A man was driving down the highway when he spotted a sign stating "In the following years mens death rate will increase due to stubbornness." and in the lower corner someone had painted in "No we won't!!!".
I dunno why but that joke hit me the moment I saw that screenshot
lol cheers! I meant that I will never update my iOS, #RwK4Life! This RwK update you're betaing now will break some levels that depend on bugs that have been fixed right? So might hold off a little while longer before updating regardless so I can finish recording some more levels. All roaring and ready to go on my Android though.
More like it'll break literally every single custom level. Apparently, it's impossible for 64-bit applications to read the original level format, so it had to be changed. Automatically converting levels would apparently not be reliable, so people will have to rebuild old levels to port them over. To help with this, a PC build of the old 32-bit version will become available that can access all old levels.
Impossible is almost certainly an exaggeration. If it can be read on a PC, it can be read on an IOS device (ref: decades of personal experience in software development). When John talked about this issue previously, he was saying that Apple changed the ability to read 32bit memory dumps in IOS11. This issue is linked to things like Intergers changing from 32bit to 64 bit. However, it can also impact other types (floating point, character, etc) and even how the bytes are packed together (eg. Byte, word ect alignment). I suspect John wanted to simplify the process of conversion by using his MS Windows code that already reads 32 bit memory dumps from IOS and will likely be modified to write 64 bit memory dumps, especially as part of the RWK upgrade. Caveat: I haven't developed for IOS, but ive developed for 8bit, 12bit, 16bit, 32bit and 64bit platforms over many years. Let's wait and see what John does. I've offered to help him if I can. I'm also willing to offer my services as a level moderator (if John likes the idea) as this will allow me to fix old levels that never quite worked properly, but, still retaining the original developer's authorship. It might (for example) allow me to tweak a level with a public note from the moderator and an email to the original level editor. Who knows :)
>>Impossible is almost certainly an exaggeration. If it can be read on a PC, it can be read on an IOS device (ref: decades of personal experience in software development).
Unless you're an old school developer who codes all his own streams himself. If that happens, when Apple changes the size of their container classes, but you still need to use those classes in other places because of Apple's overbearingness, then one's only recourse is to write a whole converter process for use only on iDevices. However, on PC I can simply load them in the old format, and save them in the new without any headaches and it works across the board.
None of this is due to any core "programming" issues, it is all due to artificial constraints Apple puts on their programmers. Caveat: If I had used only Apple libraries instead of low level file reads/writes for my file streams, it would not be an issue. But they've changed the defaults on a ton of their container classes, they've changed the format of "float" and they've even gone ahead and changed the size of long, which is like putting a bullet to the head of backwards compatibility. I gave up writing the Apple-side converter after attempting to make it all work with Solomon's Boneyard.
What my intention right now is to provide a PC version of RwK to users, along with their levels on request. The levels can be dropped onto the PC version and uploaded from there, after which the PC version can be discarded.
Wait, so the PC version can simply upload old levels in the new format without issue? Didn't you state several months ago that any automated form of conversion was likely to result in inaccuracies?
>Wait, so the PC version can simply upload old levels in the new format without issue? Didn't you state several months ago that any automated form of conversion was likely to result in inaccuracies?
Yes... in some cases, the person who is moving it over will have to make corrections. It'll be pretty rare, but will happen just often enough to make a batch conversion of 20,000+ levels turn up maybe 1000-2000 "errors."
The PC conversion won't automatically upload it, it'll just move it into your "my levels" on PC (Android people or people who know how to browse these modern iPhones would then be able to copy those levels over to their devices).
>Silly question, but if I only have Apple, can I still do this?
I'm not good enough with OSX to do this expediently, I'm sorry. I could make you a mac build, but my unfamiliarity with how to intercept drag/drop on a mac (I use SDL on my mac library) prevents me from making good tools on a mac.
It's all just balance between what I should be doing with each second of time... I just need to get this porting over with and move on to new stuff.
