All right, my problem is going to be very specific, and very weird, so, strap in!
I've been playing one specific play-through I started sometime in 2018 on Windows, with the then-actively developed Area 51 mod. Then in 2019, I have moved to Arch Linux, upgraded to the then-current build (2911_g47700c398), had to fiddle with the mod files (rulesets), with the help of the then-actively developing Hobbes. As I was streaming the game on my YouTube channel, I wanted to just keep going with the same rules, that's why I didn't just switch to the then-current version of the mod. And things were all fine and dandy until today.
During the last update, Arch Linux got a new version of yaml-cpp (bumped to 0.7.0), which resulted in an error, of openxcom not being able to run, as the libyaml-cpp.so.0.6 was not available in the system anymore. So, what I did is that I just grabbed the newest openxcom version from github (3050_g6ef797008), built it against the new dependency files. Now, openxcom ran well, I finished up my mission, and went on a new one, finished that too, and then went on a third one, a base / hive map, that relies heavily on tileset from the now unmaintained Area 51 mod. That mission became super weird, some tiles that were under the ground level and should have worked as solid blocks (or as empty ones to fall through?), let me move through them.
Then I realized something was up, so cut the game, and went back to get the 2911_g47700c398 commit from github, and compile that against the new dependencies. Now, if I load any save games where I'm on a mission, the mission is just dark black emptiness with soldiers, dead bodies and aliens visible (WTF). However, if I load a save state with the geoscape, go on the same base/hive mission, the game acts in a bit more reasonable way, such as, i can't traverse the underground tiles that should be untraversable, and sometime the soldiers fall down as stepping on a hole (and at this point I can't tell if that is desired behavior or not). However, as I said, the save games from the battlescape (even if saved from this version) fail to load.
So after describing my situation, I have a few questions. And I am fully aware that this might be just one of those "doesn't worth attempting to solve", and I am prepared to accept if the community refuses to help. So:
1. Is there any way to salvage the situation, or should I just say f*** it, start a new game with a supported mod and hope to finish it in less than 3 years next time (dubious with my usual 1-2 hours play time per week lol).
2. Does anyone have any clue, what changed with yaml-cpp, that suddenly screws up the file loading system for battlescape savegames? Is there a commit that was done specifically to counter this issue? Maybe I could just get that specific modification and apply it to the old version and make it work?
3. Does anyone have any clue, what changed in the battlescape handling that modified the behavior of certain tiles?
4. Would it be possible to edit the savefile so that specific base mission has a different tile set, one that maybe doesn't involve the newly broken stuff?
If you read this post to the end, I already owe you one.
Thank you very much.
