Ricebug on 5/8/2013 at 13:02
I built Return to Tarnhill under ND 1.21. It now seems we have a couple of players who are having trouble with it. Certain events are not happening. Most aren't having any problems. Even when I played their savegames, I couldn't reproduce the faults--everything works like it should.
I just discovered that they are playing under 1.19. Could that be why the problems exist? I thought the upgrade addressed editor issues, not the game executable.
fibanocci on 5/8/2013 at 13:23
There are many changes in 1.21 related to the gameplay. Look at the release notes. If you're doing a FM with 1.21, players have to update, anyway. You're not to blame for that.
LarryG on 5/8/2013 at 15:29
If the mission has been updated to 1.21, then the players need to play using 1.21. The 1.21 Thief executable is backwards compatible: you can play a 1.19 mission using it. The 1.19 Thief executable is not forwards compatible: you can't play 1.21 missions with it.
In brief, they can still play the 1.19 version of the mission if they are Ludites and have not upgraded to 1.21, but they can't play the 1.21 version until they upgrade.
Ricebug on 5/8/2013 at 19:25
Well, they're apparently able to play my FM under 1.19, only some aspects of it won't work. I've posted the warning.
LarryG on 5/8/2013 at 19:58
I believe that both the mis and gam file structures changed some between the versions, so if they can play it at all, it is just that they haven't hit on any of the changed data structures ... yet. "Random" crashes would not be unusual in this case. I thought there was a version checker script that was updated for 1.21 so that you could check that players were using the correct version of the thief executable and prevent them from using an invalid version ... or am I misremembering? I would have to go back and re-read all the 1.21 release notes to be sure. Maybe it was just wishful thinking.
kdau on 5/8/2013 at 23:07
It's possible to use version.osm on thief2.exe itself for that purpose, IIRC.
However, I don't think there were any critical structural changes between 1.19 and 1.20. (1.21 was just minor fixes.) Some new data chunks and property fields were added, but those should be ignored silently by the engine, leading only to lack (or misbehavior) of specific features. If something changed that could cause crashes, it wasn't documented.
Ricebug, what specific sort of events aren't happening for the 1.19 players? It may still be possible to work around, if that's what you'd prefer.
The Watcher on 5/8/2013 at 23:47
If nothing else, for my own purposes, I've started putting together a new version script that should be easier to use (and, y'know, documented). No idea if it'll work out okay for anything other than T2, but we shall see.
fibanocci on 6/8/2013 at 07:25
Quote Posted by kdau
However, I don't think there were any critical structural changes between 1.19 and 1.20.
Sunlight (moonlight) rendering was completely broken in 1.19. Crouching in some places was impossible.
kdau on 6/8/2013 at 07:52
Quote Posted by fibanocci
Sunlight (moonlight) rendering was completely broken in 1.19. Crouching in some places was impossible.
Oh, yes, I'm certainly not recommending that anyone use it. I was referring to the MIS/GAM file structures as discussed above.
