Bad quicksave - Is it possible to recover a savefile?

[66688a61e59e5Poisonfume]

Hello everyone. I turn to this message board as a last resort to something that has torn my heart to pieces and shaken my very soul.

It's my first playthrough of SS2 (GOG version) ever, and I got to the end of the Hydroponics stage. However, I was killed and reached for the quickload button, accidentally hitting the quicksave button in my haste immediately after dying (but before the menu screen popped up). As you can imagine, loading this quicksave now takes me to the menu screen almost immediately. The problem is, the most recent manual save since is one from waaaay earlier in engineering and no autosave files exist. I'm stuck.

My question is, is there any way to recovering a more recent savefile (either a previous autosave or quicksave)? I see only save_13 and save_14 folders in the game files which, judging by the contents, correspond to the faulty quicksave and old manual save from engineering.

Like I said, it's my first playthrough and I've been thoroughly enjoying the game, but I simply am not willing to do it all over again if I know there's no other way. Any suggestions?

[66688a61e5c44Kolya]

Image: http://i.imgur.com/M81xYAw.jpg

level selector

[66688a61e5f97ZylonBane]

However, I was killed and reached for the quickload button, accidentally hitting the quicksave button...

How in the hell did you accidentally hit Alt-S while reaching for Alt-L?

[66688a61e6240Olfred]

Maybe he put it on something like F5 and F6 or something, some games have it set up like that.
I prefer something like F5 and F9 so you don't mishit a key accidentaly

[66688a61e636bPoisonfume]

Yep, I assigned them to two neighbouring keys. I do that for every game but it's never bitten me in the ass until now...needless to say ill select different keys from now on.

As for level select, wouldn't that ignore any item collection and skill progression made along the way? Ideally I'd like to recover the last autosave (which I don't understand why the game deletes), seeing as recovering my last quicksave seems unlikely.

[66688a61e64dbvoodoo47]

if you have used ss2tool 5.1, you should have an autosave right above the last save slot (the "current" save).

[66688a61e660fKolya]

You'll get approximately the skillset and necessary items in the level selector that you would have on the level. So you're not a newborn.
However there's another caveat when entering higher levels: The levels below won't be solved, like they would be if playing them in natural progression, eg if you select Ops then go down to Hydro, the biomatter will still block the elevator in Hydro and prevent you from going back to Ops.

The best solution is of course to start again and learn from your mistake by making regular savegames in different slots.

[66688a61e678ePoisonfume]

Reading the release notes of SS2Tool 5.1 I come to the painful realization that I wouldn't find myself in my current predicament had I discovered it earlier. I installed it just now but my antivirus detected a certain 'madplay.exe' as a vicious file for which it could provide me with no description. I quarantined it just to be safe. I'll reinstall the tool upon your confirmation that the file is good. It seems that the game will not launch at all without it, so I guess I'll have no choice either way.

Last call: is there no magical temp folder somewhere storing any previous deleted savefiles? If there's no chance of recovery I guess I'll have to go with your best solution, Korya, though I will enable any cheats I find useful so as to breeze through it as painlessly as possible. It's a sub-optimal solution for me if only because it throws the immersion out the window, but it will have to do.

[66688a61e68a2Kolya]

madplay.exe is clean. Try updating your antivirus.

[66688a61e6992voodoo47]

and, to answer the second part of the question, no unless you were already running ss2tool 5.1, your saves are lost.

[66688a61e6a78Poisonfume]

Fair enough. Thanks for the replies!

[66688a61e6d07ZylonBane]

your saves are lost.

They're not lost, they were... murdered.

Image: http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02436/jack-Klugman-2_2436786b.jpg

[66688a61e6e04Kolya]

this is serious

[attachment deleted by admin]

[66688a61e6f25voodoo47]

Image: http://chrisldiaz.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/garfield_dont_care_black_shirt.jpeg

aanyway, now that autosave has it's own slot, the cases of vicious autosave murders should become much less frequent.

[66688a61e7005Poisonfume]

Ey, it totally is serious. I was super devastated, mkay?

[66688a61e70ceRuThaN]

I have same problem.

[66688a61e71bevoodoo47]

a dead save will remain dead.

[66688a61e74c0unn_atropos]

Thought I would post this in the funny video thread, but I think that it has a comfy place here, too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03CTbYqYouc

[66688a61e75c1Kolya]

The way that video is edited it might give the impression that the player is shot at his spawn point. It's only funny when you know he ran into that line of fire time after time.

[66688a61e76d6Olfred]

Reminds me of my first Half-Life playthrough.
At the final boss I made a quichsave right before getting hit by a big energy ball thing which kills me.
Fortunately enough I discovered one way to get out of the line of fire. But it took me about 30 tries to get another quicksave which was save

[66688a61e77a9voodoo47]

if I remember correctly, HL1 has two quicksaves to help avoid this problem.

[66688a61e78b2Olfred]

Yeah, it does. But I don't remember why I didn't used that.
I was playing the unpatched game, maybe it didn't had it back then? And it was my first ego-shooter on PC, so I was kinda stupid about everything

[66688a61e79a6Joshsmog]

half life did have a million different versions, I remember when the flashlight used up the HEV suits charge. The evidence of it is still in the tutorial where you have to walk across a dark railless catwalk using your flashlight picking up HEV batteries along the way.