[m!m]

Here is a small notification for the people not following the GitHub commit log (which are probably most users of FSO ).

The JSON pilot feature has just been merged which converts the previous .plr files from a custom binary format to the standardized JSON format. At the moment, only the main pilot files are stored as JSON but at some point the campaign files will also be converted to JSON.

FSO will automatically convert the binary pilots to JSON on your first launch and will then only use the JSON pilots. That means that the "old" pilots will not be updated anymore so if you switch to an older build you will not see the changes that were made to the pilot with a build which uses JSON pilots.

That is all, have a nice day.

[Spoon]

Please educate me on the reasons for this switch to JSON. What does it do, why was it done, what are the pros (or possible cons)? For I am ignorant and would like to know more.

[Nightmare]

Does that mean that pilot files spontaneously corrupting is less likely now?

[X3N0-Life-Form]

Well, JSON is just plain text, so if you pilot does get borked, you could theoretically fix it using notepad or something.

[m!m]

The given reasons are the most compelling ones. Since JSON is plain-text it is much easier to inspect (and change) the pilots files in case they got corrupted. There are still some bit-flags in there which make it harder to manipulate them but at least now you don't have to look up the byte-offset of the individual options in the FSO code.

[Nightmare]

Ah, that's pretty neat. I had a lot of trouble with corrupted pilot files; at one point pressing 1 didn't work for me anymore, and another time the game crashed while playing BP and after several restarts my pilot file had grown to over 200MB for some reason.

[wookieejedi]

Great news! I've been looking forward to that merge for a long time!

[Mr_Maniac]

My old pilot files didn't get converted. I had to create a brand new pilot (again). Is there any way to convert the pilot files even after the first start?

[m!m]

I had some issues with the conversion code when using a mod. Try running retail FSO once, that should convert your pilots.

[mjn.mixael]

I had some issues with the conversion code when using a mod. Try running retail FSO once, that should convert your pilots.

That's kind of a non-minor issue. Is there a way we can help get that fixed to make the transition smoother?

[m!m]

I will fix that as soon as possible. I don't plan on leaving it as it is

[m!m]

Here is the fix: https://github.com/scp-fs2open/fs2open.github.com/pull/1863

[Mr_Maniac]

Great to head @m!m. I'll try as soon as it's merged. Running retail FS2 also didn't convert my "old" pilots.

[m!m]

Not the "Retail FS2" executable, I meant FSO without mods

[Colonol Dekker]

This means I can tweak pilots in codepad or notepad++?


:3

[Nightmare]

It's never been so easy to become a triple ace in a couple moments.

[Mr_Maniac]

Not the "Retail FS2" executable, I meant FSO without mods

I know 
I started FS2 SCP without mods, with MVP and with my own mod, but the only pilot I saw, was my newly created one. But now I started it without mods again and the pilots were converted... strange.

[m!m]

The fix has been merged so if you are compiling the builds from source you can do a pull and compile the newest version and it should start working in all circumstances.