I’ve been using GDevelop to create a FNAF fan-game about myself. I’ve put a lot of effort into it, and I’m currently facing an issue that’s preventing me from continuing.
Before the most recent update, I had no trouble opening and working on my project. However, after the update, when I try to open my project, I get a popup that says:
“Check that the file exists, that this file is a proper game created with GDevelop, and that you have the authorization to open it.”
Here are the key points:
I am the owner of the game and have not tampered with the game directory or cloud save.
It is a proper GDevelop project.
I’ve been working solo on this game.
I started the project in the website editor, then moved to the app, logged in, and it worked fine until the recent update.
The Problem:
Now, when I open the app, the game shows up as stored locally under “Your Computer”, but I can’t open it.
On the website editor, the game is not showing at all.
The Main Menu took a long time to get right, and I don’t want to redo all the progress I’ve made.
What I’ve Tried:
I’ve confirmed that the game directory hasn’t been tampered with.
I’ve checked for backups, but the website version doesn’t show the project, and the app won’t let me open it.
I’ve checked the error message and confirmed the game file is still located locally.
Questions:
Did the update corrupt my project?
Is there any way to recover my project?
I’m really hoping to continue working on this game without having to start from scratch.
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated! I’ve invested a lot of time and passion into this project, and I really don’t want to lose all the progress.
I’m not sure if you mean pressing Ctrl + Shift + I on the website editor or in the app—could you clarify?
Also, I’m not sure how to install an earlier version of GDevelop. I’m still relatively new to the engine, so any guidance on that would be really helpful.
I doubt the project is corrupted. Similar thing happened to me once with a local project stored on my computer. Not even restoring backups fixed the problem, GDevelop refused to open it after an update.
What I have done is removed the local project from GDevelop and added the project again from folder and it fixed the problem. So if you have a local copy and you still have this problem, you can try what I just did. Removing the local project from GDevelop is not going to delete it, only remove the reference to it. But you can add it back by opening manually from folder, so make sure you know where the local project is on your computer and while you are there, create a backup manually to a different folder just in case.
I believe my project was entirely stored in the GDevelop Cloud, so I don’t think it’s saved locally on my computer. When I started working on it, I was using the website version of the editor, and I later accessed it through the app after logging in, where it was also on the cloud when using the app.
I’ll double-check to see if there’s any local copy saved, but if my work was cloud-based, do you think the same approach might apply in some way?
My solution would not work with a cloud project because at the moment all of your cloud projects should be automatically listed in the build section. If you remove it, you delete the project from the cloud and in theory if a cloud project is not listed in the build section, the project does not exist in the cloud.
If the project is listed as a local project, you can right click it and choose “Show in local folder”. It should open the folder where the project is stored. Then it should display the files and folders of which the one ending with “.json” is your project file.
Make a note of this location and also copy everything in to a location you can remember.
In case you get any error message or opens an empty folder or nothing, the project is not stored locally, missing.
At this point the only thing I can recommend is open the “developer tools”.
In the desktop app go to View => Toggle Developer Tools
In the web browser press Ctrl+Shift+I or Option+Command+I
In the developer tools select Console if not already selected
Then see if you have any red error messages already in the console. Try to open the build menu, try to open your project and see if you get any new red error messages in the console.
If you get any error messages, post them here and hopefully a developer can help you.
If you are certain the project was in fact a cloud project, I would also contact the developers through email or Discord and ask if you have any projects in the cloud and if you don’t, ask if they can recover it for you.
I apologize for the late response—I’ve been focusing on other things, like school.
I did some research and found an email (hello@gdevelop.io) for GDevelop support. However, it seems that the email is specifically for “questions/suggestions on their privacy policy,” so I’m not sure if I would be allowed to contact them about this issue. Could you confirm if this is the right way to go about contacting them for help with this kind of problem?
As for the developer tools, I checked the console on the desktop app as you suggested. I didn’t find any red error messages, but there was this yellow warning message:
“DevTools failed to load source map: Could not parse content for file:///D:/GDevelop%205/resources/app.asar/www/TileMapHelper.js.map: Unexpected end of JSON input”
I’m not sure if that’s relevant to the issue, but I wanted to mention it.
Thanks again for your advice, and I appreciate any further suggestions!
Looks like it is failed to parse some JSON string. If you get this warning when you try to open the project, it could be the reason why GDevelop fail to open the project. But hopefully @davy able to confirm this.
But I think reinstalling GDevelop should fix this warning. You can download the latest release from the link Davy has posted earlier:
Regarding the email, yes that is the only public email of the GDevelop team as far as I know. You are eligible for official support only if you are a Gold or Pro subscriber, so officially you are not eligible for any support if you are a free or silver member.
But If you are 100% certain it was a cloud project and suddenly the cloud project disappeared, shown as local project instead and you did not saved it as local project, then I recommend to send them an email regardless and maybe a developer going to find some time to look in to it. But as I mentioned unless you are a Gold or Pro subscriber, it could take several working days until someone can look in to this for you if at all. I recommend to give them at least 5 working days. If you send them an email today, the earliest you can expect a response is sometime end of next week.
However unless it is happening to multiple people within a short amount of time, it may going to be ignored unfortunately.
