load save games from old versions properly

[jwalker]

Hello. I updated to 1.12, and now the game is complaining about my old save files. I copied them into the new save directory for 1.12, which was empty. It was able to load the files, but then the game continually complains about WML and the formatting of units' text, filling up the window with these messages.

It would be great if these old save files could be loaded without problems.

[beetlenaut]

It would be great if these old save files could be loaded without problems.

Yeah, but a lot of BfW has changed in the last three years, so old save files just aren't compatible any more. It is possible to install two versions of Wesnoth if you want to be able to play with the old files using 1.10, and start new campaigns with 1.12.

[fabi]

Yeah, but a lot of BfW has changed in the last three years, so old save files just aren't compatible any more. It is possible to install two versions of Wesnoth if you want to be able to play with the old files using 1.10, and start new campaigns with 1.12.

We usually try to keep backwards compatibility to the old wml syntax for at least one stable version.
Thus the save files are not really incompatible, they are just outdated.
The output should be mostly warnings.

I do not know if those can be disabled, they are mostly meant to help UMC developers, not to annoy users.

I think the OP should just play on.
The next scenario he enters will be loaded from the new files and thus no longer throw warnings.
Most likely the most of his saves will not be broken for 1.12.

[Anonymissimus]

Always use start-of-scenario saves for transferring campaign playthroughs between different BfW versions, because they only contain the campaign data, but not data from the scenario (just the info what scenario shall be loaded).
There probably will still be warnings spamming the chat area. You can use the ingame command line (:clear) to remove them.

[fredsmith999]

I'm using wesnoth 1.10, the latest version in ubuntu 14.10 repository. The posts aren't clear: if i update to 1.12 am i likely to be unable to play my old saves or is it just a question of warning messages? Anyone did it and it worked?

[iceiceice]

I think BFW 1.12 is highly incompatible with 1.10 save files. We changed how the sync mechanism works I believe -- there is a different way of checking whether the state is matching the replay, probably it will generate errors.

The start of scenario savefiles probably work, because those only contain your recall list and gold information, and not any moves that you made in the scenario. If we changed the stats of any units though between 1.10 and 1.12, then I would expect it to turn out strangely. I don't think we changed any mainline default era units but I think we might have changed the stats of some campaign-specific units or something.