Seen Text not carrying over after updates for Ren'py games

[DorcasAurelia]

My understanding is that the "persistent" file in the saves folder of a Ren'py game tracks, among other things, which lines of text have already been read, regardless of if you're loading a save file or starting a fresh game. However, I've recently found that in most cases when I download an updated version of most Ren'py games that none of the text is flagged as seen, so I can't use the skip previously read text function to quickly replay scenes. This isn't too much of an issue with most visual novels, as continuing from a save at the end of a previous version is usually fine, but when version changes bug out the save or for sandbox games where scenes are commonly repeated (particular Time Loop Hunter with it's premise requiring repeats of scenes constantly) this can become a big time waster.

I did notice this seemed to start happening after I physically moved the hard drive I have the games stored on from an old computer running Windows 7 to a new computer running Windows 10. I'm not sure if there is some new setting or permission I need to configure in the OS.

 

[anne O'nymous]

However, I've recently found that in most cases when I download an updated version of most Ren'py games that none of the text is flagged as seen, so I can't use the skip previously read text function to quickly replay scenes.

The long version is technical and not interesting, so I'll just give the short one: It's due to the deletion of the RPYC files, an issue that come from the devs.
There's way to fix this on your side, but it need manipulations that generally don't worse it.

It need to :

• Keep the RPYC files from the previous update ;
• [If there files are in a RPA archive] extract everything from the said archive and delete the RPA file ;
• [If there's only RPYC files] generate the RPY files ;
• Keep only the RPY files from the update ;
• Put the old RPYC in the game directory where the RPY files are, keeping the same directory structure ;
• Launch the game and wait that it do its magic.

Depending of the game and computer, it can take tenths minutes, and there's always risk that you made an error and break the game. All this for a result that isn't always guaranty, since sometimes there's more than just a RPYC deletion behind the issue.