When to Backup and Why?

Walking down a nice little metaphorical path being happy and content and then.....BAM!  Some Bull S*** happens and ruins your day!  Today I'm talking about Show-Stopping issues.

Last night I was calmly working on the game making good progress and out of nowhere (after many changes) I could no longer build an EXE file in GameMaker Studio 2 - I was getting an error like this:

Can't open script "C:\Users\BLAH_BLAH_BLAH"
C:\ProgramData/GameMakerStudio2/Cache/runtimes\runtime-2.1.4.218\windows\makensis\makensis.exe exited with 
non-zero status (1) elapsed time 00:00:04.7439401s for command 
"C:\ProgramData/GameMakerStudio2/Cache/runtimes\runtime-2.1.4.218/bin/Igor.exe" 
-options="C:\Users\JustWall\AppData\Local\GameMakerStudio2\GMS2TEMP\build.bff" 
 -- Windows PackageNsis started at 06/14/2018 15:15:14
"cmd"  /c subst Z: /d
elapsed time 00:00:00.1429984s for command "cmd" /c subst Z: /d started at 06/14/2018 15:15:19
FAILED: Package Program Complete

No matter what I did nothing resolved the issue.

I google searched various things - All leading me down a path that did not fix/resolve my problem

I Reinstalled the Application - No Luck
I did various other things I found on Google searches which lead me to believe the issue was caused by the Updates to the Installer Graphics I added?
I then reverted all the changes I made manually.  No Luck.  Actually it was worse?

This lead me to my point.....Backup you project and do it often.  I live by this.  I was able to go back and reload a project from about 2 hours prior and it works.  Whatever I did, I did it in those 2 hours.  Sure I had to then redo the work I had accomplished, yet the alternative was a 100% broken ass game.  So remember.  Save Often.  Backup Often.  It can save your sanity in the long-run.

I backup very often - especially once I have implemented something new and created a new build.

In GMS2 I can Export Project in case I need to revert.

I can then Export to a Backup hard drive and use it later - This has saved me in many of my projects.

I feel if this article gets one person to backup their work in GMS2 I have done my job here - Thanks for reading!

Life is Short - Be Creative