JazLyte 2009-02-10 23:08:11

That's weird, never seen that before. I dunno if you animate inside symbols or not but you can try to use the Library to arrange the movie again on another file, it might be faster than a complete re-do. That sucks ass though, if that doesn't work just take a break from flash for a week or so. That shit'll give you headaches.

DonkeysBazooka 2009-02-10 23:55:57

That is HORRIBLE. I would have died if I was in your place. I've had 5 hours of work in flash go down the drain, but never 5 months. That would kill all of my motivation to ever go back to it. I guess it's important to always have back-up files :-/
I personally save a new file every couple of weeks with the date on it just in case this kind of thing happens. It's a flash artist's worst nightmare, as I'm sure you now know more than anyone.

Do you happen to have an swf of the file anywhere? Like when you hit "Test movie" or exported the movie in any form? If you do, maybe you can use some kind of decompiler software to covert the swf into an fla.

HolyPeanuts 2009-02-10 23:57:10

Oh wow man that sucks, I have never had flash crash like that before....

Senti 2009-02-11 00:14:03

I know little to nothing about recovering lost files...I've lost too many to remember.

My only word of advice, and ever since I've heard this I've followed it religiously. Do not save your entire flash movie into ONE flash file. Flash is weird. If you open up ONE document, and create a whole movie and spend months animating, and only save in that ONE .fla the file size is huge, because it like multiplies or copies on top of old copies of the same stuff into the one file. But, if you 'save as' each time you save your work (you'll have a ton of files by the end) not only will you have an incremental timeline of the work you've done, but you shouldn't have thaaaat many problems opening it up...as long as you open the most up to date version.

I'm horribly sorry for the misfortune. I was really looking forward to this, and I know you've worked forever on it. I suggest taking a break, and making knocking out a few shorts to ease the pain (after a week or so much needed break). I look forward to more stuff man, Chin up Derek.

Jimtopia 2009-02-11 01:30:41

Geez man, sorry to hear that. I don't know if I'd ever be able to go back to Flash if something like that happened to me. >_< I really wish I could help, but I don't really know enough about the situation. If you want you could send me the .fla or something, I could try and export it for you, who knows.

Best of luck to ya.

Lazy-Dan35 2009-02-11 03:18:11

Well look on the bright side Derek, when you do start Episode 2 again, You have Flash CS4 in all its beauty. BTW have you used it yet, I don't animate much so I dont know much difference between Flash 8, which I used to Program Tetris, and Flash 10.

Lazy-Dan35 2009-02-11 03:20:14

At least I saw most of the episode, and I know it would have got front page.
Also, Derek those sniper rifles are very well drawn.. :)

VACKenny 2009-02-11 12:01:13

I guess this is why I always had trouble making the leap towards bigger and better things in Flash; there's always the chance of things mucking up :(

Good luck, and as always, SAVE BACKUPS. Keep 'em on a thumb drive, make multiple files in a folder on your hard drive, whatever... there's just nothing like working on something for months only for a small mishap to screw it all up. Happened to me a lot in my programming classes.

knugen 2009-02-11 14:06:53

I'm not sure if I can help really, but if you want to you can send me the file and I'll make a try at fixing it. I have a few ideas that could work, it's possible you've tried them all already, but there isn't really anything to lose. Right? :)