Problem loading games

International board Development
#1

Hi everyone.
I seem to have difficulties loading my saved games with the most recent svn build of vcmi. As far as I understand some work is being done on improving the serializer, but it results in issues like this. Is there any way around it (other than roll back to an older svn revision)?
I couldn’t transfer my saves from 0.95 to the svn version - this I can mostly understand. Now I have problems just using builds from different svn revisions.

Why use an unstable version one might ask? Well, I’m a software developer who happens to love HOMM III, but my C++ is not so good yet so I’m trying to learn how VCMI works first so I can contribute to the development at some point, but I also want to “just play” some times. And that’s the part that I am having issues with. Please don’t take it as criticism, I’m merely asking if there is anything I can do about this.

Cheers.

#2

Hi. This becomes quite regular question. Short version - not much can be done here since save format changes whenever there are changes in internal structures (e.g. new field added somewhere).

It is possible to provide compatibility for simple changes if some field was removed or new field(s) can be set to some valid values. But in case of more complex changes like recent serializer improvements providing such compatibility would be just too complicated.
And even simple cases are usually not handled to avoid all maintenance work that most likely will be removed by next release anyway.

Your best option would be to avoid updates while you have unfinished games (or check commits for any save format changes)