Any way to patch and not lose save games?

[Zub]

After playing the game for a while, I realized that I was supposed to have children in the game, so I found a patch to put children in, but it said that after installing it, I had to install the US patch. I did, but then my save games didn't work. I found a savegame converter, but it wouldn't convert the savegames.

Does anyone know any way I can patch to get children and fix bugs and not lose my savegames? Or at least a savegame converter that works.

Ah crap, I moved my savegames to another location, and after I uninstalled the patched game and reinstalled the original, the savegames wouldn't work!

 

[Kanhef]

Savegames become unusable after patching because the savegame format is in part dependent on certain data files. Notably, it contains a list of the values of GVARs. If vault13.gam (which contains the list of GVARs) is modified, the game will read an incorrect amount of data; the following structures are read from the wrong offsets and are corrupted. Fortunately, the game notices this and won't load it. Changes to party.txt, city.txt, worldmap.txt, and ai.txt can cause similar problems.

If the patch only changed the number of GVARs, it wouldn't be too difficult to convert the savegames with a hex editor. Otherwise, it could theoretically be done, but a lot more trouble than it's worth.

 

[Per]

Changing "only" the exe file between US and UK shouldn't affect saves assuming you have the same version number, nor should the children patch in itself. Was your game originally not patched at all? That the saves didn't work when you reinstalled seems to indicate they were corrupted to begin with, but I don't really see how that would happen.

 

[Zub]

Changing "only" the exe file between US and UK shouldn't affect saves assuming you have the same version number, nor should the children patch in itself. Was your game originally not patched at all? That the saves didn't work when you reinstalled seems to indicate they were corrupted to begin with, but I don't really see how that would happen.

Yes, my game was originally not patched at all. I was looking at another topic, and a person said that moving my savegames to another place, saving in the patched game, and replacing the new files with my old savegames might fix the problem. I think moving the savegame files must have corrupted them somehow


Well I guess I don't really need any help now. I'm going to be pretty busy in the months to come so I've decided to just let it rest and start over when I have more time to really play.