Follow-up Comment #5, patch #4739 (project freeciv): > While working on a new version of civ2civ3, I liked to keep the > previous versions updated as much as possible in order to > receive some feedback about the latest changes.
While setting this system up, one thing to consider is savegame compatibility. The official "civ2civ3" ruleset should always be backward compatible in a way that game saved with previous major freeciv version can be continued with the new one. Within release series (branch) rules are even stricter. There also the older version has to be able to load game saved with the newer one, which means that usually any new "objects" (techs, units, buildings...) cannot be added to the ruleset as their instances couldn't be loaded to game using older version of the ruleset. The "experimental civ2civ3" would not necessarily have similar rules, and certainly one cannot continue "experimental civ2civ3" game with newer "civ2civ3" even if they have more similar rules than old "civ2civ3" and new "civ2civ3". That would be made impossible by the different name of the ruleset already. I definitely don't want experimental ruleset to have same name (even if different version number) than official one, as that would cause both technical conflicts and human confusion. (whether one even sees that experimental ruleset as different variant of civ2civ3 at all, or independent ruleset forked from it - like civ2civ3 was originally based on classic ruleset - might be just matter of taste in the end) > make it more similar to classic rules We already have separate classic ruleset available for those who want those rules, so I wouldn't give much weight to request to make it "more like the rules we're used to" unless accompanied with other more serious reasons. > it could force to freeze the development of the rules, because > I guess people do not like as default a set of rules that are > continually changing, as we see with classic rules that have > not changed for years. You're right that classic ruleset got stagnated because it got so well established, and any change would have broken it for someone, even when fixing for others. That's actually the main reason I'd like to switch to civ2civ3 as default ruleset - if we can't evolve classic ruleset, let's get completely fresh start. But even if civ2civ3 suffers same fate, that's not an issue compared to having it as not-default ruleset. You can always fork new ruleset from it to develop as not-default one. _______________________________________________________ Reply to this item at: <http://gna.org/patch/?4739> _______________________________________________ Message sent via/by Gna! http://gna.org/ _______________________________________________ Freeciv-dev mailing list Freeciv-dev@gna.org https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/freeciv-dev