Look on main screen or in About dialog to find out exactly what version of the game you’re running.
Expected Results:
The current version number is displayed.
Actual Results:
Version not displayed.
Version Number and Mods in use:
No mods, version… kinda ironic you want to know this too.
Notes:
I don’t think I’ve ever encountered another piece of software which does not make finding the version obvious for obvious reasons. GUI applications, console applications, bios, firmware, OS, mods, everything. Given the simplicity and usefulness of providing this information and time this game’s been around it’s simply ridiculous something so fundamental is omitted, still. Come on guys.
We used to display the game version in the title screen and next to the sun widget for years, but we removed it in the 1.0 release.
The version number is still the first thing that appears in the stonehearth.log.
Ok. So why wasn’t or isn’t it displayed in the the About dialog instead?
If you want people to give good bug reports it’s beneficial to make the information they require easily available in an obvious place. It’s also useful to determine if a mod is compatible before downloading. And kinda ridiculous that people have to go trawling through files just to know what they have installed.
You’re right that it may be beneficial for knowing if a mod is compatible, although after the support period has ended in December, everyone will have the same version of the game. Some modders don’t say which is the latest compatible version for their mods, so you can only guess by date. (The “version” inside their mod’s manifest is the API version, nothing to do with the mod version nor the game version, and some mods don’t need updates when we release a new patch, they’re still compatible, so it’s hard to determine whether they still work without testing).
I’ll poke the devs, maybe we can still add it there in the About section. When connecting to a multiplayer game the game also warns if you have a different version than the host.
Regarding bug reports, it was more beneficial when we pushed weekly updates, because that way we knew whether they were playing with the latest fixes or not, and even could guess that when they pasted screenshots, if they didn’t include the version number in the report.
For the time that’s left, is more beneficial to know the steps to repro and/or a savefile that reproduces the issue (and the log, if they didn’t copy-paste their errors). The version number is less important, as long as there is a way to reproduce the bug.
I didn’t like it when we removed it, but realized that it wasn’t really necessary anymore (for our case. Other programs do make good use of it).
So yeah, I’ll see if we can put it somewhere in the About. Thanks for bringing attention to this
No worries, thanks for taking the time to understand, explain and reply.
I didn’t consider the mod API version. Ideally that would be displayed as well e.g:
Game Version: 1.2.43 – released 16/2/2019 – change log
Mod API Version: 4.3 – released 2/12/2018 – change log
Here’s some use cases why:
Someone encounters an error. They google it and find a workaround which doesn’t work. It’s said to work for version X so they look to see if they have the same or more recent version. We don’t want them to be frustrated and disappointed when they discover this fundamental information has been neglected to be shown anywhere, right?
Someone wants to play a modpack they see someone playing. It contains many mods and only works on a specific mod API version. They look to see what mod API version their copy has.
Someone finds an old mod browsing the forum. No information other than release date is provided and they wish to get an idea if it is likely to work. They look in About for information and see the mod API has changed since the mod was released (good to know). Conveniently there’s a link to the API change log which they click and spend a minute reading that the changes during that period are not likely to affect the mod in question, so decide to give it a shot praising the developers for their consideration and foresight.
Someone asks something in a forum/discord/anywhere. Someone goes to help but comes to suspect they may be running an older version with different features. Do they A Ask them to tell them the version in the about box or B Spend the next 15 minutes trying to assist someone with little computing experience how to locate the install directory and open the log file in the OS’s text editor. C Give up trying to help since it just became too hard.
Perhaps it will not be particularly useful for the development team to have this information shown but if you wish to have as good an end user experience as possible I suggest doing it like this. That’s the goal right, payer enjoyment. Best not to make it harder than it has to be then.
