A Guide to Corruptions in Line Rider

I made this because I realized that many people don't know what a corruption is. Hopefully this will help you prevent corruptions, recognize them when they happen, and recover from them as painlessly as possible.

Note:
- ".sol corruption" is a misnomer, it's actually only the one save that corrupts, not the whole .sol. In this thread I will use the term "corrupted save".
- This is NOT the same as a script error. Script errors cause Line Rider to crash, but corruptions cause a track to be permanently lost

I should thank Sorvius for explaining much of this to me. (and helping me figure out how to get around it )

How Does a Save Corrupt?

1. As you are drawing lines, a frame in playback or a line corrupts. This usually happens with large amounts of lag, especially when recording or switching applications, but it can happen any time. (Little is known about this step, as it is unidentifiable at the time. Sorvius is sure that MMX was corrupted when he was using MSN, and I know that recording on my old computer with Display Eater and over 14,000 lines corrupts the save. However, saves have been corrupted on fast computers with naked tracks.)
   
2. Nothing weird happens, and you don't notice anything (right away)
   
3. About 1000 lines later (note: this is collective - if you draw 100 and then erase them all and repeat that ten times this will still happen) you get a funky line. It actually looks completely normal until you try to erase it (backspace or eraser). If you do, it doesn't erase, and if you press the play button it stays in color.
   
4. Other than this weird line, nothing out of the ordinary happens, yet.
   
5. If you save the track at this point, close Line Rider, open it again, and load what you just saved, Line Rider freezes at 0 lines, every time. That's how people lose lines over corruptions.
   
6. If you open a save that was saved after step 1 occurred, this same chain of events will still happen. This is how people cannot continue a track because of a corruption. You can test if step 1 has occurred by opening the save, scribbling a couple thousand lines with the pencil tool, and then erasing them all. If they all erase, it isn't corrupted.

Yes, corruptions are a scener's worst nightmare, and you can see why It'd be difficult to invent a more insidious bug in Line Rider if we tried!

Preventing Corruptions

The best way to prevent corruptions is as follows:
MAKE BACKUPS!!!

If you're working on a large project, make a backup .sol every time you close Line Rider - just put them in a folder and name them with today's date. Then you can simply go back through the most recent ones to see where it corrupted and use the most recent one that isn't corrupted to start from again.

Dealing with corruptions:

• If you're scening and only have one backup and your save corrupts, you can use tweakwindow/powermenu to copy that parts of scenery necessary to split the save (I know of a mac version of powermenu if you have a mac)
  
• You can also finish the track and record it without ever closing Line Rider, then the corruption presents no problem.
  
• If you're making a naked track, if you go ahead on a corrupted save but go a different route, it is less likely that you will get a funky line (thanks aspi33!)

Other tidbits of Information:

• You are less likely to have corruptions if you split your saves for scenery and use less applications at the same time as Line Rider. More lag means more likely to be corrupted.
  
• Sometimes you get funky lines (usually while making naked tracks) and there's nothing actually wrong with the track. Usually they come along with other odd thing happening, while a corruption is just one stubborn line. I also have suspicions that tracks that are being made in 6.2 and 6.7 during the course of the making may cause weird stuff like this.

I hope this was helpful!

Please contribute to this thread if you know something about .sol corruptions! I'd like to think of this more as a thread of collective knowledge from the community than my tutorial.

I think i remember now a couple corruptions a few years back. Not like it really mattered back then but when the color line showed up in playback, I was like WTF?!......whatever.
Luckily i probably wont be scening anything anytime soon.
Nice guide.

