Switching from production exe to dev exe and back resets user settings, particularly video resolution

Bug or by design?

from Sins Forums

Split off from another, non-technical thread:

Quoting WJC3688,


I still play SP actively and running the dev exe resets my extensively customized settings in the normal game, very annoying.

That happens to me too and it is indeed very annoying, particularly that it resets the video resolution. Something the devs could easily fix... The rest [of the settings being reset] don't bother me as much. You can make a backup copy of your user.setting (or of the entire Settings folder to be sure) after using the regular exe and then just restore your backup after using the dev exe.

I do wonder if there ain't some bug there at work. Those files have internal format versions (of their own) so that when you upgrade Sins they can migrate settings as needed. But for the same version of Sins (1.82.5006), the production exe writes "Version 1241" to user.setting whereas the dev exe (of the same Sins version) writes "Version 241" (omitting indeed the first "1") to the same file. So when the normal exe then loads, it thinks it needs to reset/ignore the video settings and so forth. I'm not sure if this is by design (i.e. the first "1" in the user.setting version is supposed to indicate being written by the production exe) or if it is a bug that the dev exe writes a Version field that is 1000 less.

 

 

 

 

 

technical
6,952 views 2 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

I don't believe this is a bug but rather on purpose.  I think (just guessing at the motives) the point is to reset all your settings so that way there is a reduced chance that some of the errors or crashes you get are due to the settings themselves.

I get around this issue by making a copy of SP setting files and sticking them in a separate folder.  Then when I'm done with the dev.exe and want to play a normal game, I just copy them in.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Well, apparently if you make the rebellion.user file read-only, it isn't changed when you switch versions...so, I'm using my dev.exe version, and I get a single error that it can't be opened if I run the normal .exe, but it seems to still use the settings I have in there (I doubt it will save any changes I make though)....

uimappings isn't working out though since the dev.exe has more hotkeys...at the very least though making it read-only will prevent it from being written over...

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