Mod Backward Compatibility Issues?

[Vhati]

Something interesting came up in the Mod Manager thread:

Most mods are designed to work with the latest 1.03.1 version of FTL. Since this version several changes were made to the game resources making mods made for 1.03.1 incompatible with older versions of FTL. Not 100% incompatible but there will be errors and graphical glitches.

Question: What exactly has changed from 1.01 through 1.03.1 that would break mods on older FTL versions?
I thought each patch primarily introduced minor bugfixes (I'm only familiar with what's happened to the xml).

I know some mods have copied and edited vanilla files rather than append changes, but that usually means bringing the modder's old xml into a player's latest FTL version.

There are glitches when you copy an entire dat from an old install into a newer FTL, like what happens when upgrading the game but forgetting to delete the contents of GMM's backups from the previous install. But I thought such glitches were from discrepancies like missing patch-added UI images, things rarely touched by modders.

[DryEagle]

I've had things like black boxes instead of graphics reported, among other issues.
Though to put simply, just run the latest version of FTL and you should be good ;)

[Vhati]

I've had things like black boxes instead of graphics reported, among other issues.

My purpose for this thread was to find out why. What's new that breaks the old?

Were those black boxes in place of graphics you made, or did vanilla graphics suddenly turn black?

[kartoFlane]

I think it's simply because the FTL exe was patched to include new features (oxygen stripes), and with old .dat archives it was looking for resources that weren't present, or were named differently/located elsewhere. It's just dumb wild guessing on my part, though.

When I've unpacked the Thanathos' archives with KuroSaru's manager, there were a few differences highlighted (apart from the ship itself), it could probably provide some insight into which parts are causing the issues.

[Vhati]

with old .dat archives it was looking for resources that weren't present [...] When I've unpacked the Thanathos' archives with KuroSaru's manager.

That'd do it.
But that was an old mod from the days when entire dats were distributed.
From the typos in copied vanilla sections, I date it to FTL 1.01 or earlier.

A dat copied between FTL versions in either direction would break things.

Are there any backward compatibility issues with *.ftl files though: mods made for 1.03.1 that wouldn't work in 1.01?
If someone replaced the oxygen stripes image, 1.01 would simply ignore it.

[kartoFlane]

I doubt, there shouldn't be any problems... I mean, we're just replacing the select few files that are included in the mod, nothing else. I think the BPaB mod was the only one that had any troubles, not sure why, though. I haven't ever looked into it.

[Vhati]

Okay, so this was "not intended to be a factual statement"...

thx for the help but nah i bought is but not on steam didnt wanna update my game though

Then i dunno y u even bother to ask here something if u are not willing to upgrade the version of your game. If u are modding, and using mods, u are forced to update to the las version, if not, 90% of the mods will not work, and u will be very limited to doing the same.

[DryEagle]

I've had things like black boxes instead of graphics reported, among other issues.

My purpose for this thread was to find out why. What's new that breaks the old?

Were those black boxes in place of graphics you made, or did vanilla graphics suddenly turn black?

well one of them was because I forgot to include a blank .png for floor layer - it turns out that the older version of the game (apparantly) draws this as black box. or it may have been conflict with another mod the guy was running