Contracts Wiped/NullReference Contracts

[Booots]

Sometime in the last few days, all record of my contracts was erased from my persistence file. This was weird enough, but I thought that fortunately I had backed them up when upgrading to OSX 10.9 a few days ago. The rest of my save file was untouched, but all of my current contracts and completed contracts were simply gone. I'm not sure about the offered contracts because they would have simply been replaced by new offers.

So I thought that rather than undo all of the progress I've made since that backup, I might be able to just copy in the contracts section of my old persistence file to the current one.

This seemed to work at first. The game loaded fine, and hovering my mouse over the contracts icon in the top right of the screen even showed the proper contracts again. Yay! But clicking on the tracking station did nothing, same result from the SPH and VAB. Buildings that bring up an overlay (like the runway, launchpad, and mission control bring up that building's display but nothing happens on clicking any buttons. Same awkward problem with the menu to exit. The only button that works is resume which leaves me force quitting my game and unable to do anything.

Now, when I completely remove all the contracts again, everything works fine. Except I won't get my money or science from visiting Eve and I have no record of saving so many Kerbals.

Looking at the logs, it seems to be throwing NullReferenceExceptions immediately after loading the contracts. I'm putting this in the modded installs folder because I am running mods, but since I can clear the error without removing mods I suspect it is not due to any of them (I do not have contract modifying mods).

Persistence file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8k196eh065kbmy2/persistent.sfs?dl=0

Player.log file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/96hs6dshhqldzx7/Player.log?dl=0

KSP.log file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/agdrgmi2f3t6tse/KSP.log?dl=0

Note that in the instance shown in the logs, I loaded the copy of my save with no contracts; entered the tracking station to confirm it worked; exited, and proceeded to load the version with contracts. The lack of NullReferenceExceptions is evident in the first and disappointing in the second.

Essentially what I'm wondering is if there is some way of re-instantiating my contract data into my current game or if I must choose between my contracts and my progress? Secondary objective is to find out why the contracts disappeared in the first place, though I understand that may be difficult since I don't know when that happened nor have logs from then.

[Aloriel]

I have also experienced this issue.

I'm running the Win32 version instead of the OSX version. The only difference is that I don't have a backup to load. My contracts are just gone.

[Dwaine]

I had the similar prob on Win32, I had NO contract modifying mods, not even mods adding new parts. ( Full list is : Toolbar + modulemanager + RasterPropMonitor + KerbalAlarm + Mechjeb + Chatterer + EnhancedNavBall + KerbalJointReinforcement + TSUtils + HotRockets, NOTHING that change the core game )

I just found out that this was caused by the last one. Hot rockets somehow break the game by trying to load "TurboFanEngine" that don't exist, and it break it so much that all contract past and present are wiped out ! Even Science archives ! Anyway, on the last page of hotrockets there is a fix (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/65754-HotRockets%21-Particle-FX-Replacement-Tutorial?p=1462438&viewfull=1#post1462438) that works ! I loaded an old backup and all my contracts are here again, but I lost ~10H of progress ...

Well if this can help. This is mostly due to a mod, and maybe not the one you'll expect !

[Booots]

I don't think we can say that it's caused exclusively by HotRockets because I don't have that mod. I'm running Toolbar, DMagic Orbital Science, Extraplanetary Launchpads, Firespitter propellers, KAS, Kerbal Engineer, Kethane, Mechjeb 2, ModuleManager, RemoteTech, Trajectories, and Alarm Clock. My science archives were preserved as well, so I think Dwaine and I might have different but similar issues.

On the plus side, I found out that I had a named quicksave that had my contracts data so I only lost about two hours. Yay!?

[malkuth]

Contracts disapear in most cases because a mod that has its own contracts makes a major change or deletes one of its Contract.Parameters. If you happen to have a contract that is completed in list that uses the old Contract.Parameters and it is no longer there. Then the system will freak out and clear you Achieved list.

Its the same idea that happens when you delete a part that is on one of your active vessels. When you start the game up again the Game will completely delete your vessel to protect your Persistant.

Same thing will happen if you play a Mod that adds contracts, and you complete a bunch of contracts from it. Then remove the mod, your list will be wiped. Or if the above happens with a mod update. No way to get the archives back after this wipe.

No other mod should effect this. Unless it is actively making its own contracts. And Dmagic does have contracts.

Edited October 9, 2014 by malkuth

[Booots]

Contracts disapear in most cases because a mod that has its own contracts makes a major change or deletes one of its Contract.Parameters. If you happen to have a contract that is completed in list that uses the old Contract.Parameters and it is no longer there. Then the system will freak out and clear you Achieved list.

Its the same idea that happens when you delete a part that is on one of your active vessels. When you start the game up again the Game will completely delete your vessel to protect your Persistant.

Same thing will happen if you play a Mod that adds contracts, and you complete a bunch of contracts from it. Then remove the mod, your list will be wiped. Or if the above happens with a mod update. No way to get the archives back after this wipe.

No other mod should effect this. Unless it is actively making its own contracts. And Dmagic does have contracts.

Thanks for explaining that. It's still bizarre because I hadn't updated any mods or the game itself when this happened. That also means that my outdated DMagic version hadn't added any contracts yet.

For future reference, couldn't I just narrow down the specific contract that was buggy and replace all but that one?

[Thanny]

My contract history disappeared with the 0.25 update. I don't have any contract-altering mods.