[taylor]

That's the question for everyone to answer.  Work is in progress to properly handle changes to the ship and weapon tables without breaking the pilot file.  This will help prevent problems with weapon loadout and ship selections as well as kill counts for the various ships.  I'd like to get as many breaks as possible fixed while I'm at it though so if anyone can think of something that breaks your pilot files list it here.

[Annorax]

I know this isn't quite what you wanted.... but FS2 retail breaks my pilot files

While you guys are tweaking pilot files... would there be any possibility of a file converter? I'd like to be able to, for example, play Inferno Ch.1 through to Mission 13 in FS2_Open, then play the last mission in retail so that I can see Earth. I'm sure there would be many, many other uses for this as well. I'd do it myself, but all my programming knowledge died with the Apple IIgs, thus forcing me to be content with testing.

Any ideas on if this is possible, feasible, etc? Thanks in advance.

[karajorma]

Swapping from a campaign with eg. 128 ships (where you've killed the 128th on the table)  to one with less always caused crashes in the barracks. I don't think that problem was ever fixed.

[taylor]

Originally posted by Annorax
Any ideas on if this is possible, feasible, etc?

Possible? Yes. Feasible? With some limitations. Likely to happen? Nope.

It is possible to make a converter (I'm doing so now to upgrade FUBAR Mac OSX pilots from the beta versions) but going backwards you are going to lose a good bit of information and going forwards again would be a problem.  Having newer pilots compatible with older game versions just isn't going to work out well.  Forward, forward is always better, unless there is a brick wall in front of you.

Originally posted by karajorma
Swapping from a campaign with eg. 128 ships (where you've killed the 128th on the table)  to one with less always caused crashes in the barracks. I don't think that problem was ever fixed.

This should be fixed with the new changes.  I've switched from many ships to few ships and back again without a problem.  It will "forget" any values which don't have a corresponding ship though.  Shouldn't be a problem in most cases but it won't crash either way.

[WMCoolmon]

Originally posted by Annorax
While you guys are tweaking pilot files... would there be any possibility of a file converter? I'd like to be able to, for example, play Inferno Ch.1 through to Mission 13 in FS2_Open, then play the last mission in retail so that I can see Earth.

Why can't you see earth in FS2_Open?

[karajorma]

There was a bug a while back with the z-buffer that prevented an object too far away being rendered but I thought that had been fixed?

[Annorax]

Apologies for the pseudo-necro....

Would it then be possible to have just a one-way converter? I have a Commodore on FS1 that I'd like to use in SCP without losing the rank and metric ****tons of medals.

[taylor]

Originally posted by Annorax
Apologies for the pseudo-necro....

Would it then be possible to have just a one-way converter? I have a Commodore on FS1 that I'd like to use in SCP without losing the rank and metric ****tons of medals.

Not from FS1.  I don't know exactly what the format of that pilot file version was.  At one point I looked for a specification but never found one.  I think that there is a pilot file editor out there which you could use to modify a new pilot with similar stats as your old FS1 pilot.  Don't have link handy though, I've never really wanted to use such a thing.

[phreak]

the inferno builds should display earth

[WMCoolmon]

Originally posted by Annorax
Apologies for the pseudo-necro....

Would it then be possible to have just a one-way converter? I have a Commodore on FS1 that I'd like to use in SCP without losing the rank and metric ****tons of medals.

Aren't the medals in FS1 different than FS2 though...?

[Hippo]

FS1 pilots will not convert to FS2 in any way... THere's too many differences. FS1 was a completely different game, even the POF files are different...

[Goober5000]

It wasn't completely different.  The POF format is very similar; the player file was very similar; the game was very similar.  That's why the FSPort works with FS2.  There's just a ton of extra information added, and not all of it is documented.

[taylor]

Originally posted by Hippo
FS1 pilots will not convert to FS2 in any way... THere's too many differences. FS1 was a completely different game, even the POF files are different...

Most of the differences between FS1 and FS2 code wise are trivial, excluding new stuff added for FS2.  Many aren't such pilot files, networking, a bit of the parsing code and a few interface things.  The hard part is finding those differences since many aren't marked as being for FS1 or for FS2.  The POF changes are one of the trivial things, the old code is still there and it probably took me 10 minutes to find it and get original FS1 models working when I tried.  I never tried to get both working at the same time but I think it would be possible.  And before someone asks -- No, I have no desire to do such a thing.

Reversing the basic structure of FS1 pilots isn't that difficult since they are similar to FS2DEMO pilots and those have an upgrade path in the code.  The big problem with the FS1 pilots is the format of all of the structs that fill it and I know that there are new/changed/removed settings in there but figuring out what they are is a challenge.  I don't know how different the stats, detail and multiplayer stuff is stored in the file which is why I haven't ever written in support for FS1 pilots.

[CP5670]

I have actually been using the same three pilots for every FS version since 1.2 and it's been working okay, even with several hundred changes the my PI tables. I have gotten some bugs with the kill lists however. It looks like the game does not store ship names in the pilot files but only their positions in ships.tbl, so adding or removing a ship from the kill list will mess up everything beneath that entry.