I have a class working on the Foldit Coronavirus Beginner Puzzle. Students have reported that Foldit has been crashing a lot in the last 24 hours. When they log back in to the game, they cannot access their saved solution. Even after logging into their account on a separate computer, it still does not show their saved solution. Anyone have suggestions as to what the problem might be?
First, a few line about helping debug the issue, then a few more or the saved solutions front.
A file called log.txt gets created in c:\Foldit or the equivalent spots. It sometimes contains useful information after a crash. (Or more often, it's no help at all.)
The easiest way to send log.txt is to use the #bugs-and-feedback channel on the Foldit Discord server.
Otherwise, you can use the feedback area on this website. You can open a new feedback, but it won't let you attach a file at that point. Instead, you can reply to your own feedback, and then find the option to attach files.
You can't attach files here in the forum, but you can always include a few lines here in a reply. The "pre" and "/pre" HTML tags are useful for that. Generally, the last few lines of log.txt are potentially useful, especially if they have "traceback" info. Often the traceback info is missing or corrupted.
Regarding saved solutions, an initial save is always "local", ending up as an "is_solution" file under "C:\Foldit" or the equivalent. Saved solutions can then be shared, using the "Upload For Myself", "Upload For My Group", or "Upload For Scientists" buttons in the Open/Share Solutions dialog (control+O by default). These uploaded solutions are available "in the cloud" on the Foldit server, and can then be downloaded to any computer.
Locally saved solutions are only available on the computer where they were created.
Missing solutions do seem to crop up from time to time. If you're using the Tracks feature, be sure to change back to the same track after a crash. Foldit always starts up in the "default" track, not your most recent track. The Tracks dialog is found in the Undo menu, alt+U by default. Things like the "recent best" solution and any quicksaved solutions are specific to a track. Manually saved solutions aren't specific to a track, and should always be available when playing the same puzzle.
There are some issues with the current "main" release that are causing crashes.
The latest "devprev" release has a fix that may help.
Switching to devprev involves editing the file options.txt while Foldit is not running. On the "update_group" keyword, change "main" to "devprev", then save and start Foldit. Foldit will download the update and restart.
The wiki has the complete procedure: https://foldit.fandom.com/wiki/Devprev