I’m a relative newbie at this latest Unreal/Epic level editor (although I’m 55 years old and have been building levels, just for fun, since the first Doom and Duke Nukem3D level editors). I’ve been working on a sci-fi level for the past week or so based on purchases I’ve made from the Marketplace (SciFi Props Pack, SciFi Populate Pack, SciFi Animated Doors Pack, etc.) I also purchased a couple of light packs with no problem.
But today I purchased the Interactive Industrial Lights and Switches Blueprints by Ermin Ascic, downloaded it and added it to my project. But when I opened my level, over half of it was missing! The level only contained the basic walls, floors and ceilings and some lights and a couple of animated displays, most of the props within the level (consoles, chairs, etc) are GONE. It’s like the level reverted to the earliest saved version. This represents HOURS of work!!! All gone! Even my backup files of the level, which I didn’t even add the new Industrial Light pack to, are also missing all of the same things.
(The light pack I purchased today said it was compatible with Unreal Engine 4.18.) The level also worked fine after I updated the Unreal Engine to 4.18.3
None of the other packs I purchased destroyed my level. I just downloaded and added them to my project. But this new one totally screwed up my level and I can’t figure out how to get it back.
I even selected “Remove Local Content” from the new light pack and tried to reopen my level. Needless to say, I’m pretty upset. As I’ve said, this represents hours of work, totally gone.
Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Lee
EDIT: I also tried to contact the seller of the light set, but when I clicked on the button to email him, I got “Page not found”. And all of the recent posts/questions posted on his product page have been left unanswered.
Is it possible that you overwrote your content with objects from the pack that has the same names as your objects? How did you add the pack to your project?
I added the pack the same way as I did all the others. I clicked on “Add to project” and selected the project I’ve been working on.
I guess it’s possible that I overwrote content, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t have the same names. As I said, whole sections of the map were gone. Walls, floors, consoles and chairs. And none of those object names were in the new light pack that I added.
Another strange thing that happened, just after I added the new light pack to my project: I opened up the project and opened the specific level I’ve been working on. Normally when I open a level, everything appears all at once (without any delay). But this time, objects (walls, ceilings, etc,) started appearing one at a time (as if slowly loading each object) but then it never finished opening the entire latest version of my level. It appears that the level that opened, was one of the first “saves”, from the first or second day I was working on it. It was like it opened an early version of the level.
I’ve been trying a few things to get the project back to the way it was before adding the light pack. I deleted the project, then went to my computers recycle bin and restored the project. This restored much more of the level, but still not the latest version of how I saved it yesterday. I should also mention that I moved all my projects/levels to my D drive, several days ago (everything worked fine), because my C drive is an SSD and I didn’t want to keep reading and writing to that drive (SSD have limited read/writes), so I moved it to my HDD D drive. Just thought I’d mention those things just in case they might be relevant to the problem.
I don’t think that the stuff you added in would have removed stuff from your game, are the assets still in the Content Browser? If not then the asset files are definitely missing. Windows has a backup system where you can right-click on a file and find the “Restore Previous Versions” option, it might have an older version you can restore some of the files to.
Yes all of the assets from the various packs are still in the Content Browser. And I’ve tried restoring previous versions of the level files, but there aren’t any options to choose from.
So you’re thinking that it was just a coincidence that somehow the level file reverted back to a much earlier version, where over half the things I built weren’t there, at the same exact moment when I added this new light pack? I suppose it’s possible, but over the past couple of weeks, I’ve opened, closed, updated, and saved this file (and two backup files) dozens and dozens of times with no problems at all.
I discovered some auto-saved and backup files that might contain all the data that was lost. It’s under the Project File directory/Saved/Autosaves/Game. But when I try to move the .umap and .uasset files to the same directory as the other files, they do not show up under My Projects, Open Level directory in the Unreal Editor menu. I see the other levels listed, but not the ones I copied and pasted from the Autosave directory.
I’m afraid I don’t know enough about how the files and support files work with each other. I’m sure I’m missing something. But the Autosaved files that I found are much larger in size than the current level files (the ones that lost all the stuff), so I’m pretty sure those files contain the missing data, I just can’t seem to get the Unreal Editor to recognize them or even list them in the levels list.
So again, I’m asking for any advice on how to restore those files and hopefully get my lost levels back. Thanks!