Dom2 file formats

[Arralen]

There's a pro and a con to generally known file formats:

pro:
Some folks could start working on "external", nation-specific AIs.
(I still wonder if you could write one in F77 ...)


con:
Some folks would start working on cheats and exploits to ruin multiplayer games ...

I would like to know the file formats very much - sadly the other game, which would have been much more suited for such a task, Stars!, died without the devs giving the specs to the public.
Security by obscurity isn't the way to go, but that's only IMHO.

Maybe our devs here could drop a line how they feel about this issue ??

[ May 13, 2004, 01:43: Message edited by: Arralen ]

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Arralen:
con:
Some folks would start working on cheats and exploits to ruin multiplayer games ...

It would seem to be the case that the data is encrypted and compressed to prevent exactly that. I've pulled open .trns and .2hses just to see if anything particularly edifying was revealed, but not only are they at least partially encrypted and compressed, as no plaintext strings such as the name was found anywhere, but they are also checksummed against modification.

[Evil Dave]

dumpgod doesn't seem to work on dom2 files. under linux, it dies with "g2 seems to be misaligned".

[Innocence]

ftherlnd is the "world state" file. It contains all of the information about the world, which is needed to host a game. It's updated at every hosting. In a PBEM game, players should not be sent this file unless you wish them to be able to do oracular hosting, or you wish to change who is handling the hosting.

Ok thanks - so it's a host-only file and in a normal multiplayer game the regular players wont even have this file

I would like to know the file formats very much - sadly the other game, which would have been much more suited for such a task, Stars!, died without the devs giving the specs to the public.

Ah yes Stars! I wouldn't call it dead, though the sequel sadly is.

It's likely that Illwinter has enrypted the files, but if they wont release the file-specs and encryption metod (and noone else has been able to figure it out) I say we stand almost zero chance of any progress. Too bad.

Alternatively, maybe they could implement an export feature like Stars! has, dumping ALL information from the players PoV into semi-colon separated text-files, readable with anything from Excel to custom made programs. All without comprimising the file-security.

[Johan K]

Originally posted by Arralen:
pro:
Some folks could start working on "external", nation-specific AIs.
(I still wonder if you could write one in F77 ...)

con:
Some folks would start working on cheats and exploits to ruin multiplayer games ...
[/QB]

The problem with releasing info on the save files is that the 'con' part is very very much easier to do than the 'pro' part. Doing an external AI for Dominions 2 would be a humongous task. That said I believe the most common use for this info would be cheating.

[liga]

[quote]Originally posted by Johan K:

The problem with releasing info on the save files is that the 'con' part is very very much easier to do than the 'pro' part. Doing an external AI for Dominions 2 would be a humongous task. That said I believe the most common use for this info would be cheating.

Ok, I fully understand. I just only want to know if this informations are somwhere aviabile in the .trn and .2h and if possible to extract them (it will be really nice to have a small utility who could do that, a precompiled one, so no secrets could be obtained). Just something to run

info abysia.2h
info abysia.trn

and get something like

turn 4 on map Aran with mods A,B and C

I know that could be tedious for devs to produce this kind of utils (that the reasons why we are trying to have the files formats) but it will be really usefull becouse playing a lot of game by email sometimes is easy to make confusion with the .2h files recived and the .trn I have to send ...

and also it will be easy to use the utils to move the files and send in an automatic way ...

thank you anyway for this great game!
Liga

[Pocus]

there is still another possibility, which is to give the file format to some trusted individuals (a beta tester willing to code an utility for example).