TWD Episode 3 Won't Continue from Previous Saves!

[eddyc123]

I bought the walking dead a few days ago (just before release) and completed episode 1 and 2 with no issues in one day.

I then finished the walking dead episode 2 and it simply takes me back to the main screen and Episode 3 says COMING SOON. If I re-launch the game, Episode 3 I can play but it says "Generate random story decisions for skipped episodes" so it will not continue with my choices.

I have tried this "continue" option 3 times to no avail. I even used the "rewind" feature on a copy of the save and it deleted the save! :< HELP MEEEE there is nothing as annoying than buying a game you cannot play :<

Has anyone else had this on the PC version (bought with steam).

[DjNDB]

It might be the issue mentioned in the support FAQ.

[Redundant]

Originally Posted by DjNDB

It might be the issue mentioned in the support FAQ.

Doesn't help. I tried what he suggested by just selecting YES for random choices and that my saved choices would be picked.

Nope.

Doesn't work, I just got random choice. To be honest I'm kind of sad that no one from TTG has been on here and just said something. I've never had a problem with them before but this... eh. I just want to play

[bazenji]

Here's the solution I figured out for Windows 7. Some people have linked to vaguely related solutions that haven't really worked for most people, but this definitely worked for me.

Copying over the prefs.prop into the steamapps default subheading folder will not fix many peoples' problems because those of us on Steam shouldn't even have a prefs.prop in that folder in the first place. Don't do this, it will just show stats and then randomly generate a new game anyway and save in a new folder you can't find. Do not add prefs.prop to the default folder.

1. Now, first thing's first. Start The Walking Dead. You should have 3 empty save slots. Pick one, play any episode until you autosave, then restart the game. Check to see if your save game is there (safer to use "delete all local content" in the steam menu just in case, but not necessary).
   
2. Open two windows. In both do a search for "The Walking Dead."
   
3. In the first window, find Documents>My Documents>Telltale Games>The Walking Dead and back up this folder somewhere safe.
   
4. In the second window, find Documents>Public Documents>Telltale Games>the walking dead (notice how it's lowercase).
   
5. Copy the contents (not the whole folder, just everything inside) of the "My Documents" folder called "The Walking Dead" into the "Public Documents" folder called "the walking dead" and overwrite everything inside. Everything.

And there you go. I found this out when I noticed autosaves and new games weren't saving in either "My Documents" or "steamapps" so there must have been a third folder. Find that folder and you're golden.

[eddyc123]

DjnDB -- I took a look but nothing helped Thanks though.

Redundant -- I tried the same thing but it never seemed ot be the same, I want to play with my EXACT choices as the whole game is based on these choices.

Bazenji -- Thanks for the suggestion, I took a look and did some searches but I only have the one area for saves in my My Documents area, nothing in public docs etc which is a shame. really appreciate the suggestion though!

[Curdle_Sanders]

Yeah this fix doesn't work for me. The search did not find anything regarding the Public Docs saves

[bazenji]

Strange.

Start up a new game, play through the intro until your first save (there should be an autosave indicator in the top left corner), and then quit. Restart and check to see if your last saved game saved.

If it saved but your My Docs folder still has your old saves in it, then it means you definitely have another folder on your computer. That's the important folder you need to find. Do a search for "the walking dead" or "SyncFS" and any folder you find that is labeled "the walking dead" will be the equivalent of the Public Documents version of the walking dead folder in mine. Follow the instructions and replace those saves.

It should only take about 5-10 minutes using this method to see if it works and you won't have to download or modifying or tinker with anything.

[Curdle_Sanders]

Originally Posted by bazenji

Strange.

Start up a new game, play through the intro until your first save (there should be an autosave indicator in the top left corner), and then quit. Restart and check to see if your last saved game saved.

If it saved but your My Docs folder still has your old saves in it, then it means you definitely have another folder on your computer. That's the important folder you need to find. Do a search for "the walking dead" or "SyncFS" and any folder you find that is labeled "the walking dead" will be the equivalent of the Public Documents version of the walking dead folder in mine. Follow the instructions and replace those saves.

It should only take about 5-10 minutes using this method to see if it works and you won't have to download or modifying or tinker with anything.

Yeah, Started up the game played till the auto save. Quit and then checked if it saved which it did. Did a search for both Walking Dead the synchFS... No public docs folder.

