** The Summarry **
We do need to place ourselves on solid footing if we want these bugs
to go away. And from what I'm judging, there really isn't away to do
this without completely breaking backwards compatibility.
I'm all for breaking compatibility if it means we can get a better code structure for Glob2. So by all means, go ahead.
I have a lot of free time on my hands for the wiki (which is slowly getting completed), the win32 and mandriva releases (both will be complete within a week), and I'm also happy to remake every map, and more when the time comes so users can have a map to play on when Alpha 24 (or
0.9.0, whichever you prefer) is released. Thats no problem.
The only problem is, as you said, Autosaves, but You could write a seperate programs, a small button in Glob2 so that rather making it comptable (like having the new and old work together which is messy), just have the new code there, but provide a tool to convert old to new. That way you can have the new code running, and a 1 page script to convert to the new format. So you can convert old games to new :D Would that be possible (rather than converting in game and having lots more code like you said).
it seems people (one person) is crying out for a bug-fix release.
I assume you mean me :P I played several games and the only bug that needed fixing majorly (now that mingw works) is the one with repairing buildings. Once thats fixed (and any other blocker bugs), then Alpha 23 is done and ready for release. I should take you what? 10 minute to find the problem and 20 minutes fixing it? 30minutes and then nothing but the new core engine design :D