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Level Design RIP-Stoumont

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SchutzeSepp

Grizzled Veteran
Sep 23, 2006
1,540
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#1
some of you might have heard i had a serious pc crash some time ago, a hard disk crash to be exact.
meaning i lost everything i had that wasn't saved on something outside my pc.
the worst thing being one of my maps for DH, called Stoumont.
so i thought i might share with you all my screenshots i had uploaded, as its the only proof the map existed.

A little about stoumont, it is a small village in the ardennes, belgium, wich marks the stopping point of the german spearhead in the battle of the bulge.
as Stoumont is the last village captured by the Kampfgruppe peiper, after wich peiper was forced to stop his advance because he was out of fuel and ammunition. he retreated to the famous village of "la Gleize" where he escaped with his men on foot at night several days later, abandoning all his material including many kingtigers due to lack of fuel.

i took a trip to stoumont last summer, as i live 40 minutes from there, and took pictures of every house and building so i could make the most detailed map possible.

















this was my DH project for the last 8-10 months, and it would have been my best map ever. it was about 90% done, with 34 accurate fully enterable buildings and a new "intelligent" spawn system, where players can choose at wich objective they want to spawn.
it would feature american GI's supported by various tanks, defending against the 1st SS KG peiper, supported by fallshirmjagers and various heavy tanks.

besides that i also lost all my other map projects, including the final pariserplatz and some other map projects.

i have send my hard disk to a recovery company, they estimate the cost between €900 and 1900 as they need to open the HD in a clean room.
thats huts to much monet i can spend for a map :(

anyways if some of you have important stuff on your pc's, save it frequently on something outside of the pc, as this crap comes without warning. just like that one morning the pc won't boot, and it's over.

edit: on request i have created a paypal account where those who wish can donate to help me fund the recovery of this map. wich should cost around €600.
ok, i just created a PayPal account on [email protected] in belgium
those who wish can participate in the data recovery costs of this map, that would be a fantastic gesture and i would really appreciate, no matter for how much you participate!
if anything should go wrong, or if that specific data could somehow not be recovered. i will refund everybody obviously.

thanks in advance!

i will keep everybody updated on this, and those who wish can mention their names so i can credit them would the map be released.
Click to expand...
 
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#2
Oh, this is so bad... it looks so good ... :(

Seriously Sepp man, if you decide to spend the money to recover the data, I would gladly help you out with a donation to cover a bit of the cost, if you have a paypal account or something. As I am sure other members here would, too see this map finished?

And remember, never ever save data on the system drive (c) - if that crashes it will often require a reformat for re-installing the OS, and windows is prone to messing up the filetable. Always use separate partitions for important data, and back them up regularly to external media.

I recently bought one of these babies, along with two 1TB disks:
http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=509
Expensive, but I have lost too much data in the past to care.
 
Upvote 0
#4
Was really sorry to hear about this, you obviously put alot of work into it. :(

It looked like one helluva map....

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I also have a second drive that I use, mostly for storage and making backups/copies of important things. For those that are on a budget, there are still CD-Rs that can be burned, they are fairly cheap. I would imagine by now, all computers have at least a CD burner.
 
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#5
it was not playtested yet, as it had no spawns or objectives yet, so i didn't see the use of uploading the map. plus im to damn proud to share WIP stuff out of fear of giving a bad image if its not finished yet.
the pc was not even 6 months old, and i had several problems with it. but i thought it was windows that was corrupted. it crashed 2 months after i bought it, and a friend of me was able to retrieve my important files via the console. then we reinstalled all, and added a second partition on wich i was to double-save my important data.
but that didn't help, since my entire HD crashed now.
now im saving my data on a simple USB key.
 
Upvote 0
#9
Rak said:
Damn, looks awesome.

Didn't you upload it somehwhere? Maybe it was in some of the DH beta versions so you can start again from an earlier stage maybe?
Click to expand...

DH uses a three entity fail safe for this sort of thing, firstly we have our ftp (which is used for direct uploads) then we have a dedicated external HD which i own and has every file dating back to alpha 1 and lastly exocet carries a similar system on his PC. The problem is sepp was v secretive about his work as he always is :) he only sent an early beta to one other member and unfortunately this member regularly deletes his DH folder (as many do for keeping things tidy and preventing file mismatches). In short it was one of those cases where everything that could go wrong did go wrong. Sorry sepp, although testing of wacht am rhein is so far showing it should be paradise for tankers and DH will be moving to fully support sepp and others in the Ardennes with new content so hopefully he will still do a nice village map for you guys :D.

many DH devs and testers have offered to donate to sepp to get the files back but from what he is telling us it might be too far gone.
 
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#10
Oh wow, that's very sad. While I was making Kryukovo, the editor crashed and I hadn't saved for 1.5 hours. It was really painful to to them again, if something like this happened to me I'd be very very pissed :)

Better be open than secretive with these input heavy works like mapping.
 
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#11
As I mentioned in another thread:
VyvyanBasterd said:
How about putting the broken drive into the freezer?

Apparently you can get some extra life out it, hopefully enough to recover the data. Never tried it myself, but a ex-colleague of mine mentioned this trick once. He used it a couple of times to successfully retrieve data from broken drives! :eek:

http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2006/01/freeze-your-hard-drive-to-recover-data.html
Click to expand...

According to the comments following that article, many people successfully recovered their data this way. If you still have the drive, I would suggest you put it in a freezer for a night and then try to retrieve the data from it again. Who knows, it might actually work. It would be a shame to not at least try it...
 
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#13
i feel uncomfortable about accepting cash, i need to get my mind straight and think about it, since i had started to accept the fact that it was lost forever untill i win the lottery for wich i never buy tickets anyway.

believe me guys i have tried everything, from freezer to replacing the printed circuit but nothing gets it back, i had also given it to 2 different persons who do this after hours but none got it to work again.
the recovery company gave me a list of everything that is wrong, basically the head is broken and lays next to the platters, slowing them down.

now if i want them to open it and give me a list of all the data that is intact, it will cost €250. and between 950 and 1550 to get the data back.(tax not included, wich is 21% in ******* belgium)
 
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#16
Sepp had asked me for advice on some issues he was having with the map, I Really feel busted, that this has happened and only wished he had sent me a copy to figure something out for him.

From his description posted here and the discussions He and I had about it, I was getting the feeling that this would have been his best map ever, Everything he was putting into it just seemed to fit perfectly.

Sorry Sepp but if ya ever need anything m8, you know just ask.
But as Aeneas2020 has posted above the new Tank Map your doing for DH is Without sounding biased, Going to be a classic and probably one one the best tank maps I have played thus far.
 
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#18
Day-um, that mapped looked sweet, Sepp! :( I would be willing to chip in or help out in any way that I could to help you recover the data. It might be cheaper to see if someone in the community can perform this service pro-bono if they have the technical "know-how". Heck, it would even be cheaper if you had to ship it over to the US if the person could perform the free service here.
 
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#19
SchutzeSepp said:
i feel uncomfortable about accepting cash, i need to get my mind straight and think about it, since i had started to accept the fact that it was lost forever untill i win the lottery for wich i never buy tickets anyway.

believe me guys i have tried everything, from freezer to replacing the printed circuit but nothing gets it back, i had also given it to 2 different persons who do this after hours but none got it to work again.
the recovery company gave me a list of everything that is wrong, basically the head is broken and lays next to the platters, slowing them down.

now if i want them to open it and give me a list of all the data that is intact, it will cost
Click to expand...
 
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