Thank you for your work on this. It will take a long time to test thoroughly whether each change causes any problems, so I suggest that, in order to make it easier to test smaller batches of changes, that each set of changes (e.g. up to a Standard version number) be put on its own branch, and each later set of changes be put on a separate branch derived from the earlier branch. That way, I and others can test in the changes batches to narrow down any particular problems.
For this to be workable, we are going to need several testers, as my testing alone is unlikely to be enough. Would anyone like to volunteer to do some testing?
One particular thing that we need to test extremely thoroughly is whether there are any losses of network synchronisation, as this sort of problem can be so difficult to track down that there have been occasions where many months of intensive work were spent doing nothing else. We need to test very well developed games to make sure that there are no features which are unused by a particular saved game which, if used, would cause a loss of synchronisation.
All works in testing this will be very much appreciated.