My game was lost to cold storage (error setting remote JSON for campaign 1915499)

The day I feared has come, my game of many years was potentially lost, because I was very busy working as of late. My game was moved to "Cold Storage." I have long feared something like this would happen, which is why I continued to pay my subscription even when I was too busy to play or GM my game. My game, which I put thousands and thousands of hours into, was moved to cold storage without any kind of warning, which I did not even know was a thing that could happen. I'm getting this error code when trying to restore my game (error setting remote JSON for campaign 1915499). I was not warned via email or anything; if I had been, I could have predicted or prevented this from happening. Maybe I missed an announcement, but from what I can tell, no users know when or how their game is going to be put in cold storage, which I think is a huge flaw, asking for trouble. Please roll20 name your price to keep my game safe and running well, and I will pay it. The only reason I don't have Pro is cause none of the features in it would function for my game for whatever reason, just cold storage is now. The only thing I ask for is for my game to be left alone, and it would have been fine, which is what I paid for. I would understand putting some random game in cold storage, but this is what I pay for: simply keeping my game safe. Roll20 team, please help resolve this issue, make the platform better, and potentially make more money. Many of us are willing to pay for improved service. I'm not saying put existing features behind a pay wall, but new safety features and improved quality for those of us willing to pay for example something like backed up independent servers for those of us that have larger games, those of us that want our games to run smoother and load faster, and those of us that want our games safe and untampered with for the benefit of a larger community. Sorry if this post sounds angry, I really do I LOVE Roll20 a lot and just want to help and get help resolving this issue now and forever. I would also like to see Roll20 reach its full potential.

It’s mostly community help here. You should use the Help Center and Send a request to get Roll20 staff attention and a ticket to track your issue.  Having a game go into cold storage has nothing to do with subscription. I’m a Pro subscriber and games that I don’t launch regularly go into cold storage. I’ve never had an issue getting them out again.  For example, every 2 weeks I launch the  Australia and New Zealand Tavern Raiders Association

Hi Natedog,  Please file a report via the Help Center . The Devs can restore your game.  As Andrew stated, cold storage has nothing to do with your subscription level. It is a thing that Roll20 uses to save storage space from active more expensive storage to cheaper inactive storage when your game is inactive. 

Yes, I've made a request to the help center earlier today, and I'm sure I will hear from them soon. Still, I fear it will not work due to how vast my game is, as many features do not work for my game. This is one reason why I don't have Pro backing up and copying my game, simply does not work due to how vast it is I assume. The point I'm trying to make is that if the source of the issue is cost, give me a  profitable  option to pay those costs, and the problem will be solved, and everybody will win. For example, if I could pay for a server with more extensive backups, no cold storage, better speeds, and all-around performance, I would love to. How possible all this is, including the restoration of my game, I do not know. As your comment about this mostly being community help, I'm sorry if I posted this in the wrong place. I just noticed someone who had a similar problem here, so naturally, I voiced my concern and offered a solution, as I am a believer that there are no problems only solutions, preferably profitable ones.

An update to my problem is that the developers/support "restored my game" from cold storage on their end, somehow, but it appears to be absolutely empty, no maps, tokens, pages, or anything. My high hopes have once again turned into a nightmare. Seemingly more than 10000 hours of work and memories lost. At this point, I can only hope they can do something. I have no words to express my despair if they can't.

Another Update, the issue has been passed on directly to developers. Progress has been made, my tokens have been restored, but all my maps remain empty.

I am crossing my fingers for you. I once lost my entire campaign to a bug like this. Fortunately I did have a backup. Unfortunately, the backup was from several months earlier. It was a lot of restoration work.

A restoration to any time would be a blessing at this point. Restoring all 100 1500x1500x1500 ft free roam maps would be hell. I'm talking about cities, wildernesses, kingdoms, and literally the entire solar system. Another update to note is that the dynamic lighting layers are intact, along with all the token sheets I mentioned earlier. My friend's games are likely trapped in cold storage as well, as they are run off the same FA platform and are of the same size. Right now, we are hoping I can figure something out here.

Are the map images still in your Art Library? Just not showing on the VTT? And what is "FA platform"? Also, what is the third dimension you are indicating for your maps? Also, also, you said 1500 "ft", what does that mean in terms of pixel dimensions? Grid size? Just trying to get a better idea of the situation.

Hello Natedog, I have just had the same issue and it is very upsetting, were you able to resolve the problem?  Cheers, Frank

Hi Frankaroc,  Have you filed a report with the Devs via the Help Center ? They should be able to get your game straightened out. 

