Is there a simple way for me to archive FAF with past executables for each version to make my collection of replays replayable offline?
Same question reworded: Imagine I want to archive FAF so I could play it offline 20 years from now. How would I do this?
I mean, FAF can be run in offline-mode, and all version of FAF are available from github. You could download every iteration on a harddrive I guess?
"Design is an iterative process. The necessary number of iterations is one more than the number you have currently done. This is true at any point in time."
Newest map:
There is no "simple" way. You need to download and keep all the patch files from the server (needs a script). Then you need scripts to parse replay headers, extract the information which patch files you need, put them into the right directories and launch the game with the right commands. For older versions of some point in FAF history it's already broken and we don't know why. There used to be some init.lua-files generated by scripts to wire together everything. Newer patch versions don't need this anymore.
"Nerds have a really complicated relationship with change: Change is awesome when WE'RE the ones doing it. As soon as change is coming from outside of us it becomes untrustworthy and it threatens what we think of is the familiar."
– Benno Rice
@brutus5000 Thank you.
What about just playing the game 20 years from now. Is there any reason to think my current snapshot in time wouldn't work?
@defiant if you distribute your version to all players you want to play with sure that'll work for lan games.
If you want the client to work for online stuff, you'd need to also save and host that part, though there wouldn't be much to gain from that if it's only for you / your friends.
I wrote a version manager to do this a few years ago but there have been a lot of security changes to the API and download process that broke it. You could probably save a copy of your %APPDATA%\FAForever directory by hand, although it will include some unnecessary stuff that will just take up extra space.