But I won't do the level conversion stuff until RwK is fully done and out.
I see. In that case, I can understand wanting players to take care of this themselves.
But why do you only plan on giving people access to the old levels they made themselves? I'm sure there are lots of good levels whose creators aren't around anymore. Of course, such a restriction would prevent people from taking credit for others' levels, but after a month or two, pretty much everyone with any intention of converting their old levels will have already done so. At this point, wouldn't it make sense to open the rest up to everyone so that they can bring over any abandoned levels they like?
Comments
A man was driving down the highway when he spotted a sign stating "In the following years mens death rate will increase due to stubbornness." and in the lower corner someone had painted in "No we won't!!!".
I dunno why but that joke hit me the moment I saw that screenshot
When John talked about this issue previously, he was saying that Apple changed the ability to read 32bit memory dumps in IOS11. This issue is linked to things like Intergers changing from 32bit to 64 bit. However, it can also impact other types (floating point, character, etc) and even how the bytes are packed together (eg. Byte, word ect alignment). I suspect John wanted to simplify the process of conversion by using his MS Windows code that already reads 32 bit memory dumps from IOS and will likely be modified to write 64 bit memory dumps, especially as part of the RWK upgrade.
Caveat: I haven't developed for IOS, but ive developed for 8bit, 12bit, 16bit, 32bit and 64bit platforms over many years.
Let's wait and see what John does. I've offered to help him if I can. I'm also willing to offer my services as a level moderator (if John likes the idea) as this will allow me to fix old levels that never quite worked properly, but, still retaining the original developer's authorship. It might (for example) allow me to tweak a level with a public note from the moderator and an email to the original level editor. Who knows :)
PC, it can be read on an IOS device (ref: decades of personal experience
in software development).
Unless you're an old school developer who codes all his own streams himself. If that happens, when Apple changes the size of their container classes, but you still need to use those classes in other places because of Apple's overbearingness, then one's only recourse is to write a whole converter process for use only on iDevices. However, on PC I can simply load them in the old format, and save them in the new without any headaches and it works across the board.
None of this is due to any core "programming" issues, it is all due to artificial constraints Apple puts on their programmers. Caveat: If I had used only Apple libraries instead of low level file reads/writes for my file streams, it would not be an issue. But they've changed the defaults on a ton of their container classes, they've changed the format of "float" and they've even gone ahead and changed the size of long, which is like putting a bullet to the head of backwards compatibility. I gave up writing the Apple-side converter after attempting to make it all work with Solomon's Boneyard.
What my intention right now is to provide a PC version of RwK to users, along with their levels on request. The levels can be dropped onto the PC version and uploaded from there, after which the PC version can be discarded.
without issue? Didn't you state several months ago that any automated
form of conversion was likely to result in inaccuracies?
Yes... in some cases, the person who is moving it over will have to make corrections. It'll be pretty rare, but will happen just often enough to make a batch conversion of 20,000+ levels turn up maybe 1000-2000 "errors."
The PC conversion won't automatically upload it, it'll just move it into your "my levels" on PC (Android people or people who know how to browse these modern iPhones would then be able to copy those levels over to their devices).
>Silly question, but if I only have Apple, can I still do this?
I'm not good enough with OSX to do this expediently, I'm sorry. I could make you a mac build, but my unfamiliarity with how to intercept drag/drop on a mac (I use SDL on my mac library) prevents me from making good tools on a mac.
It's all just balance between what I should be doing with each second of time... I just need to get this porting over with and move on to new stuff.
But I won't do the level conversion stuff until RwK is fully done and out.
But why do you only plan on giving people access to the old levels they made themselves? I'm sure there are lots of good levels whose creators aren't around anymore. Of course, such a restriction would prevent people from taking credit for others' levels, but after a month or two, pretty much everyone with any intention of converting their old levels will have already done so. At this point, wouldn't it make sense to open the rest up to everyone so that they can bring over any abandoned levels they like?