This one's a little bit complicated, so bear with me and read it carefully. (This suggestion uses real examples, please forgive me if I use something from one of your stories that you didn't want published...) Say you are writing a complex game mode story, and decide to change the name of the "Gold" variable to "Shillings". Now this Suggestion isn't about making that change easier itself, it's about the aftermath. When you have made that change everyone who was playing in game mode now has to reset back to the start to implement those changes and be able to continue correctly. What I propose is that instead of tracking score changes as a sort of save file we track the chapters visited and sequence, then apply thier score changes in that sequence to get the most current and accurate information. Now I am not sure how this would interact with the new formula parser, but I have a other similar idea for that: to whit: if the previous idea wouldn't work correctly we add such a path track to the existing score save files, and if one of those chapters is updated, it reconciles the new changes with the existing variables... What say all?
I understand what you're getting at, but I think having it as a continuously running system might slow things down considerably in deep stories.(And take more server power?) Maybe a one-time trigger to update the save file would be better. After all the save file works fine until you make changes like that.
Good sugestion, that would most likely serve the same purpose more efficiently if added to my second sugestion.
Changing all savegames in one run would require to "simultaneously" change all existing chapters using that variable. I would rather rewrite the variable at certain points of the story. (The feature Formula Parser would be necessary for this)
Obviously Gene: you wrote the formula parser that way BECAUSE you felt that was the better solution. That said, while it is, definitely, a GOOD solution, it is not the ONLY solution: nor the ideal solution for everyone...
Well, actually the respective function is meant to handle nonexistent variables. The possibility to use it for this issue is coincidental. If a story owner changes all savegames in one run and someone plays their game before the owner changes all respective chapters, his game would get wrong variables. The reader could then have Gold 15 (won't change afterwards) and Shillings 213. Changing all savegames in one go can be a dangerous thing. Changes can be irreversible. E.g. if a story owner changes a variable name to an existing variable name, the values are mixed up and it couldn't be reversed. (Not sure if that case could even break the save game) (I would rather prefer to delete the save games, though this is not a nice solution for the readers.)
I agree, changing the saved games could be problematic, especially if done haphazardly, but, I don't see a better solution without complex shenanigans with the formula parser, which is not implemented yet. I agree that deleteing the saves is a less than ideal solution, but I think it could be a useful feature on its own in some situations, like if a total rework of the story variables is undertaken for one reason or another...
A possible solution to your problem could be the use of deprecated variables. So if you change variable A to B, A would still exist in existing savegames, but would get modified by changes aimed at variable B. The downside to this system is that you can't use variable A for something else. So in the original example you wouldn't be able to re-use "Gold" as a variable.
While I think that option is possible I think it's merits are outweighed by its drawbacks. That said, it is one potential solution and for myself I am unclear whether implementation might be simpler than those already suggested...
