Dedicated Server Won't Start

[Fearra]

I've been playing Ark with my roommates using the 'Start Dedicated Server' button in Ark (using my PC as a local server). We've had no problems playing on the server amongst ourselves across the LAN until yesterday. Sunday night we were all on and everything was fine, but I get home from work on Monday go to start the server and it never finishes loading.

Typically starting the server takes 2-3 mins to fully start, however after waiting for over an hour the server never finished loading. I get to the "Primal Game Data Took XX.XX seconds" line in the console, but never further. It's taking CPU and memory resources, so it seems like it's doing something but it never becomes playable.

Anyone out there have any ideas on how I can get our server up and running again? I've tried using the Ark Server Manager program as well with the same results. Primal Game Data loads in 15-18 seconds, then nothing though it's using CPU cycles and filling up my RAM.

Thanks for any help!

[Fearra]

Note: I have used the 'Verify integrity of game cache..." option in Steam before and after the latest update with no results.

And *bump*

[RGBeanie_YT]

Originally posted by Fearra:

Note: I have used the 'Verify integrity of game cache..." option in Steam before and after the latest update with no results.

And *bump*

I've found doing it manually is far more reliable. Make a proper server and password it?

[crimsondrac]

It is possible the save game data became corrupt. You can test this out by going to the Saved folder for your server. In there you should see a bunch of backup saved files, generally about 2 hours apart on the time stamps. If I remember correctly, they are named something similar to TheIsland_<a bunch of numbers>.ark. The bunch of numbers correlate to the time stamp I believe. Anyway, rename TheIsland.ark to TheIsland.bak and rename one of the backup saves (preferrably the most recent one) to TheIsland.ark. Now try to launch your game to see if it starts. If it does, the worst is you may have lost a few hours of work. If it doesn't, then there is something more serious that is wrong.

[TheMagman]

Same problem changing backup doesn't fix it. Edit... For me

[Fearra]

Originally posted by crimsondrac:

It is possible the save game data became corrupt. You can test this out by going to the Saved folder for your server. In there you should see a bunch of backup saved files, generally about 2 hours apart on the time stamps. If I remember correctly, they are named something similar to TheIsland_<a bunch of numbers>.ark. The bunch of numbers correlate to the time stamp I believe. Anyway, rename TheIsland.ark to TheIsland.bak and rename one of the backup saves (preferrably the most recent one) to TheIsland.ark. Now try to launch your game to see if it starts. If it does, the worst is you may have lost a few hours of work. If it doesn't, then there is something more serious that is wrong.

Thank you very much, this appears to have been the issue.

I renamed my "TheIsland.ark" file in the 'SavedArks' folder to something else (didn't want to delete it yet).
I identified the "TheIsland_XX.XX.2015_XX.XX.XX.ark" with the latest time stamp, copy-and-pasted it back into the folder, and renamed it "TheIsland.ark".

The server now boots up fine in just over 120s. It appears I may have lost a slight amount of progress, but it's not bad (especially compared to starting over).

Thanks again!

[TheMagman]

Thats nice to hear I'm gonna try again with a less recent save in that case.