Have to start new AP game for the Orcs campaign? RU Kidding Me?!?

[BB Shockwave]

Originally Posted by brettjv

Well, BB ... I've only played KB:TL vanilla and did so like a year ago, never got AP until I heard about CW on steam, got the pre-order with all three, and started AP.

I can see how people that are into the 'scene' of the game might or should have supposed this would happen, but to the average consumer like me ... it was very frustrating the way it went down. A simple note somewhere that had said that AP saves would be incompatible with OotM would sure have been nice. As I said above, it's not at all unreasonable to expect that an add-on expansion that appears to mostly adds quests, skills, and new units to buy would work w/old saves.

I broke down and started over since I didn't want my money to be wasted. There certainly are a whole lot more orcs around to be bought right from the beginning, along with what look to me to be new units like 'witch hunter' (although maybe I just never found one of those before in AP).

I've yet to really see anything that's made me go 'oh NOW I get why they HAD to break saves'. I suppose some of the stuff that they've added to the beginning would sorta be 'wasted' if you were starting on a way higher level/on a distant island, but ... that's about it. And there's some minor changes on the skill trees, which I guess technically 'complicates' things with old saves.

Let's see... there are new skills that you can learn for every class. The maps have changed, there are new buildings such as the Academy (where you can upgrade units) and new quests, there is even a new boss in the game. Then, as you said, there are lots of new units - if you have used your old save you'd have never found them. Also, ALL the Rage Spirit skills are now available as spells to be learned.

I think the main problem would have been altering the map - you most likely already cleaned up Debir, well now there'd be some new quests and buildings there that you most likely would have missed as you wouldn't have gone back to check.

[Aesir]

Originally Posted by DGDobrev

No need to vent out.
<snip> the saves are incompatible.

It stood to reason that they would be incompatible...

No need to be apologetic on the dev's behalf. They need to hear the problem with the decision to overwrite existing game files, including making it impossible to continue your existing campaign.

Should you expect to run an AP save game through CW? I suppose not.

Should you expect to run an AP save through AP? Definitely so.

For example, on both Impulse and Steam, games with expansions remain eligible to run separately **. Yet, for this game, the installation of CW corrupts a vanilla AP install. You are left with the sole option of starting a new game, and in the process losing access to your AP mods (including the 'official' gift bag) and such.


(**) Games such as Titan Quest, DoW, Dow II, Civ IV, HoMM V, SupCom, Gal Civ II, Sins, Oblivion, Borderlands, CoH, King Arthur, SotS/ANY, Tropico 3. That's just my collection of games+expansion bundles.

[brettjv]

Aesir, I am able to play my old AP saves by using the AP option in the CW exe. Haven't tried clicking AP in my steam list to see if the original app still works ... your posts here and on steam forums have scared me off of trying

Originally Posted by vmxa

Well nearly every strat game I ever bought that added changes to the game broke the prior saves and certainly a new addition/expansion would.

Several times for patches alone in civ III. Only way to make them compat is not not change anythig that is keep in the save. That would be a bug fixes at best.

Well, I'm not a big strat game player, but I know off the top of my head that the Chaos Rising stand-alone expansion allowed you to use your DoW II save game.

And like I said before ... TQ:Immortal Throne was a MAJOR expansion that changed the game pretty significantly ... but didn't break saves.

To me it just doesn't make sense to break save games unless the expansion is legitimately making a huge change in the core game. Now, I haven't played (and may never, now) but from looking at the OotM change list in the manual, I'm just not seeing anything there that qualifies as remotely huge in my book that couldn't have been worked around.

And if they couldn't, they should've told us up front.

[Aesir]

Originally Posted by brettjv

Aesir, I am able to play my old AP saves by using the AP option in the CW exe. Haven't tried clicking AP in my steam list to see if the original app still works ... your posts here and on steam forums have scared me off of trying

Thanks for the info. The failure to load in my case may have been in-between installs, when my install folder had both ap and cw content in it.