Hi everyone!
So after I got an error attempting to cook my project, I closed and reopened it, and now it opens the project as it was back in 2016. My last save was 4/14/2019, but it says the uproject file was last modified on 12/26/2016. And when I open it, it is just as it was back then, nothing added or moved. Seems very strange to me, as I don’t see how that’s even possible.
Has anyone else experienced this type of thing? And if so, is there a solution?
I hope there is, because I’d be devastated to loose all that work.
Thank you in advance for your time!
Launch the desired engine version and then open the project; if it’s outdated you’ll get a prompt asking you whether you want to create a copy of the project to be updated to the running version of the engine.
Hi, thanks for your reply! Sorry, I wasn’t very clear. The engine version is the same, but the project(my game and everything in it) has gone back 3 years. Trees, enemy characters, light settings, objects, etc. are all just as they were when I first started working on the game back in 2016. Most are just gone. I’m just not sure how, or why this happened, or how to fix it. I’ve been working on it steadily and everything was fine until this. Is there a way to revert back to a previous save or autosave?
This sounds like a nightmare mate, First and most obvious question is are you using source control. I assume no but just asking because I have had a similar issue with my source control. Its really important on big project (especially if you have been working on it this long) to have some kind of backup in place. I use source control for my big projects and I do monthly backups of smaller projects by packaging them to zip files and uploading them to my online storage.If you do have backups I am assuming you wont be asking here so that being said the only advice I can give you is to first of all clone your project and work on the cloned project, and then start going through your autosave folder in your project files to see if you can find your most recent backups( if there is any).Look at the dates of files and when they were modified last and try to copy those files into your content folder replacing the newer/older files. You might need to do a simple fix redirects. I have no experience in 4.14 though I started UE4 when it was in 4.14 and I have kept up with the newer versions. I have had it once where something similar happened but since I was using source control I did not spend a lot of time on it trying to fix it I just reverted to the previous version. I am posting this as a comment, not an answer because I know someone is going to ask you about source control and I doubt my advice will be useful, still worth a try.My apologies tho hope someone can help you!
Hi MadMars! Thank you for the reply. I actually do have perforce, but I have never used it to restore a project before, thankfully never had to 
. Would that be the best way to go? I honestly don’t know how to use it, I set it up and never really thought about it, other than an occasional submission through the UE4 engine. I cloned the project and am going to try fixing the redirectors and see what happens. If that doesn’t work I’ll start looking into how to restore using perforce. Thanks again for your help!
Ok, so, if I play the game from the editor as Standalone Game it plays as intended, everything works, everything is there in game, just as I had it a few days ago. But none of it shows in the editor, for example the level blueprint is blank, completely empty. But if I play the game, events in the game are triggered by the level blueprint. I’m SO confused! LOL I don’t know how that’s possible. If I play the game in a new editor window(PIE) nothing works and everything is still gone. I do feel quite a bit of relief seeing the game working in standalone mode at least, makes me feel like all is not lost. Just need to figure out why it’s not showing in the editor, and blank level blueprint, etc. Ugh, game dev is hard…
Okay this is good it means your level probably restored back to a previous state for some reason but the redirects are still directing you to a backup of the map. To do a restore on perforce is super easy follow this tutorial https://www.perforce.com/video-tutorials/rolling-back-and-backing-out-changes and see what you get. Do keep a clone of your project as a backup tho. Did you have a crash while saving the level or by any chance did you have 2 instances of the engine open with the same project attempting to save one. Just incase restart your computer to make sure you don’t have 2 instances of UE4 running since this is what caused the problem for me. I have also seen it happen when 2 people work on the same file at once from source control. Its a very strange issue indeed tho. Also do a search in your content folder for maps. Your current map might still be there just in a different location or different name. This is all the information I could dig up I really hope something works.If not I suggest to close this question and open a new one again stating in the original question that everything works fine in Stand alone but not in PIE. Someone might have experience with it. Best of luck man.
Oh man, thank you!!! This is awesome news! I’m going to check out the link for perforce, Thanks! I’ll look and see if I can find the map, it must be there somewhere since it works in PIE 
. I really appreciate all your suggestions.