The *create function and saves

This is just an honest question as I am a little confused. I have been learning the system and it says that the *create function can only be done in the startup file.

My question is if someone is already playing through a testing version of the game, say on dashingdon, and they save where they are; if I then add a new variable in the startup file which relates to something that happens in the next chapter, do they have to start back at the beginning. I do not mean adding stuff in the sections already complete.
I ask because I have some health issues which would make releasing the choice story episodically at a reasonable pace much better for my sanity.

Thank you for taking the trouble to read this.

Yes, I think so. That’s one reason save feature is currently not in the default design of the system.

So one would want to plan the mechanical aspects of a CS project as thoroughly as possible from the beginning, or not rely on save, or at least let players know that their save game will likely be useless in future updates of the game.

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I think @CJW’s plug-in deals with that. Not sure though, since I’ve never used it.

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Afraid not. The most recent version actually just plugs straight into CS’ builtin save functionality. There isn’t much you can do to circumvent these sorts of issues other than design your game very, very carefully, and restrict what you change in updates (and where you can save).

For example, if you make sure you never add/edit globals and only ever allow saving in a special save.txt scene, then you might get away with editing most other scenes without breaking saves… But really, welcome to one of the widespread pains of game testing/development.

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See, a list/array-parser would be good for that. :joy:

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