[Black Wolf]

...and, if it has, my apologies, but I was thinking about this this afternoon and I haven't come up with a satisfactory answer.

Currently, people release mods with a mod ini that tells the game to look for their mod folder and mediavps3612. Well, aren't we getting ever closer to the next release of the mediaVPs, which will (presumably) be called mediavps3614 or something. Now, this is fine for me and, I assume, most of you, since we all know how to edit mod.ini files. But for the future end-user, this will be a potential source of frustration. They DL the latest mediavps and an older campaign (and not neccesarily ancient ones here - everything from the last several years is like this) and suddenly they're getting errors because the game can't find mediavps3612.

So, has anyone thought about this? Is there a solution planned? Will all mediaVPs just be dumped in mediavps3612 from now on? Are people expected to keep multiple mediavp folders? Is every campaign for the last x number of years going to need a patch? Or is there a simple (possibly codeside?) solution that I'm missing?

This is relevant to me (and anyone else who plans to release a campaign in the not too distant) since I've got to admit while I'm not super keen on the idea of repatching everything in a few months when new mediaVPs are released, if it turns out that that's going to be the only viable solution, it'll be important to design the downloadable package with that in mind.

[The E]

We expect people to keep multiple mvp installs around. Among all the various ways of dealing with compatibility issues, this was deemed the least bad.

[Dragon]

If so, it could be useful to keep the links to 3.6.12 Mediavps around once 3.6.14 are released. If you want to get 3.6.10 VPs now, you have to dig through the board for them.

[Fury]

They DL the latest mediavps and an older campaign (and not neccesarily ancient ones here - everything from the last several years is like this) and suddenly they're getting errors because the game can't find mediavps3612.

On the contrary. One should not expect previously released mod to work 100% with recently released mediavps. Mediavps change and evolve, stuff are removed and changed. Hence there is no guarantee mods that were released before the newest mediavps work without errors.

Is there a solution planned? Will all mediaVPs just be dumped in mediavps3612 from now on? Are people expected to keep multiple mediavp folders? Is every campaign for the last x number of years going to need a patch? Or is there a simple (possibly codeside?) solution that I'm missing?

Modder states what version of the mediavps a particular mod was designed for and mod.ini points to that version. Older versions of mediavps should remain available for download. So yes, you will have to keep as many versions of mediavps around as the mods you want to play require. In a perfect world their authors have or will update their mods to fully support the latest mediavps, but this is not always the case.

The situation is very similar to FSO builds. Some mods do not work correctly with newer FSO builds mostly due to bugs, either bugs in the mod or in FSO. There's no way around that as long as mods depend on something else. The only way around that is not to depend on mediavps or any other mod and supply your own FSO builds with the mod.

I've got to admit while I'm not super keen on the idea of repatching everything in a few months when new mediaVPs are released

Let's assume in your case your mod would work 100% with new version of mediavps that was just released. You should have a small core package (and .vp file) containing config, fiction, missions, scripts and tables for easy updates. This small package also contains mod.ini. If your mod just so happens to be perfectly compatible with new mediavps, all you need to do is update mod.ini and reupload the small package.

But what if your mod has issues with new mediavps? Maybe missing textures or effects for example? Or maybe a script conflicts with your mod. If we had still used "mediavps" folder without version numbers, then now everybody would be plagued by errors and warnings and possibly unplayable mod until they are fixed by mod author or helpful community. But with version numbered mediavps folders, your mod continues to work fine with previous version of the mediavps.

Everybody wins. The old method was bad because it ALWAYS broke mods whenever new mediavps was released. And there is no need to update your mod to support new version of mediavps if you don't see the need for it. The mod continues to work with older mediavps and people don't need to mess with mod.ini or mod dirs, only thing that is required of them is to keep older mediavps.

[mjn.mixael]

We at also keeping track of changes so as to communicate those to mods and help them update if they want to. We have a list of changes and things to check for mods.

[Spoon]

We expect people to keep multiple mvp installs around. Among all the various ways of dealing with compatibility issues, this was deemed the least bad.

