WARNING: Savegame bug NOT fixed in patch #2…
 

…as I just found out the hard way. I'd stopped using the savegame backup utility since the patch came out, assuming that such a serious bug would automatically have been fixed.

Well, it wasn't, and I lost several hours of game.

I'm giving Gothic 3 a rest until the next patch.

USE IT :)

And do not stop playing now… remember, it was you who wrote "How To Play G3 (And Not Give Up In Frustration)" :D

Sorry about your lost work though :( I know it sucks.

The memory leak is not fixed, but this is not the actual savegame bug - this is a memory leak that leads to savegames being corrupted if you happen to run out of memory while trying to save. This memory leak problem has been present since day 1 and still is, but the savegame bug that was in the first goldmaster is gone.

Edit: Typos

I guess I have been lucky, to this point at least of all the bugs I experience I never had problem with Save games courpting.
If I hear my HD tapping hard or seem to get Locked, I use the Windows Key or Ctrl-Alt-Del and it will usually unlock the HD or the Memory, not a 100% but I would guess 80% success.

Only occurs after patch 1 if you play for several hours straight, as the memory leak is not very big anymore. If you play it unpatched it will crash every 20 minuttes even with 2gb of ram though. In patch 2 the memory leak is almost gone it seems, as it takes many hours before it crashes(at least for me).

I didn't have any particular problems with save game corruptions … at first. While I was traipsing around Myrtana before heading up north or to the desert I only experienced it one time but I was able to free up enough memory so that a "Retry" succeeded.

However, now that I've been around most of the world and have visited all but a single city it seems that so much data have accumulated that I dare not make more than a single quick save and a single regular save before I quit the game to alleviate the overworked memory circuits. If this trend continues I'm afraid I will soon reach the point where I have to do the rest of the game in "Iron Man" mode (no saving whatsoever).

Agreed. I didn't experience any save game crashes during the first ~10 hours of playing the game. I'm still roaming through the middle lands, however, I'm pretty close to finishing my sightseeing tour there … and alas, since about the time I hit Geldern savegame crashes have been my (only) trusty companions. Turning down the resource cache to Medium takes care of savegame crashing though (playing with all other settings maxed out). In exchange, the game simply crashes out of the blue. Which is not nearly as treacherous. YMMV.

Is there a specific reason why you guys refuse to use that tool?

I'm not concerned about restoring my previous saves. I'm concerned about a major annoyance that's pretty good at ruining my gaming experience.

Only time I can complain about savegame corruption was before the savegame backup thingy had been released, nowadays it's nothing more than slightly annoying. Besides, it hardly ever happens anymore, maybe once every 20-30 hours of gaming or so.

As aldee said: It is not about restoring saved games since I have long since acquired the habit of using several rotating "Temp" save slots in combination with quick saves. The problem is that when I save it is because I've just finished something tough or found something worth keeping or am preparing for something (like entering an ancestor tomb or whatnot) and THAT is when the game crashes … i.e. when I LEAST want it to.

Sometimes I can't even return to the desktop after a crash and have to reset the computer. So as far as I'm concerned it is without doubt the annoyance of finally finding the entrance to the Hammer Clan's village and then having to try and find it again when the game crashes when attempting to save.

Crashed for me twice in 1.8 so far and lost the savefiles both times.

The savebackup program by HiddenX friend seems to stop after awhile, so I have still lost a few sessions, including a 1h session yesterday. Now I run that and Autobackup2 from http://www.arsoftware.co.uk to be safe. Last time I lost 2 minutes. :P

@JemyM

Use Shiron's Tool to be absolutely save:

http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showp…2&postcount=16