Playing Trunk - Is it scummy to swap versions midgame?

[XuaXua]

I am playing trunk (5-day old build end tag 1912) and doing GREAT, see CIP here if you want to.

I was questioning some concepts and went through the change log and noticed several things I had been complaining about in my head were actually FIXED since 1912

NOTABLE CHANGES (things that actually affect *MY* gameplay experience):

1 - Sustenance changes for the better (I'm running low on food for extended endgame!)
2 - MASS ABJURATION IS NOW LEVEL 6 and not 7 which it is for this game and stuck in the Grand Grimoire
3 - better curare
4 - fixes to auxilliary weapon (unnecessary for me now that I ditched my horns)
5 - Metabolic Englaciation is back or something
6 - More scrolls of silence
7 - Boost the power of mass enchantments (Control Undead, Mass Confusion, Cause Fear)
8 - stasis won't help in abyss/pan

That's about it that is relevant to me.

7 positives, some of which actually DO directly help me (I've cast 2 out of 3 of those mass enchantments), and one negative (nearing endgame and haven't found stasis yet so it's irrelevant, even if I did visit abyss twice, it doesn't bother me much).

So here is the big question:

IS IT CONSIDERED SCUMMY IF I SWAP VERSIONS OF TRUNK MID-GAME?

I'm not save-scumming, and I will NOT encounter any player ghosts; any that I have would have been encountered by now.

[AtT]

I wouldn't say so. The point of playing trunk is to play the latest version available isn't it?

[robulon]

Watch out for tile image changes (if applicable). Small changes can screw your save, especially if new are added or removed =/.

[Sealer]

If playing online the game always asks you if you want to change into the latest version of crawl, if one is available.

Otherwise it seems you would do so only to benefit from some nice changes.

Either way it's completely up to you. Do you consider it scammy yourself?

[XuaXua]

No, because those are patches to the code, I'd guess. Like fixes for things that are actually considered wrong.

Granted, if the only change was to boost the danger of Killer Klowns, I don't know if I'd upgrade.

Either way, I beat it with the version I was using; I just wanted to find out opinions on this topic.

I don't play the online version, so knowing the option to change a character to the latest between plays of the same character is interesting and pretty much answers my question.

[dassem]

No. Unless perhaps you're doing it to exploit a bug, or to play most of the game in a known "easy" version and switch to a "hard" version to claim the win (e.g. tornado nerf).
In fact, since the nerf stick is being wielded a lot, the question could perhaps be: Is it scummy to not switch?

In that case, should we really count your win as legitimate?
- No, I am just joking. Of course we should!

However, on a more serious note, I am a bit nervous each time I switch. My first win online involved losing a high-level character due to a save bug on version switching: I got another (very similar) character to almost the same level; then switched versions again only to find my previous character was restored; so I took that as a hint, grabbed the orb and escaped without any more messing around. Since it was all unintentional and I didn't benefit from it, I counted that as fair. Luckily, that was a while ago and hasn't happened since.

[Sharkie]

Where does one see what's changed in the recent build? Can only find lists of changed, not when they have been applied.

[KoboldLord]

If the new version doesn't actually break save compatibility, the differences are probably going to be minor enough that nobody cares. Switch if you feel like it.

[Tiber]

Where does one see what's changed in the recent build? Can only find lists of changed, not when they have been applied.

In http://crawl.develz.org/trunk/changes.txt:

  Code:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
dc92e72 | Samuel Bronson | 2011-11-18 21:58:34 -0500

New "{throwable}" stash-search prefix.

The changes are listed chronologically, and there's a timestamp at the top right. For everything else, there's Ctrl-F.
Or, if you prefer, there's also http://gitorious.org/crawl/crawl/commits/master

[evilmike]

There's nothing wrong with upgrading to the latest trunk. In fact, you probably should do this as often as it is convenient - you are essentially playtesting the in-development version of crawl, and if you run into any problems, your feedback will be more useful if you're playing a recent build.