I still think this is the ugliest solution and one that doesnt make a lot of sense to me.
Wanting people to have like 3.5gb in mediavp's around, majority of which is just redundancy. Instead of having each new version just being backwards compatible. Sure the new version would be 'bloated' but there is no way that will compare to having an whole extra 1.5gb redundancy of the previous version around.

But meh whatever, not my call.

[The E]

Spoon, read Fury's post. He explains the reasons for the new system quite well. If you have a better idea that can address the shortcomings of the old system, please share it.

[Capt_Thunder]

I still play a lot of the older campaigns. The size of my FreeSpace folder is now 20.3 GB - I even got a dual core chip and a 9600 gt so I could use advance effects. Both the mediavps and the campaigns are getting bigger. This is getting expensive. But then that is what I have top do to continue playing high quality games. May be Freespace to be split into a full and a light (compatible) version?

[BlasterNT]

What about having a mediavps "compatibility" install?  Basically, after the 3.6.14 vps are released, include a separate download that includes everything that was changed between 3.6.12, and have that reference the 3.6.14 vps as a dependency.  That way, you get rid of redundancy. 

So, base->3.6.14->3.6.12

[Kolgena]

@BlasterNT: I'm pretty sure the idea is to get the mod creator to ensure compatibility with the newest MVPs. For older mods that are no longer being maintained, no one would be around to fix bugs should they arise, so it's best to freeze their requirements at the mediavps version they're designed for.

If you're an advanced user, no one's stopping you from fiddling with older mods to work with new mediavps. Most of the time, a mod.ini change is sufficient, and nothing will break as a result. If something does break, then you can attempt to fix it or revert to the older MVPs.

As an aside, I am unaware of any material being removed from the mediavps as they get more recent. The only thing I can think of were the tile maps that were torn out (and released as a standalone package). What sorts of compatibility issues are we talking about here? Subtle differences in turret placements and hitboxes that might affect balance?

[mjn.mixael]

As an aside, I am unaware of any material being removed from the mediavps as they get more recent. The only thing I can think of were the tile maps that were torn out (and released as a standalone package). What sorts of compatibility issues are we talking about here? Subtle differences in turret placements and hitboxes that might affect balance?

Yes, and possible script conflicts. Also differences in POF names a few other things that might change.

Again, I want to make it absolutely clear that when the MediaVPs gets closer to another release, we are going to reach out to the mod and campaign developers with a list of changes. We want to help them be ready and/or easily make the switch to the newest MediaVPs. We feel very strongly that this is the best solution that doesn't completely limit what we can and can't do.

Additionally, it's an incredibly difficult task to maintain compatibility with every mod ever designed with the MediaVPs since its inception. Our goal is to upgrade Freespace and it's main FS2 campaign. Beyond that, we can't make guarantees, but we will be trying to ease the switch as much as possible.

[Mongoose]

I know it probably is the simplest solution from a support standpoint, but I'm kind of with Spoon that keeping ever-increasing gigs' worth of outdated media files to ensure full compatibility doesn't seem all that great.  At least for the moment, I'm not exactly made of hard drive space, so the fewer unnecessary/redundant files that I have to keep around, the better.  I can't really think of any feasible alternative at the moment, though.

I guess what I'm really left wondering is just how many campaigns/mods run into these compatibility issues in the first place.  Before a certain point in time, say 3.6.10 and earlier, I'd think a lot of the issues would be the sort resolved by the texture compatibility pack, since most mods were probably a good order of magnitude simpler than they are today.  As for the more recent stuff, most of the original creators are still active, and could presumably release a patch if need be.  Is this fundamental incompatibility something that's actually happened on a frequent basis?

[mjn.mixael]

It's been frequent enough that we've talked about it many times.

Keep in mind that a lot of this is to protect us from joe-modder that comes back to HLP after 3 years from complaining that our updated MediaVPs broke his campaign. In many cases simply changing the mod.ini to use the new MediaVPs won't cause any issues. What we are trying to communicate is that we can't be held responsible for backwards compatibility for every campaign ever made.

If we start offering backwards compatibility for the 'mainstream' or 'popular' campaigns, then where do we draw the line? What's the standard for campaigns that we are supposed to check? After much deliberation, we set this standard at the main FS2 campaign and no others. We think that is the easiest and most fair solution.

