So it's 2019.
I figured out this past year what needed to be done:
Either stand up the rotting DB next to a clean one and do a manual copy-paste job, or do the same with the flatfile.
The first option is simpler. @decompile and then swap some #DBREFs before pasting into the new game.
However, the rotting DB is, well, rotting. There's no guarantee that what I get on an @dec is going to be accurate, especially as uptime increases. Any scheme to reboot it more rapidly is bound to cause even more delay.
The second option is more confusing, but the DB can't rot if I'm opening the flatfile in a text editor.
The formatting of attributes and DBREFs isn't too bad, though. This is pretty doable. Even for unmotivated me!
I think I've found my future for it, too. Twilight: 2000 has been a beloved game of mine since my teenage years. I've had some repeated online interest in it from friends and fellow T2k junkies over the year. I periodically ask these fans to pick a "sine qua non" for playing T2k. So far it's Humvees, distilling fuel, going home/rescuing home, lots of guns, and radiation danger.
Distilling fuel and rads are the only ones of that which would need some coding... and I can see some places in existing code that I might start from for these systems.
