Jeez, no need to be a dick about it. The guy was just trying to help.
Also, you aren't on the dev team either. 100% backwards compatibility is a fairly high-priority goal, and saying otherwise is just being dishonest.
While this is certainly true, the spec is for 100% compatibility with 1.90, 1.92 (all major betas), 2.10, 2.10.1, 2.10.2, and 2.50.0->2.50.2.
1.84 and earlier, 2.50 betas, and some minor stuff that is specific to 2.50.3 was specifically not included in that specification, for various reasons. The most notable, is the lack of the original source code for these old builds from 1 years ago.
Those of you who have been around long enough, may remember that versions 1.0 through 1.84 all came out within the span of about one year. Phantom Menace produced v1.0 through v1.82, and retired in January 2001. War Lord took over from there, alone, and produced ZC until the 2.11 era. He was the only one with sources for versions between 1.83 and 1.90, and sources for 2.91 through 2.50.0 are still mostly unavailable. (I would like to see this resolved, too, and those sources handed to everyone involved.)
We never discussed 1.00, 1.50, 1.60, 1.7x, 1.82, 1.83, 1.84 or any of the interim releases from 2000. When PM stopped working on ZC (v1.82), the source passed to War Lord. At this time, he has no idea where that source would be, if it exists at all. That means that full compatibility with these versions would be very difficult, and probably spotty.
I would like to see 1.84 compatibility, at least, in the form of being able to import 1.84 quests in ZQ and save them. If 2.53->2.60 can
play 1.84 quests, that is even better. I have the source for 1.00 and 1.50, and even with that, adding 1.00 and 1.50 quest loading is going to be a challenge.
One possible option, may be a standalone quest converter, that produces a new quest file for the most current version of ZQuest, but an issue with updating old quests in this manner, is that it may mean allowing anyone to edit them. I do not know how critical an issue that may be for the lot of you.
Really though, if you look at the 1.00 and 1.50 structs, and quest format, and if you consider that there are some packfile changes in allegro--remember, these old versions used allegro 1, 2, and 3--and that the password format was different, it's sort of a nightmare (no pun intended) to add this stuff.
At present, the highest priority is to sort out the bugs in 2.53, and make it rock solid, to use as a foundation for the next two or three interim releases until 2.60 is ready. The way this will work, is that features that are added to master that are known to be retained, will be backported to 2.50.x, producing new versions. The first of these, 2.54, will be the initial build to add truly new features.
2.54 will primarily be a ZScipt update, whereas 2.55 will likely be the one that adds new editor features. I'll be working on the specs for these in the autumn and early winter, but much of the new ZScript (in the extant pointers and classes) can begin migrating into this codebase.
Adding 1.xx quest importing might be possible along the way, but I will need cooperation and assistance across the board. THe fact that James is willing to spend a lot of time testing what versions can read old quest files, and what quest versions have bugs, and documenting the issues, goes a long way toward making this viable.
I'm not much of a fan of the banter on the subject though. I'd rather see constructive discussion on this topic, than to start ranting on it, accusing people, and devolving this into a long list of idiotic name calling. If adding this kind of feature--which is in fact, quite hard to do--amounts to no more than a huge bickerfest, then no-one is going to want to be involved.
All of us have limited time, and I;m no exception. I spent several hours today going over the 1.xx sources that I have, and examining the routines. I even went as far as to start piecing together a makeshift makefile to try to build 1.50, which is not something that I truly love doing, but it may be needed so that it is possible to create 1.50 quests to use as validation files foe an import function.
If any of you want to assist with this endeavour, that would be fantastic, but this topic is probably best removed to its own thread.
Edited by ZoriaRPG, 30 August 2017 - 12:49 AM.