[Pkg-games-ubuntu] [Bug 355086] Re: Wesnoth save game file format in jaunty is incompatible (1.4 -> 1.6) and saves just vanish

[Gergely Máté]

OK, so saved games did not really vanish, but are unusable with Jaunty's
version of Wesnoth - and you want to continue the campaign you already
played a lot. If this is the situation, you have some resources at your
hand, and you are not afraid of the Terminal, keep reading. ;-)

If you want to play Wesnoth the way you did played in Intrepid, you need
Intrepid. Fortunately, you can have Intrepid and Jaunty on your computer
at the same time. The solution is called virtualization, and the tool I
just used continue my campaign is VirtualBox Open Source Edition.

These are the steps to play :-) :
1. install virtualbox-ose
2. Start VirtualBox and configure a new virtual machine. I gave it a hard drive of 8 Gigs, and an Intrepid LiveCD iso as CD-ROM. Also don't forget to enable audio among the settings (my choice was PulseAudio).
3. Start the new virtual machine. The livecd boots, and you can install Intrepid onto the newly created virtual hard disk.
4. Than, in your Intrepid virtual machine:
	1. Install roughly the following packages :
		wesnoth
		dkms
It took me about 90 minutes to reach this state. In theory, here you can start Wesnoth, but the display resolution may be to low to enjoy it. So here comes the harder stuff - and the Terminal. You will have to tell your virtual Intrepid that it is running in a virtualized environment to be able to change display resolution. dkms was required to make that easier.

	2. From the tools menu of your VirtualBox window that displays your Intrepid, select "Install Guest Additions". This will download a 18megs ISO file and mount it. Still in your Intrepid virtual machine, start up a terminal, and navigate to the mount point of the downloaded ISO file (it was /media/cdrom0 for me). There enter:
> ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run
After this, you have to configure your virtual Intrepid's X server. So edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf like this:
in Section "Device" set:
     Driver    "vboxvideo"
in Section "InputDevice" set
     Driver    "vboxmouse"
There should be NO "alwayscore" or "sendcoreevents" anywhere in your virtualized xorg.conf file.
After the change, you have to restart the X server in your Intrepid. Simply logging out and back again probably solves this. Here, if you try to resize your VirtualBox window, and the Intrepid desktop resizes with it, than you are almost done. In case of problems, you still can ask for help :-).

      3. Now you have Intrepid, Wesnoth, and can resize your display. The last thing to do is to copy your old, well played .wesnoth directory to this newly created virtual system. Simply copy .wesnoth from your non-virtualized home directory to the home directory on Intrepid - overwrite the .wesnoth dir that came with installing Wesnoth to the new system. Every setup information and every save game for Wesnoth is in the .wesnoth directory.
In fact, I was unable to transfer data directly to the virtual machine. So I sent it to the Internet, and downloaded it from inside my Intrepid VM.

With the .wesnoth directory in place, the last thing to do is go
fullscreen with the VM, and launch Wesnoth. Voilá! It works. It is quite
playable on my 1.6 Ghz Celeron (I have 1GB ram, that's needed, as I gave
the Intrepid virtual machine 400MB). The whole process of setting this
up probably can be done in about 2-5 hours depending on computer speed
and network connection. Disk space consumed: 9GB. Network traffic: ~1GB.

If you try this, and have problems, let me know. If you have success,
let me know that also ;-) !

-- 
Wesnoth save game file format in jaunty is incompatible (1.4 -> 1.6) and saves just vanish
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/355086
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Status in “wesnoth” source package in Ubuntu: Won't Fix

Bug description:
Binary package hint: wesnoth

I have completed 23 out of 25 scenarios in the Wesnoth campaign "Heir to the Throne". I then upgraded to the Jaunty beta, which replaces Wesnoth 1.4 with 1.6. Now, none of my saved games are available in the GUI, and so I can't load them!

This campaign took rather a long time to play. If this were my only computer, I would cry. Fortunately, I have another one and can use rsync to move the saves across and finish the campaign. But other people will not be so lucky.

There needs to be some sort of warning, or a conversion script, or the ability to keep 1.4 installed as well... or something! Just "losing" all the saved games (although the data remains in the Wesnoth directory, at least at first) and not telling the user anything is unacceptable IMO.