Exactly! Legacy Foldit and New C(*&% running two different code bases, and puzzles set up for each, leave it the the players (your resources) to choose.
Legacy client running older Rosetta, and those that want to fuss with NC can run the crippled new client with new Rosetta.
You'll soon find out which client people prefer, although I don't think that's real mystery right now. The hardcore "doing it for the science regardless of the pain" folks can bang away on the NC client, and the rests can get back to enjoying the game. Both will provide science, maybe not at the level you want, but having only a slow or broken client with fewer people playing with client instances and going nowhere isn't going to get you much.
I should clarify that there was no way to have parallel versions of Foldit running at the same time where you would be able to get credit for playing both versions (ie how you can be playing in devprev and you get credit for a puzzle like you would if you were playing it in main).
Sorry for not being clear about that when trying to address your suggestion, bobandpenny.
Since the scoring has changed so drastically, where people and strategies were competing at a high level before, and now everything is turned upside down, it might be time to do a rest of scores, retire the old Foldit and start over .
Otherwise, commit the resources to figure out how to run two parallel sets - maybe on a new virtual server - and write some easy scripts to combine to scores? Although, it's really mixing apples and oranges to compare the scores from the two systems.
I think a total retirement of Foldit original scores and ranking would be easier. It's a brand new game, make a clean cut and go for it.
It is impossible to have the same client run puzzles like it did on the old client while still being able to run new-client puzzles. This means that running two sets of puzzles requires two separate clients. We temporarily had two different clients while new chapter was in testing, but that isn't a realistic model for a deployed game.
Two clients require two code bases. Two code bases mean we have to fix bugs in both code bases when they happen. Worse yet, since the very nature of a 'legacy' client means that it doesn't get Rosetta updates, as time goes on, the differences between the two code bases will grow and grow, and the fixes for these bugs and even the bugs themselves will be different. We would also need to track feedback separately for the two clients in a way that is reliable.
We would have two different release cycles to manage. Two sets of puzzles to actually post. Half the time, when we try out a new puzzle internally before players even see it, we discover it doesn't work properly. That requires us to modify the client - or in this case, both clients (probably in different ways). These new puzzles often require new features from Rosetta as well, for which there is no real fix in the legacy client. The traditional scoreboards of the website have no differentiation between new/old clients, so you would have to play both sets in order to get full points. The category scoreboards are a bit better, since you could make separate categories for each client, but that's a hacky solution at best.
Then you have to deal with testing, server communication, analysis, and new player confusion about multiple sets of puzzles and clients. It just isn't sustainable. We would be spending more time just trying to keep afloat than doing actual science.
In addition to Jflat's comment below, because most people would just use legacy, the "better" solutions they would make on NC would no longer be produced,.
And why would most people use legacy ? Because it works, and they don't have to re-learn the whole game. Not everyone has all day every day to try to learn a new game, and it's especially offensive to have to throw away years of experience and start over.
And, the new client is nowhere near as productive as the old one, nothing happens quickly. We shouldn't have to buy new 16 core CPUs with gobs of memory to be able to run this.
I don't disagree, but that completely gets rid of the point of having NC in the first place.
I agree. Let us some time to discover, test, script and adapt. Limit big puzzles to 2, small puzzles to 3 during some time.
