Unable to load saved games anymore. [RESOLVED (plus a warning)]

[Michael]

Issue has been resolved. The load preview was trying to read a corrupted player portrait.

This serves as a good word of warning for anyone using custom portraits: When making a new character using a custom portrait, save your game immediately, exit, and try to load it to test it BEFORE becoming too invested. A bad portrait will destroy your save file. Not only that, but you will be unable to access ANY of your saves until you manually delete it outside of the game.
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I seem to be experiencing a very strange and devastating bug all of a sudden. Literally none of my saved games will load. The game crashes instantly.

It's the darnedest thing. I've tried the following:

1. Removed all mods one-by-one until none were left. I then tried creating a new game, and then saving. The save completes. Then, I click load. Boom. Crash.
So then,

2. Deleted all saves. (Outside the game, since the game crashes if you click on one.)
Still no luck. Then,

3. Deleted the whole NWN folder from Documents.
STILL no luck. So then,

4. Reinstalled the whole freaking game.

Even with a purely blank slate and a freshly installed game, if I start a brand new module, save the game, and then try to load that game from ANYWHERE, instant crash. It doesn't matter what module I try to use. I've tested it with several now - even the OC. It's like something is corrupting the saves.

I have hundreds of hours logged in this version of the game, and I've never experienced anything like this before. I don't know what happened this week, but as of right now, the game is essentially unplayable. Any ideas?

[DrLoboto]

Could it have something to do with any antivirus software or firewall preventing NWN to access to the save game folder? Did you change anything about it recently or was there an update to your OS?

[Michael]

Originally posted by DrLoboto:

Could it have something to do with any antivirus software or firewall preventing NWN to access to the save game folder? Did you change anything about it recently or was there an update to your OS?

Nope, absolutely nothing has been changed, and the only security stuff I have is what comes with Windows 10. I was playing the game just fine a few days ago.

[Michael]

Okay, this is super weird. Just now, I decided to delete the NWN folder a second time, just for the heck of it. And now, like magic, the load function is working again.

I literally did nothing different. This should not have fixed it, because I already tried this. But, it did.

And now it's 4am. I think it's time for bed, before I lose my mind to the apparent inconsistency of reality.

*sigh* Why can't I ever have a reliable foundation for anything?

[Michael]

Welp, I DIDN'T go to bed, and it's almost 5am now. BUT. I've finally figured out what the real issue was. I wouldn't have been able to sleep anyway until I proved reality still works, and lo and behold, it does!

The whole culprit was a single portrait. That's right, a character portrait. The load preview didn't like the custom picture for whatever reason. (And even after removing the mods, the preview was still trying to read from the image.)

Anywho, thanks for responding at any rate. I guess sometimes rambling to another person is all it takes to figure things out. Like therapy.

Edit: Bonus points, since you're a doctor!

[oldrocker99]

Valuable information. Thank you very much.

[an_thrax]

A simple copy a paste fix for me.
Copied from desktop "Mycomputer"-"documents"-"NWN"-"saves",,,to "user"-"documents"-"NWN"-"saves". Did auto onedrive update/sync.
No problems.

[The One True Nobody!]

The problem with saves not wanting to load because their portrait-preview got corrupted is actually an old bug that's been with the game for a long time, apparently since the game was first launched back in the day, even: https://steamcommunity.com/app/704450/discussions/0/1726450077661594917/

Apparently it just comes down to the game being really fiddly about you having the formatting and filesize of every portrait JUST right. You can force the game to load the save file correctly by deleting the portrait.tga file from the save folder in question, but you'll need to do that *every* time you save your game, since it creates a new portrait.tga file. Apparently the game just reads the absence of portrait.tga as a blank image and is totally fine loading your save when it doesn't have one.

To fix it permanently, you'll have to find the portrait files you're using, figure out what aspect of the portrait is incorrect, and fix it so that the save file creates usable portrait preview files. In this case it's better to use the Portraits folder in your NWN Documents folder, and just eschew subscription-based Workshop packs entirely.