Frankaroc said: Hello Natedog, I have just had the same issue and it is very upsetting, were you able to resolve the problem?  Cheers, Frank I feel your pain man, its ridiculous. At the moment, they have only restored my token sheets, sheets, and dynamic lighting layer, not a single part of the actual maps has been restored. I am still waiting to hear back. Hopefully, they are working on resolving the issue. If I was them, I would have put at least 2 fail-safes before risking deleting someone's game, like double verifying the integrity of the copy before outright deleting someone's game, very Klingon of them otherwise.

keithcurtis said: Are the map images still in your Art Library? Just not showing on the VTT? And what is "FA platform"? Also, what is the third dimension you are indicating for your maps? Also, also, you said 1500 "ft", what does that mean in terms of pixel dimensions? Grid size? Just trying to get a better idea of the situation. None of the token layer, or map layers are here at all. I am able to add new map, and tokens features fine. it is 300 70 pixel cells by 300 70 pixel cells or 21000x21000 pixels. FA is just the name free-roam tabletop RPG we are developing that uses maps of this size.

Frankaroc said: Hello Natedog, I have just had the same issue and it is very upsetting, were you able to resolve the problem?  Cheers, Frank What are the size of your maps in pixels Frank, and how many maps did you have? Maybe this info will help contribute to them finding a solution to this issue. Also, I will keep you up to date on what's going on with a resolution to the problem.

Natedog said: keithcurtis said: Are the map images still in your Art Library? Just not showing on the VTT? And what is "FA platform"? Also, what is the third dimension you are indicating for your maps? Also, also, you said 1500 "ft", what does that mean in terms of pixel dimensions? Grid size? Just trying to get a better idea of the situation. None of the token layer, or map layers are here at all. I am able to add new map, and tokens features fine. it is 300 70 pixel cells by 300 70 pixel cells or 21000x21000 pixels. FA is just the name free-roam tabletop RPG we are developing that uses maps of this size. Thanks! That doesn't necessarily explain what happened to your maps, but I can give some performance advice. Those maps are gigantic, especially if dynamic lighting is involved. You can increase performance by a couple of ways (once they have been replaced, unfortunately): 1. Cutting theirresolution in half, and dividing the cells to 0.5 width. This is much more effective in Jumpgate, since that engine actually scales the token interface to match. 2. Slicing the maps into multiple, smaller images and tiling them back together in Roll20 The maps are probably still on the large size if you intend to use dynamic lighting with them, but that should hep. As for my earlier question, I was asking if the map images are still in you Library, that is your Art Library . That is where the images "live". What is placed on the VTT page is merely a reference to those files. I was asking so we could determine if your original uploaded files are still intact. Some folks have run into trouble by deleting images from their Art Library, figuring that they still have the "copies" on the page. This inevitably leads to image loss once the browser cache catches up. This can also happen in shared campaigns, where co-gms are adding graphics and unaware that a deletion could affect another's map page. I was trying to determine if you would need to re-upload anything, if they were still resident in your library, or if they had been inadvertently deleted.

keithcurtis said: Natedog said: keithcurtis said: Are the map images still in your Art Library? Just not showing on the VTT? And what is "FA platform"? Also, what is the third dimension you are indicating for your maps? Also, also, you said 1500 "ft", what does that mean in terms of pixel dimensions? Grid size? Just trying to get a better idea of the situation. None of the token layer, or map layers are here at all. I am able to add new map, and tokens features fine. it is 300 70 pixel cells by 300 70 pixel cells or 21000x21000 pixels. FA is just the name free-roam tabletop RPG we are developing that uses maps of this size. Thanks! That doesn't necessarily explain what happened to your maps, but I can give some performance advice. Those maps are gigantic, especially if dynamic lighting is involved. You can increase performance by a couple of ways (once they have been replaced, unfortunately): 1. Cutting theirresolution in half, and dividing the cells to 0.5 width. This is much more effective in Jumpgate, since that engine actually scales the token interface to match. 2. Slicing the maps into multiple, smaller images and tiling them back together in Roll20 The maps are probably still on the large size if you intend to use dynamic lighting with them, but that should hep. As for my earlier question, I was asking if the map images are still in you Library, that is your Art Library . That is where the images "live". What is placed on the VTT page is merely a reference to those files. I was asking so we could determine if your original uploaded files are still intact. Some folks have run into trouble by deleting images from their Art Library, figuring that they still have the "copies" on the page. This inevitably leads to image loss once the browser cache catches up. This can also happen in shared campaigns, where co-gms are adding graphics and unaware that a deletion could affect another's map page. I was trying to determine if you would need to re-upload anything, if they were still resident in your library, or if they had been inadvertently deleted. Yes, I still have images in my library, the ones I bought from the marketplace, but none of them have been restored at all, including the ones I simply sourced from online using the in-roll20 feature to do so. Also, Dynamic lighting works fine on maps this size. Everything worked fine, other than 5-10 min slow loading in maps with 1000s of tokens, and duplicating or copying the game using Roll20's feature to do so, although simply copying and pasting a map 1 layer at a time worked if you gave it some time to load. In the end, I may try fewer pixels overall, but now that I think of it, I had another game I was working on that had only 6 or so maps of this same size kind that restored just fine. So I don't think the issue is directly connected to map size.