A file I was working on recently suddenly won't open

Help and Advice
1

I last worked on my animation 12/13 days ago and when I attempted to open it, I recieved the following pop up window:

Raw file path: C:/Users/nuc/Desktop/Digital Art/speed/animation/practice/head turn.pclx Resolved file path: C:/Users/nuc/Desktop/Digital Art/speed/animation/practice/head turn.pclx

[Project LOAD diagnostics]

File name: C:/Users/nuc/Desktop/Digital Art/speed/animation/practice/head turn.pclx Working dir: C:/Users/nuc/AppData/Local/Temp/Pencil2D/head turn_Y2xD_8edh4lyd/ Project format: .pclx

[Miniz sanity check]

Found an error while reading the file. Error code: 7, reason: failed finding central directory
Found an error while closing the file. Error code: 24, reason: invalid parameter

Error: Unable to extract project, miniz sanity check failed.

[System Info]

Pencil2D version: 99.0.0.1046 (nightly) Build ABI: x86_64-little_endian-llp64 Kernel: winnt, 10.0.19045 Operating System: Windows 10 Version 22H2 Language: en_GB

I have already attempted the temp folder recovery routes and found nothing in this animations temp folder, the data folder was there but it was empty.

My 3 other pencil2D animations are all opening and everything seems to be in order but this one won’t open. the only difference between this one and the other 3 is that this one had 3 bitmap layers(one layer had colour) and the others had 1 or 2 bitmap layers, with no colour

I also tried downloading the most recent nightly build (9 December) and the error window still pops up

It’s seemigly impossible to recover my animation at this point but if there’s no solution, please assist in helping me avoid this sort of scenario in the future

Thank you

2

Unfortunately it appears your project has become corrupted somehow. This does occur sometimes and there isn’t any specific conditions within the app that we are aware of that trigger this issue. Certainly you can have color and as many layers as you want and you should not let this discourage you. The mostly likely cause of an issue like this would be if Pencil2D was interrupted or crashed while saving the project.

There will always be some risk of file corruption or accidental deletion, regardless of the app used, so ultimately the most important thing you can do to avoid this scenario in the future is to regularly backup your projects. The simplest approach would be to copy your project files, or to use the Save As command to save to a new file. Setting up system backups for your entire computer is more involved, but can save you in non-Pencil2D scenarios.

If you don’t mind sharing the project file, please upload it here or by send it to me through DMs. If you do I can take a closer look at the file. It may be possible to recover some data if the file is only partially corrupted. We recently revamped the error messages for opening files and this project could also help me to understand the circumstances in which those particular error codes appear.

3

Thank you for the quick response. i’ve taken note of your suggestions and i’ll be sure to make backups for all my future projects

i’m attaching the file below

head turn.pclx (1.6 MB)