I even tried again manually creating the public docs- telltalegame- walking dead pasted the my docs saves... nothing

Thanks for trying to help but this fix doesn't work for me and I'm doing everything correctly

[bazenji]

Originally Posted by Curdle_Sanders

Yeah, Started up the game played till the auto save. Quit and then checked if it saved which it did. Did a search for both Walking Dead the synchFS... No public docs folder.

I even tried again manually creating the public docs- telltalegame- walking dead pasted the my docs saves... nothing

Thanks for trying to help but this fix doesn't work for me and I'm doing everything correctly

It's spelled "SyncFS" if that helps.

The only way those files would save at all is if that folder existed on your computer and the easiest way to check is to search for "SyncFS" or "the walking dead" (not both at the same time) in your start menu.

Try this:

If you're on Windows 7, do a start menu search of "the walking dead". Under "Documents (###)" you should see several folders labeled "the walking dead." Open all of the ones with save_##.save in them (an easy way to find them is to mouse over them and look for the folders that are very small, only a few MBs...these are your save folders).

The new folder is where your game is saving files and where it checks for prefs.prop. If your game is saving files, then it has to have this folder on your computer or it wouldn't work. Replace everything currently inside the new folder with everything taken from inside the old folder so that the new folder is identical to the old folder except for its name.

Also, make sure you don't have hidden files since those won't show up on a search and make sure you restart your game.

[Castiel91]

Originally Posted by bazenji

Strange.

Start up a new game, play through the intro until your first save (there should be an autosave indicator in the top left corner), and then quit. Restart and check to see if your last saved game saved.

If it saved but your My Docs folder still has your old saves in it, then it means you definitely have another folder on your computer. That's the important folder you need to find. Do a search for "the walking dead" or "SyncFS" and any folder you find that is labeled "the walking dead" will be the equivalent of the Public Documents version of the walking dead folder in mine. Follow the instructions and replace those saves.

It should only take about 5-10 minutes using this method to see if it works and you won't have to download or modifying or tinker with anything.

The strange thing is I just followed your advice and when I got to the first autosave I closed the game and went back to the main menu, I had a load game available for episode 1, the point I just completed.

I closed the game completely and went into Dan, My Documents, Tell Tale Games, The Walking Dead and I had save 1 to 55 originally. I checked again and it's still the same save 1 to 55, but the date had changed on save 1 from 01/07/2012 to 01/09/2012 so it seems to be autosaving to the same folder it was meant to anyway.

It has overwritten my save 1, it's a good thing I have the backup version anyway.

Any ideas how I can fix this from where I'm at now? In the user/public/public documents etc it doesn't have any saved games in it.

I have checked the search function and I only have SyncFs twice and one is in The Walking Dead and the other is in Jurassic Park The Game. So the post above doesn't seem to apply for the save problem I'm experiencing. I don't seem to have multiple folders with different saves, it seems to be saving in the exact same folder it was saving into at the start, the difference being when I load the game them loads are not available. Yet the autosave that replaced my original save 1 autosave seems to be detected as a save on the game now. Any ideas how I can fix this?

[bazenji]

At first confused by dates...then realize you're European.

Looks like it's saving to the right place but your prefs.prop has forgotten about all of your other saves. Which means you need to restore your previous prefs.prop.

First, copy from your backup and overwrite that save folder completely. Remember not to change your backup, though.

Then check your prefs.prop and see what the date is on that. If it says anything between 28/08/12 and 01/09/2012 then it's been updated to ignore all of your saves and from now on will save new games and overwrite the old ones in order counting up.

To hopefully fix this, right-click on prefs.prop, click "Properties," then click on the tab called "Previous Versions" and then pick a version of prefs.prop from before the Episode 3 update (at least several days ago, preferably up to two weeks ago).

This should force your prefs.prop to start counting up from your last autosave (55) and recognize all of your previous files.

Restart, check your stats, and try starting a new Episode 3 game with a previous save to see if your choices carried over.

[Castiel91]

Originally Posted by bazenji

At first confused by dates...then realize you're European.

Looks like it's saving to the right place but your prefs.prop has forgotten about all of your other saves. Which means you need to restore your previous prefs.prop.

First, copy from your backup and overwrite that save folder completely. Remember not to change your backup, though.

Then check your prefs.prop and see what the date is on that. If it says anything between 28/08/12 and 01/09/2012 then it's been updated to ignore all of your saves and from now on will save new games and overwrite the old ones in order counting up.

