Updating old games

If you are planning to update a game you made with an earlier version of the engine, you may be in for a surprise. I decided to do just that. What I thought would take a few hours--better models, better animation, better terrain, etc.--ended up taking a couple weeks.

The modeling and terrain went easily. But the code, which used a lot of A5 template stuff, was the nightmare. Everything I improved produced a bug somewhere else.

In the end, it might have been less trouble to remake the game from scratch.

It's generally a lot easier to update games that don't use the templates, as opposed to updating those games that do use the templates. This is mostly due to the fact that the templates are always being updated, breaking compatibility with previous versions. On top of this the recent switch from C-Script to Lite-C has made porting old A5 template code to A7 stuff a very time consuming chore.

Luckily for me, I never use the templates. Personally I think they yield poor copy-cat style results.

my games monster mega mayhem and adventures of ambages were pre-made to be re-worked. since neither uses the templates, this works out pretty fine, at least for ambages where i tried a new update pack a while ago. (ill release it later this year).
NEVER use the templates dude

Amen to that...NEVER again. I quit using the templates after A5. Unfortunately, some were used in the Lost Dutchman Mine 3D. The game has had over 100,000 downloads in the last five years and is mirrored on many sites worldwide, so I thought it deserved a renewal.

...Just something to do while awaiting a new game inspiration.