Jacob · Gameplay Programmer, Squadron 42 Feature Team

So there's sort of two sides to save and load, right? So there's the saving as in when you save your character to our servers, our persistence database, and then that's the one that loads in every time you enter the PU. And what we're also introducing is long-term persistence for that character, so that should also be able to be maintained between wipes. Then the other side of save and load, what we've added with the new character customizer is the ability to save out custom head files. So that's a single file that contains everything you need to build your character. So that's your gender, your DNA string, your hair, your eyebrows, your beard, if you want one. And the new thing is also all the custom materials that we have. Backwards compatibility has been a huge part of developing that and something that we're really keen on keeping with every patch. So the dream is that we should be able to load in any custom head file from any previous patch into the current patch. Now, I can't really make any promises about if something becomes problematic and we have to remove that feature or how that feature works entirely or do a massive overhaul. So, for example, if we for some reason have to completely change how makeup works in the future, then that part of the character we might have to discard from older files, or run some sort of conversion, which would be the preferred way of doing it, some non-destructive conversion on that part of the file so that when you load it in, you might not get exactly the same makeup, but you'll be able to get as close as possible. So I guess the short answer is yes, these files are intended to be backwards compatible, and we're going to do everything in our power to make sure that from 3.23 onwards, you'll be able to load any file saved now in any future patch.

Forrest Stephan · Principal Technical Artist

I think that also goes for the art side too. It may not look exactly the same, but that might also mean that we've made improvements to something. Maybe we've fine-tuned the way the makeup works after seeing people use it, or maybe we've updated a hairstyle as well.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

So it's conceivable we might alter or update an individual hairstyle and you would just get the newer version of the hairstyle as opposed to the old one.

Forrest Stephan · Principal Technical Artist

Correct.