I think you’ll be forced to append the .blend, not open it directly.
Everytime i loaded a 2.49b .blend into 2.5 , none of the brush tools were working correctly. In sculpt mode by example all the brush tools are not present anymore.
Only by appending a 2.49b object it was working.
Hopefully one day there will be a “import old .blend” function along the append to make the whole append process less a pain, i remember that it took me a lot of time to understand how this function worked correctly,it’s definitively an area in which it could do with a rework.
(by example, why a mesh will not append if you select it from the append -> mesh category but will append if you take it from append -> object category)
(by example, why a mesh will not append if you select it from the append -> mesh category but will append if you take it from append -> object category)
A mesh and an object are two different things. Just tried appending a mesh with 2.56a and it does append. You won’t see it as you have to add the mesh to the object data.