The Shark Game - Can't Import Saved Game

April 6, 2022 2:04 PM

I recently did a clean up of my browsers and realized that cleared my current run of The Shark Game. I have an exported save from January that I am trying to import, but it keeps throwing an error.

The error message I get when trying to import is:

Error: Tried to load game, but no game to load.
Error: That's not encoded properly. Are you sure that's the full save export string?

Game Link

I don't hate starting over again from scratch, but I would like to be able to back up the game occasionally. Is it not working since the game is basically defunct?

posted by Julnyes to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

Import and export is working for me. Here's what my save file from Chrome looks like if you want to try a different one:

edit: disregard, metafilter ate it.
posted by michaelh at 5:46 PM on April 6, 2022

Best answer: Okay, here's a save file you can try: https://f000.backblazeb2.com/file/m-various/sharks.txt
posted by michaelh at 5:48 PM on April 6, 2022

If you can save the export file somewhere online, perhaps we could poke at it and see if it can be salvaged.
posted by Pronoiac at 7:56 PM on April 6, 2022

Someone else picked up development on it. Could you check if your save game works on the attempted continued version?
posted by Pronoiac at 9:54 PM on April 6, 2022

Response by poster: Here is my link - My Shark Game Save


michaelh - I can use your Save and load it, don't know why my version doesn't work.
posted by Julnyes at 6:59 AM on April 7, 2022

Response by poster: Pronoiac - my save doesn't work there either.
posted by Julnyes at 7:03 AM on April 7, 2022

Julnyes, I don't have access to that file?
posted by Pronoiac at 12:47 PM on April 7, 2022

Response by poster: Retry -- Game Save Text
posted by Julnyes at 2:11 PM on April 7, 2022

Best answer: So, the save games are ascii85 / base85, compressed with zlib; I can get to text from michaelh's save. Glancing at the Google doc, I see a couple of "mailto:" items, which makes me think something saw "@" and "helpfully" attempted to mark up email addresses out of gibberish, along with some %60 and the like. Could you check and see if it was present from whatever you pasted into the Google doc?
posted by Pronoiac at 5:09 PM on April 7, 2022

Response by poster: Yeah, I think when I initially copied and saved it a bunch of hyperlinks, etc. autogenerated. I was able to dig up an even older save that was just plain text and loaded that successfully.

So the solution is - make sure I save backups as plain text.

Thank you for your help!
posted by Julnyes at 7:02 AM on April 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Yay, that's good news!
posted by Pronoiac at 11:16 AM on April 8, 2022