pbem buuuuuuuuuuuuug

[Dracula]

Sorry if someone else mentionned it already but its the second time this bug occurs in a pbem game so i have to report it.
The game seems to "forgot" the password of both player and tell them they use a wrong password... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

Here is the saved game and the password are for the axies achtung and for the allies scavenger

cheers

Vincent

[DRG]

The question is, has anyone else seen this happen?

Anyone?

And did this perhaps occur after one or both players upgraded to Ver1.1B?? The message I see after trying this once was the player 1 OOB is different or corrupt and I'me testing this from the master game

Don

[Dracula]

All games were played in version 1.1 and no one of us had editing or modified the OB of the original version. The bug can occur at the beginning between the first and the fift turn or just before the end... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rant.gif

Cheers

Vincent

[Mobhack]

Nope - never seen this problem before.

Anyone else?.

I will see if it works in the debugger - PBEM games can be impossible to debug, e.g. even if I have the password, the path may differ.

BTW - you have not done anything silly, like try to pay a secure PBEM in the same save slot as another ongoing PBEM game?.


Cheers
Andy

[Mobhack]

the passwords that you gave were



axies achtung and for the allies scavenger




however - the debugger sees "scavenger" as the decoded password for player 1 and "achtxng" for player 2.

Seems like someone used a variant spelling of "achtung", and forgot about it later, and tried achtung instead of achtxng?

Cheers
Andy

[Dracula]

No I dont have do a "silly" thing such as choose aa wrong slot but I have say it was version 1.1 of the game what was not true it was the version 1.0 and the password is achtung I confirmed it cause I use it several turn before the game refuse to accept it further... and my opponent had his password scavenger refused at the same turn...

Cheers

Vincent

[Mobhack]

Trying to utilise the same slot for 2 or more simultaneous games is a standard way of creating PBEM hiccups. You cannot share the same PBEM slot for simultaneous games and "swap" the save files in and out betwen turns (unless you use basic security mode).

But some folk do try to do this with full security and then wonder why they get strange results (they are nuking the internal PBEM security registry which is slot based of course )..

I will look at this further. I noticed your save game was in RAR format - rather than the normal ZIP compression format. Is this the compression method you use to swap files?.

Cheers
Andy

[Mobhack]

Well, I used those 2 passwords, and played 16 or so turns in the debugger, checking the internal decoded strings. No random changing of the password, even with attempts by me to enter wrong ones etc.

The only idea I can suggest is that you (including your opponent here) have had file corruption of some description. Either in file transmission, or more likely, you have bad file clusters in your/your opponents hard disk. You (and your opponent) should try scandisk - see if either of you have problems fixed by the utility?.


Also


the password is achtung I confirmed it cause I use it several turn before the game refuse to accept it further... and my opponent had his password scavenger refused at the same turn...




Err - just how can you have the password refused, and the opponent then go on and have the game refuse him as well. If you cannot get in - you have not yet completed your turn. If you dont complete your turn - it is pointless passing it back to your opponent. As it is expecting you to enter your password and complete your turn, it will naturally refuse his password as it is your incomplete turn and not his that you just sent back to him.


Cheers
Andy

[Dracula]

I use winrar or sometimes I send the two files uncompressed it depend of my mood http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

To answer about your last remarque of the impossibility to acces for my opponent his turn before I havent played mine you are absoloutely right except (I guess) he tried to use a previous turn file and overwrite it over the current one in order to try to replay the turn and see if then it work...

Cheers

Vincent

[Mobhack]

well - the only rout I can see, is a file corruption. Either on transmission (winrar and winzip help there, as a transmission corruption is usually detected when you try to unzip), whereas sending the raw files would not. The other would be a problem on the disk (which scandisk can fix, sometimes).

Cheers
Andy

[Dracula]

Ok thanks for having spending so much time on this.
As my hard disk is ok I guess I will from now on avoid to compress the files before sending them. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Cheers

Vincent

[Mobhack]

It is safer to do sio, as the compression programme will do checksum verification etc, which sending raw data will not.

Cheers
Andy

[junk2drive]

Plus some email programs will corrupt the files. Best to zip. I use freeware ZipGenius.