Obtaining "Beta" versions of RTC

Post by **Lunever** » Thu Jun 01, 2006 12:12 pm

It would be very nice to have an RTC.exe with the new stamina rules available, V0.38.2 or V0.39-beta or whatever it may be called.

TheMormegil · Post by **TheMormegil** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 5:48 pm

In that case, until then it would be very nice to have an RTC.exe with the new stamina rules available, V0.38.2 or V0.39-beta or whatever it may be called.

I would guess that there are two chances of that happening : fat chance & no chance!
What you could do though...carry on playing. When v39 comes out make a custom dungeon in v38 with a button that lowers your ninja level. Import your party and lower their ninja levels down to what you think is the best to exploit the rules. Next make a custom dungeon in v39 with a button that raises ninja levels (which should be possible in v39) and raise them back up to the level they were!

George Gilbert · Post by **George Gilbert** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 10:01 pm

TheMormegil wrote:
In that case, until then it would be very nice to have an RTC.exe with the new stamina rules available, V0.38.2 or V0.39-beta or whatever it may be called.
I would guess that there are two chances of that happening : fat chance & no chance!

Well, it's not quite that bad, but I suspect it won't be good enough for you.

The general point is that you (or anyone else) is more than welcome to have an intermediate "beta" build of RTC at pretty much any time - just email me and I'll send you the latest build...

...however, the save games / RTC files that a non-release build will generate will not be forward-compatible with future releases (it's enough work as it is to keep everything back/forward compatible between different "official" versions of RTC, let alone hundreds of other intermediate ones).

Post by **Lunever** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 12:54 pm

I don't mind the savegames to be non-compatible, as long as future releases will allow me to import characters from the last beta build.

Aside from all the character-building I would be very interested to test the latest additions and changes in the current beta-build.

Actually, I did mail you a few days ago, but so far didn't receive a reply. Yes, I would like to have a look into 39 beta.

George Gilbert · Post by **George Gilbert** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 5:59 pm

Lunever wrote:I don't mind the savegames to be non-compatible, as long as future releases will allow me to import characters from the last beta build.

Nope - beta versions are, by definition, not real versions and anything produced by or for them are unlikely to be compatible (either forward or backward) with other versions (either real or beta).

Lunever wrote:Aside from all the character-building I would be very interested to test the latest additions and changes in the current beta-build.

OK - have sent you the last stable-ish build (from about a week ago, so it won't have all the fixes mentioned in these forums).

Lunever wrote:Actually, I did mail you a few days ago, but so far didn't receive a reply. Yes, I would like to have a look into 39 beta.

Yes, sorry about that; as mentioned before I've been pretty busy recently so havn't been replying very promptly to emails / posts etc. I'll hopefully get around to them all over the next week or so.

Post by **Lunever** » Wed Jun 07, 2006 6:32 pm

Hmm, at least the Beta 39 does load the savegames from 38 properly. Would it actually change the format if I keep playing a savegame originally created by 38, or would it keep the 38 format and thus allow me to continue without losing compatibility (that is of course in theory, if no unexpected bug happens; for that case I keep a backup of course)?

If I tried this, would the new stamina rules be applied to the old savegame in use?

George Gilbert · Post by **George Gilbert** » Wed Jun 07, 2006 7:59 pm

Lunever wrote:Hmm, at least the Beta 39 does load the savegames from 38 properly. Would it actually change the format if I keep playing a savegame originally created by 38,

Yes. Any given RTC version has only ever (and will only ever) save in the format of it's own version.

Far more importantly, as I mentioned above, will do so now, and no doubt will again, the save game file produced by the V0.39 beta is not compatible with *ANY* other version of RTC (including any other V0.39 betas).

Lunever wrote:If I tried this, would the new stamina rules be applied to the old savegame in use?

Yes - the stamina rules are part of the engine and will be applied to any game played with that engine - where the save game comes from is completely irrelevant.

Post by **Lunever** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 9:48 am

Ok, so I can play it for testing purposes, but of course I'm aware that any hours spent playing now that way will probably kinda lost once the next 39 beta or official 39 will be out.

Just out of interest: Would the next release at least try to load a savegame created by the current beta, with the possibility of not being able to process it, or would it say right away "it's the wrong version, I won't allow you to even try to load it"?

George Gilbert · Post by **George Gilbert** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 10:28 am

Lunever wrote:Just out of interest: Would the next release at least try to load a savegame created by the current beta, with the possibility of not being able to process it

Yes, the beta files are marked as if they were the actual release version (i.e. the V0.39 beta produces files that are marked as being V0.39). This means that they'll be identified by the engine as being a valid file and will attempt to load them.

Of course, if the actual underlying format of the bytes in the body of the file itself is different (which it will be), the data loaded will be at best corrupt and at worst crash the engine instantly.

As I mentioned above, the files produced by beta releases are in no way shape or form either forwards or backward compatible; they should not be used for anything other than testing / playing with new features out of curiosity.

I strongly advise that when a release comes out you delete all files generated by a beta version so you don't accidently try and load one with the actual release!

Post by **Lunever** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 10:35 am

Ok, thanks for the information, and for the beta too of course.

Post by **Lunever** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 11:17 am

I just reloaded a savegame a couple of times to see about how much stamina is gained on levelup, but I couldn't see much difference, maybe I will only see it at a couple of levels higher.

Just to be sure: The week-old beta you sent me does already have the new levelup rules, doesn't it?

BTW: After several reloads the game crashed as it used to in previous versions. Do you generally want me to send you diags from the beta?

George Gilbert · Post by **George Gilbert** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 12:34 pm

Lunever wrote:I just reloaded a savegame a couple of times to see about how much stamina is gained on levelup, but I couldn't see much difference, maybe I will only see it at a couple of levels higher.

Just to be sure: The week-old beta you sent me does already have the new levelup rules, doesn't it?

No idea - I don't keep accurate records of what went in on what date (just whats in each full release version). Have a look at the date stamp on the exe and compare it with the postings in the forum - although that's not a perfect way to do it, it will give you a reasonable idea.

Lunever wrote:BTW: After several reloads the game crashed as it used to in previous versions. Do you generally want me to send you diags from the beta?

Please do. However, can you send them to me directly via email rather than posting them on the forum? This is to prevent confusion for other people not using the beta (i.e. if you say it crashes when you do such-and-such, and it doesn't for anyone else because they're using a different version).

Post by **Lunever** » Thu Jun 08, 2006 1:47 pm

Right, the time stamp is 23.5.2006, you posted it fixed at 29.05.2006, so I'm still playing with the old stamina rules. Do you have a more recent beta available? If so, please mail it to me.

I will mail you the diags when I'm back on the machine where it was produced.