Will the save files be corrupted in future alpha?

[thekillergreece]

I got upset when the pre-alpha previous version couldnt support my save files so I was wondering now, I am using Alpha 1 , will the save file of Alpha 1 be supported by Alpha 2 too?

I dont like wasting my time doing from scratch so...

[Galileus]

So dev should waste his time making saves transferable between versions, knowing, this whole work will be worthless with each new version?

This is still a very early game and a lot of systems are changing. That's just the nature of the beast.

[Bobthefarmer1]

I got upset when the pre-alpha previous version couldnt support my save files so I was wondering now, I am using Alpha 1 , will the save file of Alpha 1 be supported by Alpha 2 too?

I dont like wasting my time doing from scratch so...

If you don't like starting from scratch, why are you playing a game that is meant to do it's best to make you start from scratch?

[Galileus]

If you don't like starting from scratch, why are you playing a game that is meant to do it's best to make you start from scratch?

Now, this statement is simply untrue. Games that "do everything in their power to make you start over" are either the "punishment" games like I Want To Be The Guy or very, very bad games. RimWorld is not a bad game - it presents challenges, but for most part they are quite easy to overcome if you learned the game well. And if they are not - it's more of a problem with balance than a design decision. Games - even ones that are hard - do not try to kill you off, they try to present you with a challenge. There is a huge difference.

[Untrustedlife]

If you don't like starting from scratch, why are you playing a game that is meant to do it's best to make you start from scratch?

Now, this statement is simply untrue. Games that "do everything in their power to make you start over" are either the "punishment" games like I Want To Be The Guy or very, very bad games. RimWorld is not a bad game - it presents challenges, but for most part they are quite easy to overcome if you learned the game well. And if they are not - it's more of a problem with balance than a design decision. Games - even ones that are hard - do not try to kill you off, they try to present you with a challenge. There is a huge difference.

Dwarf fortress doesn't even punish you too hard. Onc eyou know how to do it you can survive for (ALMOST) forever.

But it isnt meant to be easy either, and yea you do die alot.
And every colony eventually crumbles.

[jsteele726]

 The important thing to remember here is that Rimworld is still in Alpha, the development cycle. Things can change radically during this phase, and it can typically be more worthwhile to focus on adding new content and features rather than having to stop development each major update to make sure that everything plays nicely together. Yes, Tynan is working on some optimization and bug fixes while still developing the game, but in a lot of cases, it isn't until Beta phase where the developer will spend a massive amount of time working on bugs, optimization, and generally making the game play nicely with itself.

Look at a game like Starbound, for example. When the game went Beta, it was pointed out that during this phase, saves would likely become corrupted throughout, as things were being worked on. That still didn't stop people from complaining about it constantly, despite having been informed about it from the very beginning. While I feel I can safely say that Tynan appreciates us very much for supporting him, the simple fact is that Alpha phase games are going to be buggy and problems are going to persist, and even in Beta phase that still continues. I assure you that I mean nothing rude by saying this, but simply put, if you want a reliable, relatively bug-free game that doesn't have any issues, that won't happen until the game goes Final. 

[Tynan]

It's not just a technical problem. Often it's logically insensible to try to translate one save to another version, because they're not the same game. Balance changes, and systems change.

For example, translating a game from 254b to Alpha 1 would require somehow figuring out where to put all your resources on the map. This is in addition to the tens of hundreds of savefile format changes which would have to be accounted for.

[ItchyFlea]

As someone who works inside save files for the purposes of creating CustomScenario's, I can indeed attest to translating a save file from 0.0.254 to 0.1.334 would be near impossible due to the vast number of slight differences.

[Tynan]

I'm hoping the format will become more stable as time goes on. So by Alpha 5 or 6 they might survive an update.