When I try to load my unfinished project, I get an error message:

"Failed to load game due to the following errors:
*Invalid XML: Root element is missing."

I can't open the file at all. I worked on it yesterday with no issues, and today I'm getting this problem.
Anyone know the cause of this issue?

XML is the underlying language of Quest (different to its coding language) and somehow your game has been modified so it does not conform to XML's rules.

Can you open it in a text edit, such as NotePad? If you can (if not, you are in big trouble!), the top should look like this (the bits in blue will be different):

<!--Saved by Quest 5.6.[color=#0000FF]5621.18142[/color]-->
<asl version="550">
  <include ref="English.aslx" />
  <include ref="Core.aslx" />
  <game name="[color=#0000FF]testy[/color]">
    <gameid>[color=#0000FF]ac0b3225-36cd-43ab-b1fc-eb4cdc4af74e[/color]</gameid>
    <version>1.0</version>

The first line is a comment. The second line is the start tag for the root element, asl, and it seems to be complaining about that. The very last line should be this:

</asl>

That is the end tag for the root element. Are they both there?

You can also try opening it in internet explorer, which will try to process the XML. It might give more clues if (when) it fails.

Finally you could attach it into a forum post, and we could take a look.

When I open up the file in Notepad, nothing is there. Nothing. I don't know what happened. Could it have been corrupted? I put months of effort into it.

It certainly looks corrupted, I am afraid. Looks like just a continous string of a "nul" character for 126 kb. No consolation for you, but I have never heard of this happening to anyone else (in fact, I work in IT and have never seen this before with any software). Do you have any idea what might have caused it?

I worked on it two days ago. I don't think I did anything out of the ordinary, just business as usual, nervously saving every 10 minutes. I practically never touch the code section, only the GUI/in-engine stuff (I am a scrub). This is extremely disconcerting. Is there anyway to make an editable version of a published file I made of the game? I want to salvage my progress in any way possible, even if this is a huge setback.

Published version: http://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/ ... escription

I have no input here that will be of any value. I just wanted to say I hope everything gets fixed and wish you the best. If that happened to my game, I'd probably break a lot of shit. Good luck!

I had something similar happen to me at one time with a different program. After that I pretty much always have one alternate save file of my game projects and periodically switch between which is my current save.

I don't know about restoring from a published file, but if you do have to restart at least it should go much faster with what you've learned the first time through.

I have had a go at recovering the game from your unloaded game. I am using Quest 5.6, and I think you will need to upgrade to that version to open this file. It was in a state where you could start to play it without errors, but I did not do anymore than try to go north and found the door was locked.

The Pixie wrote:I have had a go at recovering the game from your unloaded game. I am using Quest 5.6, and I think you will need to upgrade to that version to open this file. It was in a state where you could start to play it without errors, but I did not do anymore than try to go north and found the door was locked.

I can't thank you enough. It works, man. Again, thank you.