!!

[Asmosis]

Thanks, some good suggestions here. This save isn't particularly old (started with sentinel ship update) but the overall install goes back to about 2018 so could do with a good cleanup by the sounds of it.

I'll have a look at the names i gave the bases too, punctuation could be causing the issue

[SirProsik]

Could try to boot to a live USB of Linux and see if you can delete the file.

[Asmosis]

Deleting all the old DDS files (some were 1200kb instead of 900kb) seems to have resolved the issue.

[Shadow Strider]

I've found that any bases I've transferred over from an expo save will never save a photo for the base (even if it worked fine during the expo)... Is this something anyone else has noticed?

[Ozwald]

Originally posted by Shadow Strider:

I've found that any bases I've transferred over from an expo save will never save a photo for the base (even if it worked fine during the expo)... Is this something anyone else has noticed?

No.

I wanted a permanent Euclid portal base, out of the way so it's not in anyone else's way, but I also made it into a spa, so if anyone did stumble across it, it would be a little relaxing spot instead of an inconvenience. It's out in BFE, so that chance is tiny, but I wanted to be accommodating.

Anyways, I had plopped down 2 portal bases in Euclid since W1. I randomly picked one to start building, one that had a nice planet. The other thumbnail was an ice planet.

I built up the other one, but W2 turned it into random toxic events & just less than desirable weather. I was starting to think I picked the wrong one, after I spent considerable time building a pretty extensive base.

Well I was cleaning up some unneeded pillar bases & decided to visit the ice planet for the first time in 4 or 5 months. Frank's Hat. It was the starting planet for ... the Normandy redux(?). I just remembered the name from an expo & there were obvious expo bases scattered about when I visited. It was also one of the last expo's that I deleted my notes for.

I ended up deleting it for potential part count, but the moral of the fable is, the only reason I avoided it was the thumbnail, accurately, of an expo ice planet.