Re: [M-dev]Bug

[Woody Z. <woo...@ho...>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Joel Watson" <jw...@ja...>
Sent: Monday, October 28, 2002 9:05 AM

> Just out of curiosity, what exactly causes this to happen? (though, I
> guess if it was known it would be fixed, but anyhow...) And, maybe the
> "fix" could be posted in the next webpage update?

Actually it's quite a valid question.  The following is based on my
estimation, is not backed by careful scientific analysis of the code and
behavior, and is likely to contain incorrect elements such as "eight lads
a-squatting".

The root cause is that several A1 file formats have evolved over time, but
insufficient care has been taken to remain backwards-compatible.  The
Preferences format is the biggest offender, but I think some other formats
(saved-game?  map?) may have changed subtly such that older files in newer
A1's might exhibit occasional subtly weird behaviors, and using the A1-style
files in the M2/Moo engine would also probably result in
almost-correct-but-not-quite behavior.

At the least, A1 "ought" to catch common errors like these and provide more
helpful feedback to the user (a more informative error message in the case
of big problems and a warning when there's potential for misinterpretation).
Ideally, it would transparently read older file formats, preserve their
behavior exactly, and probably (in the case of Preferences) rewrite the file
in the newer format.  But, these things take work, and unfortunately so far
nobody's stepped forward (myself included) to rework the current A1 into
something more... robust.

Without reading through the relevant code carefully, I have to admit I find
the specific error message a bit puzzling.  It seems to me that current A1
uses an XML-based Preferences format (this does have the advantage of
potentially reducing the impact of future alterations), and so an error on
reading an old Preferences file should be an XML parsing error, not a
wad-interpretation error as we seem to see.  Well, maybe these users are
running an intermediate version that uses a wad-based preferences format
that's incompatible with earlier wad-based formats.

As for updating the Web site, I still maintain that clicking a download link
should take users to an (appropriately platform-specific) intermediate page
that explains installation and known bugs etc. more carefully, but to
Jesse's credit there *was* a note (albeit tacked at the end of a news item)
posted on source.bungie.org about this very problem (and solution) on
October 10.

It _is_ a shame that A1 has these nagging problems.  I suspect they 'turn
off' a lot of potential users, who then miss out on some of the genuinely
cool stuff A1 has to offer (like running on non-"Classic Mac" platforms,
OpenGL rendering, and hi-res substitute textures).  Perhaps worse, problems
like these could, I fear, also 'turn off' potential contributors who might
perceive (I hope incorrectly) that A1 has worked itself into a giant
disorganized heap of kludges about to collapse under its own weight.

Woody

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