Fallout Shelter Troubleshooting
Problem observed:
When/where: While attempting to load the “lunchbox” area in the in-game interface.
the game crashed while it was loading. Last graphic seen: green band across lunchbox area with “loading,” normal circular motion of graphic frozen.
Phone hard locks and requires restart.

Subsequent behavior:

When opening the game the bethesda splash/loading screen will appear.
Instead of the game main menu opening the graphic for a loading game immediately appears, complete with 1-3 tips.
Prior to save game launching the screen goes black and the phone returns to the desktop.

No in-app purchases had been made.

1 wasteland explorer was out and was approaching 10 hours in the waste, however there was no timed event or interval event that the community has identified that might have been triggering at that moment.
The active game during crash was in slot 1.
The phone was experiencing high processor loads resulting in heat stress at the time and was behaving sluggishly.

Investigation:
The data file:
This PC\XT907\Internal storage\Android\data\com.gamesas.falloutshelter\files\Vault1.sav shows a size of 0 bytes

Hypothesis: Data corruption occurred while attempting to contact the server during lunchbox menu interaction.
This deleted the active game data which caused some kind of lock at the system level which required a restart.
Subsequently the game is attempting to display the most recently played game on the main menu but is unable to execute that logic correctly as the vault number field it is attempting to access in the file Vault1.sav is blank.
The game then for coders-only-know what reason defaults to trying to load Vault1.sav and then either at the end of or near the end of the game loading sequence it crashes to desktop.

Testing:
1. Delete Vault1.sav

2. Launch app.

Outcome:

App loads as expected.
Main menu with “Enter Vault” button opens, selecting “Enter Vault” opens the saved game screen with slot 1 empty.
I am able to create a new game freely.

Data loss is not resolved and is not reversible.
Workaround for game crash identified which does not require re-install.

Recommendations:

1. Build logic which identifies corrupted save data and informs user via dialogue and clears the save slot to allow the user to start a new game or switch to another vault.

-Same code can be used to feed the switch to backup save file once implemented.

2. Implement a rotating save system where each slot has 2 rotating save games at 2-10 minute intervals (user configurable for data management) with logic to fallback to the backup save in case of active save corruption.

-This will protect against this issue and any future save data related bugs.

3. Identify and resolve bug which triggers this data wipe.

Game files post-crash are available and have been provided to support via email along with a link to this thread.


If anyone else is able to provide replication similar to this it will go a long way towards getting this resolved.

Bethesda:

Some free Handymen and a nice stack of lunchboxes for those affected (And as compensation for time spent troubleshooting) would go a long way towards making this right.

I was greatly enjoying this game... I would very much like to continue to do so.

But I do so hate wasting my time when wasting my time.

It makes the ultimate futility of the activity far too immediate for enjoyment.