Realistically, as previously mentioned, most mods can simply have their mod.inis updated without issue. Most of the people commenting in this thread have the ability to do that and have the ability to fix possible issues especially if we have a public list of things to check and how to resolve them. Now this really only applies to older campaigns. In theory this method might spark some more life into projects like FSCRP. We also consider it a good thing when campaign developers, who are still around, upkeep and patch their campaigns.

I want to acknowledge the downside of taking up a lot of hard drive space. That's sort of a side-effect of the method we've chosen. We chose this method to effectively communicate that this release of the MediaVPs is different and that it might not work with any given campaign flawlessly. Our goal is upgraded Freespace 2, not upgraded Blue Planet, or upgraded Inferno, or upgraded Derelict.

Now, this does not mean that we are willy-nilly throwing in things that will break compatibility. We still thoroughly test each asset to ensure it keeps to the original specs as close as absolutely possible. We are trying to make it as simple as we can for any mod to use the newest MediaVPs as a drop in, but what we can't do is guarantee it. That is the central reason why we are now keeping to MediaVPs versions.

I hope you all can understand our reasoning on this and that we didn't do it just to get on your bad side but instead to give us a small amount of freedom and to protect us from being the target of mods not working with a new release.

EDIT: As an additional thought to BW's original questions. Perhaps we can work with Scotty to include which MediaVPs a campaign was made for in his list? Along with that, when I make the post about what has changed for each revision, perhaps I can include simple instructions on changing the mod.ini for people who are so brave. Of course I would still include a warning about potential incompatibilities.

EDIT 2: I don't want to sound harsh, but I'm not entirely certain the issue over hard drive space is really valid. I just checked the size of my 3.6.10 and 3.6.12 Media VPs folders. Both of them combined are just around 4GB which isn't a whole lot in the world of multi-Terrabyte HDDs. Now I understand many have bandwidth issues and download caps. However, given you don't delete your 3.6.12 that you already downloaded when it was new and hot, then it shouldn't be too bad from a MB per year perspective.

[Mongoose]

I can't speak for anyone else, but my personal issue isn't bandwidth at all, but the physical space.  I only have a 320 GB HDD right now, and it's already 2/3 full, so I'm kind of at the point where avoiding multi-GB dumps is something I try to do.  That being said, I'm definitely a fringe case, and I fully acknowledge the points you're making.

[jr2]

You could always burn the older MediaVPs and campaigns to DVD and only copy them over when you do a playthrough.  Just make sure to take care of the disks or they'll become unusable!

[Fury]

I can't speak for anyone else, but my personal issue isn't bandwidth at all, but the physical space.  I only have a 320 GB HDD right now, and it's already 2/3 full, so I'm kind of at the point where avoiding multi-GB dumps is something I try to do.

If you can't buy internal HDD for some reason, external HDD's are always available in a retail outlet near you.

[headdie]

This is starting to sound like the out takes thread asking for the FSU to release the assets removed between version to allow better backwards compatibility.

[Dragon]

I can't speak for anyone else, but my personal issue isn't bandwidth at all, but the physical space.  I only have a 320 GB HDD right now, and it's already 2/3 full, so I'm kind of at the point where avoiding multi-GB dumps is something I try to do.

If you can't buy internal HDD for some reason, external HDD's are always available in a retail outlet near you.

Still, some people might not want to waste a couple GBs for something purely redundant. Most of Mediavps assets are not changed between versions, and some of the things that do change are purely aesthetic and not break anything.

[mjn.mixael]

Still, some people might not want to waste a couple GBs for something purely redundant. Most of Mediavps assets are not changed between versions, and some of the things that do change are purely aesthetic and not break anything.

It's somewhat unrealistic to expect us to cater to what every single person here wants, especially if the only reason given is their distaste for a couple GB of redundant data.

[Dragon]

Still, a "compatibility package" would be a better idea than keeping an entire set of old VPs, which serve no purpose other than clog up the disk space. Something like the outtakes pack, also containing tables and scripts from the old core. It would disable all new 3.6.14 features, essentially making the new VPs work like the old ones. Just drop it into the old mod folder and the mod should work, benefiting from all the cosmetic improvements that were made for the new VPs.