To hopefully fix this, right-click on prefs.prop, click "Properties," then click on the tab called "Previous Versions" and then pick a version of prefs.prop from before the Episode 3 update (at least several days ago, preferably up to two weeks ago).

This should force your prefs.prop to start counting up from your last autosave (55) and recognize all of your previous files.

Restart, check your stats, and try starting a new Episode 3 game with a previous save to see if your choices carried over.

Thank you that seems to have worked.

It's about time I had a fix for the problem I was having .

Been whinging for the past 2 days because all of the fixes didn't fix my problem.

Thank you very much.

I will just need to make sure my decisions are the same. I only had one restore point which took me back to the 07/06/2012 15 minutes after my last save game on 55. (Your way of dates by the way ha)

[Leejohn]

I'm having the same issue my PS3 any solutions

[Curdle_Sanders]

My PC won't roll back that far I can only go a day. I'm f'ed. Thank you TTG for screwing my game. I've already podcasted about how terrible a launch this 3rd episode has been how unhelpful your tech support has been to your community of people that for the most part really like you games. My poor experience will also be reflected in my review that I write covering this game.

Thank you to everyone that has been trying to help out each other. It's given me some hope throughout this process.

Off to START ALL OVER!!!

[bazenji]

@Castiel91

No problem. 15 minutes after you last save is I think the final ending status. Took me four hours to figure out what's been going on. It all ties into either how the update changed the prefs.prop or how the update changed the save folder or both.

@Leejohn

Probably the same issue. Except Sony won't let you make changes to the hard drive files, so I'd make a new thread ATTN: PS3 and tell TTG that they've changed the prefs.prop (or equivalent) and it's screwing up the old saves.

@Curdle Sanders

If you're having the same exact problem as Castiel91, then not being able to roll back is going to be a problem. But only if you're absolutely sure you have the same problem should you give up (has the game been saving new files in your original folder and overwriting your old ones? If not, then you can still fix it using the method I described above.)

[erikaaeternam]

Originally Posted by bazenji

At first confused by dates...then realize you're European.

Looks like it's saving to the right place but your prefs.prop has forgotten about all of your other saves. Which means you need to restore your previous prefs.prop.

First, copy from your backup and overwrite that save folder completely. Remember not to change your backup, though.

Then check your prefs.prop and see what the date is on that. If it says anything between 28/08/12 and 01/09/2012 then it's been updated to ignore all of your saves and from now on will save new games and overwrite the old ones in order counting up.

To hopefully fix this, right-click on prefs.prop, click "Properties," then click on the tab called "Previous Versions" and then pick a version of prefs.prop from before the Episode 3 update (at least several days ago, preferably up to two weeks ago).

This should force your prefs.prop to start counting up from your last autosave (55) and recognize all of your previous files.

Restart, check your stats, and try starting a new Episode 3 game with a previous save to see if your choices carried over.

THANK YOU THANK YOU SO MUCH! This worked for me! I tried every fix, my saves weren't even showing up in the game, and now after doing what you said, not only is my last save from episode 2 available, all my stats are there and it looks like I can finally play! Thank you again! I will share your fix on some other threads if that's OK, giving you credit of course, because loads of people are having this problem

[bazenji]

Right on!

I tried posting on Steam's boards but the admins won't approve my username, so hopefully someone else can float these around if they work.

[occono]

I don't keep restore points........low space.

[Nitrium]

For me the problem was different. I started a new Episode 2 game, let it autosave (with a new name - save_6.save), then copied the last saved game from my backup folder (save_28.save) and RENAMED it to save_6.save. Bang, there it was, Episode 2 completed. Then I started a new Episode 3 game but suddenly my decisions from Episode 1 are completely different (like Doug/Carly), while my Ep. 2 decisions are intact.

This really sucks. I've been messing with this for 2 hours now and I just gave up on the game. This is very annoying and disappointing, specially in a game where decisions matter. I don't want to replay the first two episodes - I don't have that much time and I was really enjoying the game up to this point.

[Redundant]

Ok I finally got it working and finding my old saves through a combination of doing what everyone has suggested.

However, if you leave the game it will not save your progress and will say Episode 3 is coming soon. I rejoined the game and it was from the save at the end of Episode 2. So kinda annoyed that I lost all my afternoon progress.

I really think this is a situation where I need to wait for TTG to get a patch out. I don't want to play episode 3 and not save my progress for episode 4.