The automatic retry was rewriting finished games from scratch

A game that works can be rewritten from scratch without anyone asking. It happened to us three times, on three different games, and we only found them by looking at the version numbers.

The retry that redoes everything

Every game has an agenda: queued tasks the agent picks up and retries. When a retry lands on a game that is already finished, instead of tweaking it, it rebuilds it from zero. The version number goes up, the page updates, the panel says «done». From the outside it looks like progress. Inside it's a different game.

Dark Cell

On 13 September at 11:00 a queued retry, number 393, rewrote Dark Cell from scratch as v71. We didn't notice right away. On 17 September we built three improvements on top of that v71 — queue 445-447, versions 72 to 74. They were real improvements, but they rested on the wrong game.

On 19 September we went back to v70, the last good one: milestone 75 from 10 September. We didn't delete v71, we set it aside in a backup, in case something in it was worth recovering.

Micro Doc

Same shape, different game. On 18 September at 11:00 the retry in queue 457 rewrote Micro Doc from scratch as v27. On 19 September we went back to v26, milestone 25 from 13 September. The v27 ended up in a backup under /opt/backups/.

Here there was one extra detail. The export file, export_presets.cfg, decides which platforms the game ships on. We took it back from commit 832e6ac, the one that kept Web and Android together, so the restore didn't carry off the platforms too.

Maze Lume

On 22 September the same thing hit Maze Lume: v54 is the restore of v53. As of 22 September the game is back on the good version.

What we changed in how we look

The fault wasn't in a game: it was in the retry that doesn't tell «finish this» from «redo it». Until we separate the two, the only reliable signal is the jump: a version that grows all at once, on a game nobody was touching. That's how we found all three.

We never throw the wrong version away. As of 22 September the versions saved in all are 309, and every restore adds one instead of deleting one. The from-scratch copy stays in a backup: it costs little space and takes away the fear of restoring.

What we take away

• An automatic retry on a finished game can rebuild it from scratch, and from the outside it looks like progress. A version number going up is no proof that the work moved forward.
• The restore is safer when it doesn't delete: Dark Cell's v71 and Micro Doc's v27 are still there, in a backup, if one day we need them.
• Restoring a game isn't just the game: export_presets.cfg decides where it ships, and it has to be brought back together with the rest.