I'll tell u a thing. I never knew this was corruption. I've got this many times. What I do when it happends, is that I DO NOT SAVE, exit LR, cry a bit about the tons of lost work, open LR again and go on drawing. Then, most likely, the "corruption" will occur again, but only at certain spots/locations. If I go another way, it will maybe happen again, but there is less chance. And if I come about 100 lines past the "funky line time" I have escaped the corrupted save trap

Always works for me. Gotta be patient though, but I ain't abandoning a track I've started.
Plus I've got IdleBackup, which is the most awesome and useful program ever, except Windows. It automatically backups folders/files you choose, and you can set it to do it every xx minute. And it doesn't erase old files if you delete them from your real .sol directory, it just adds the changes. =Epic

aspi33 wrote:I'll tell u a thing. I never knew this was corruption. I've got this many times. What I do when it happends, is that I DO NOT SAVE, exit LR, cry a bit about the tons of lost work, open LR again and go on drawing. Then, most likely, the "corruption" will occur again, but only at certain spots/locations. If I go another way, it will maybe happen again, but there is less chance. And if I come about 100 lines past the "funky line time" I have escaped the corrupted save trap

Always works for me. Gotta be patient though, but I ain't abandoning a track I've started.
Plus I've got IdleBackup, which is the most awesome and useful program ever, except Windows. It automatically backups folders/files you choose, and you can set it to do it every xx minute. And it doesn't erase old files if you delete them from your real .sol directory, it just adds the changes. =Epic

At top part - huh, The times I've gotten a corruption I've always got a funky line. The first time it happened I got it four times in a row where I was scening, and one time I assume it was there and I just didn't try to erase it. I did go in the same direction though (heck, I had to, it was Bolted to the Wall and I had a plan ) - you generally have to if you're scening.

I've also always been under the impression that corrupted saves in naked tracks are sometimes fixable and in scened tracks they are pretty much always unstoppable. Not sure why though.

It's also true that corruptions for scened tracks have a much greater linecount between the corruption and the funky line than scener tracks.

I should also say that I have gotten funky lines in naked tracks that weren't corruptions - I stopped, saved under a different name, and loaded it back u and it worked. Funky lines don't always mean corruptions.

I will add this to the thread, thanks for sharing

EDIT: I should also say that I don't think everything people have claimed "corrupted" actually did. Often times people will accidentally erase a line earlier in the track, or they mess around while it's loading, and the track no longer works. People are very quick to may "OMG IT CORRUPTED" without even knowing what that means.

Add no corruption to mhenr's 8.0.
(is that even possible)

Well, i lost solid because of corruption, when i got the funky line i was just like 'wut' and drwe over it. .

^ When you figure out how corruptions work, then you can tell mhenr how to fix it >.>

Nobody knows WHY it happens, that's the definition of a BUG. Though mhenr and/or conundrumer have posted hypothesis about one of the variables in each line becoming crazy values IIRC.

My scened track is corrupted, but how do I get my scenery "back".
I lost about 3000 lines!

i've had corruptions where a certain line placement crashes line rider. every time. only way around it was to do something different so i didnt have to place that line there. any explanation?

^ that's not a corruption, I call that a corrupted spot. If you use small lines, I find you can get around that. Just save a lot

DeathknightDK2 wrote:My scened track is corrupted, but how do I get my scenery "back".
I lost about 3000 lines!

What don't you understand about the "dealing with corruptions" part in the OP?

If you mean load the track that has the funky line... It's impossible AFAIK. You lost those lines.

aspi33 wrote:I'll tell u a thing. I never knew this was corruption. I've got this many times. What I do when it happends, is that I DO NOT SAVE, exit LR, cry a bit about the tons of lost work, open LR again and go on drawing.

This. Thanks for the explanation rabid/Sorv.

aspi33 wrote:
Always works for me. Gotta be patient though, but I ain't abandoning a track I've started.
Plus I've got IdleBackup, which is the most awesome and useful program ever, except Windows. It automatically backups folders/files you choose, and you can set it to do it every xx minute. And it doesn't erase old files if you delete them from your real .sol directory, it just adds the changes. =Epic

hmm i'm gonna have to get that program

i've actually gotten a few funky lines in incito, i just covered them up lol

thanks for the tips rabid/sorv i'm sure it'll help people out alot ^^