When A19 hits, will my server world be reset?

[MeaTLoTioN]

Hey y'all,

I would really like to know when A19 hits this summer, will my dedicated Linux server;

1. automatically update?
   
2. reset my current 18.4 world back to before anyone played it?
   
3. will it just break?
   
4. will it stay as it is working away on 18.4 but my client will upgrade to A19 and I won't be able to connect?
   
5. as #4, but will I still be able to connect to an older server?
   

What I really need to know, ultimately, is how can I make sure that my world as it is now and while we still play on 18.4, when the upgraded A19 hits, how to preserve the world so we can continue it in A19. We have spent a lot of time creating it and I know it's the same for many many other people and servers. I would just like to know definitively how to preserve it, or if it is absolutely impossible to continue it when A19 hits.

I tried to find similar posts in a brief 10 minute perusing of all the categories but couldn't see one so I'm really very sorry if this is a duplicate topic etc.

Thanks in advance.

MeaTLoTioN

 

[Liesel Weppen]

4a. Servers don't update automatically. If you don't manually update, it will stay as 18.4

4b. If you are on the "latest Version" branch Steam will unfortunately force an update to A19. But you can then most likely switch to the A18 branch.

5. No, if your client has updated to a different version as your server is, you can not connect

If you update your server:

2/3. Your world will not be resetted completely afaik, however it may reset single chunks on errors caused by the update. It may also crash due to changes of the update not beeing compatible with your world state. Depends on what the update changed in detail. Simply don't do that, start a new world after updating to A19. If you don't want to restart, don't update.

If you want to continue in A19 anyway, you have to try and test it. Create a backup of your world before loading it with A19. Maybe you are lucky and it works (mostly), but there is no guarantee.

 

[meganoth]

Wrong forum part, moved it to "General Support".

As Liesel said, the server doesn't update automatically.

And steam allows you to define what the client will do. When A19 arrives there will be an option "A18.4" in your clients steam, which you should select if you want to continue playing this world (it may also start out as "opt out of all beta..." or similar. And change to "A18.4" once an A19 version is declared as stable. It is a bit confusing at that point). Whatever happens, one of the options will allow you to play A18.4, and you can do trial and error which one it is, or look into the forum for the right answer.

Continuing your world as A19 will lead to random effects like vanishing stuff, exceptions, no zombie spawns.... Impossible to predict what will happen. You could for example make a backup (of the server and the servers save game) and just try it out. If it doesn't work out, go back to A18. But there is a lot that can go wrong if you don't know what you are doing.

 

[MeaTLoTioN]

Thanks for the updates guys, so in a nutshell then, either keep the server and client at 18.4 and it'll be all gravy, or update both client and server and some things may break but may not. Either way I have already backed up the entire server folder and saves, so if it all goes wrong I can restore it like that.

This isn't really a very good thing, having to lose worlds at every update. If you lost all your documents every time you updated your computer it would get painful real fast, please fun pimps can you build into the update a way to update worlds to work too with the updated server/client. I love this game, but seriously this is bad form.

Anyway, thanks to you both for clarifying for me.

Best regards.

 

[Liesel Weppen]

This isn't really a very good thing, having to lose worlds at every update. If you lost all your documents every time you updated your computer it would get painful real fast, please fun pimps can you build into the update a way to update worlds to work too with the updated server/client. I love this game, but seriously this is bad form.

Welcome to early access... that is how early access works. If you don't want this, don't buy games in early access state.

 

[meganoth]

I don't think this is set in stone. You can't expect or demand this in EA, but suggesting it, why not?

Wube (the developer of Factorio) for example ships code that translates old word to new clients. I would expect developers who churn out a patch every month to also look out for compatibility (in their own interest). 

Until A18 too many changes happened between alphas (that's the offical word as far as I remember). Now with mostly incremental alphas maybe the world data isn't changing as much anymore. But the actual effort only a TFP programmer could estimate.

 

[SylenThunder]

Your player characters will not carry over. Changes to the progression system will cause them to be wiped.

It may be possible to carry a world over, but you would have to manually edit the world's POI file to add, remove, and update hundreds of POI's and deco. Even then, some regions will simply be corrupted because you already have a POI spawned that was changed or removed.

A general rule of thumb is that you're going to wipe with every major build while the game is in Alpha.

 

[Laz Man]

If you must, a possible consolation is to convert some of your player builds to prefab file and hope that there is a block conversion utility made available once A19 is released (or shortly after) so you can update them to A19.

You then can insert these converted prefabs into your new A19 worlds/saves.

My small MP group may attempt this but I have prefaced our folks it would mostly be for nostalgia and/or late game play since having a finished horde base on Day 1 would ruin game progression.

 

[Liesel Weppen]

I don't think this is set in stone. You can't expect or demand this in EA, but suggesting it, why not?

Of course it's not, but it's common for any EA games that at least major updates require a wipe.

Wube (the developer of Factorio) for example ships code that translates old word to new clients. I would expect developers who churn out a patch every month to also look out for compatibility (in their own interest).

May be possible of course but also costs effort. Anyway 7d2d doesn't get an update every month but more like one major update per year. The minor updates in between are small and usually don't require a wipe. However the major updates during active development are usefull to do changes that require a wipe and that is good, as you usually don't want to carry legacy stuff from version to version just to keep it somehow compatible.

Using the steam beta branches to keep older versions accessible so that people can continue to play on them even if there was a major update is imho the best way to go.

 

[meganoth]

Of course it's not, but it's common for any EA games that at least major updates require a wipe.

May be possible of course but also costs effort. Anyway 7d2d doesn't get an update every month but more like one major update per year. The minor updates in between are small and usually don't require a wipe. However the major updates during active development are usefull to do changes that require a wipe and that is good, as you usually don't want to carry legacy stuff from version to version just to keep it somehow compatible.

Using the steam beta branches to keep older versions accessible so that people can continue to play on them even if there was a major update is imho the best way to go.

Without a doubt this costs developer resources. And the first time it costs even more dev time since support routines for this have to written first and tested. Later alphas the code can just be adapted to the new circumstances. So for TFP this is ATM a bigger hurdle than for Wube for example, Wube already has that infrastructure built in.

Wube, by the way, is quite similar in that they have a major update once a year, and naturally old versions still available. Main difference is that their world isn't voxel based and very likely easier to port to new versions.