Particle effect cloud assets randomly fail to load in the editor

[nixxquality]

Branch

staging

Describe the bug

I've had this issue with my game before, to the point where I've almost given up on updating it because I have to go through the rigamarole of re-creating each particle effect from scratch because the textures that loaded fine a few days ago are suddenly missing_texture.

With the recent particle effect fixes, I wanted to see if #8713 was fixed. However, it turned into a repro for this issue.

To Reproduce

1. Download the old repro project temporaryeffectnowork.zip
2. Load it, press play and the 1 and 2 keys.
3. Note that the textures are now missing.

Note: The particle effect in question hasn't been updated since 11/4/2024.

Expected behavior

Textures should not disappear. The files have been untouched since July, so why are they gone?

Media/Files

No response

Additional context

I tried unzipping the folder again so I could check a fresh copy of the repro project. The textures were missing there as well.

I did not try loading an earlier version of s&box.

This is what the console says:

 10:58:55   engine/Engine C:\build\_work\sbox\sbox\src\rendersystem\texturebase.cpp(3552):ResourceHandleToData( materials/particles/particle_glow_05.vtex ) failed! Falling back to error texture!
 10:58:55   engine/Engine C:\build\_work\sbox\sbox\src\rendersystem\texturebase.cpp(3552):ResourceHandleToData( materials/particles/smoke/render/smokeloop_i_0.vtex ) failed! Falling back to error texture!
 10:58:55   engine/Engine C:\build\_work\sbox\sbox\src\rendersystem\texturebase.cpp(3552):ResourceHandleToData( materials/particles/light_flare/light_glow_01.vtex ) failed! Falling back to error texture!
 10:58:55   engine/Engine C:\build\_work\sbox\sbox\src\rendersystem\texturebase.cpp(3552):ResourceHandleToData( materials/particles/smoke/render/smokeloop_i_1.vtex ) failed! Falling back to error texture!
 10:58:55   engine/Engine C:\build\_work\sbox\sbox\src\rendersystem\texturebase.cpp(3552):ResourceHandleToData( materials/particles/spark_white.vtex ) failed! Falling back to error texture!
 10:58:55   engine/Engine C:\build\_work\sbox\sbox\src\rendersystem\texturebase.cpp(3552):ResourceHandleToData( materials/particles/smoke/render/smokeloop_g_1.vtex ) failed! Falling back to error texture!

[solwllms]

The cloud cache database is busted here somehow. I still need to work out how that's happened, but for now, you should be able to just delete .sbox/cloud.db inside your project.

[nixxquality]

Alright here's one repro:

1. Start a new project
2. Drag the "Impact Metal" Facepunch cloud asset into the scene and note that it appears as normal
3. Restart your editor
4. The smoke is now missing texture

[gabrielgilvan]

The cloud cache database is busted here somehow. I still need to work out how that's happened, but for now, you should be able to just delete .sbox/cloud.db inside your project.

Deleting the cloud.db just broke all cloud stuff, i also got the same textures/particles/smoke/smoke1.vtex error too

https://sbox.game/facepunch/impactgeneric/

[solwllms]

Still struggling to repro with these steps so I've added some more logging around this on staging. If you're still seeing these disappear and can send logs (if you can, both from the install session and after restarting the editor) that'd be very helpful.

@gabrielgilvan Not sure what's happened here either, as long as your scenes/maps/resources etc are storing the cloud package idents, deleting cloud.db should just trigger those to be re-downloaded. If you can send the project and logs I'll take a look, via discord or email sol.williams (at) facepunchstudios.com.

[nixxquality]

Following the "Impact Metal" repro steps above:

First launch of new project, dropping the "Impact Metal" into the scene: sbox-dev.675.log Opening the project a second time, seeing missing texture smoke: sbox-dev.log

This was on staging, build ID 20845476.