Dom2 file formats

[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).

[Innocence]

Originally posted by Johan K:
I believe the most common use for this info would be cheating.

Yes, that is in fact very likely. Plus, Illwinter might feel obligated to keep track of every single future change to the format, which isn't very flexible.

So in the end I guess that any utility reading the files directly will either have to be very simple (like extracting the turn number), or written by Illwinter, which is fair I guess.

However, that still leaves the possibility of an ASCII export feature. If Illwinter would implement this we'd have all the data we need and the file-security wouldn't need to be compomised.

Do Illwinter read these forums or should I rather mail them directly?

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Innocence:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Johan K:
I believe the most common use for this info would be cheating.

However, that still leaves the possibility of an ASCII export feature. If Illwinter would implement this we'd have all the data we need and the file-security wouldn't need to be compomised.

Do Illwinter read these forums or should I rather mail them directly?

---

That was Illwinter you were answering. The programmer side in fact (which reads all, but Posts rarely).

The game does do ascii dumps of some info. There is the stats dump...
Statistics for game 'Cradle_and_RandMod' turn 1
Abysia played this turn
Man played this turn
Ulm played this turn
Arcoscephale played this turn
Marignon played this turn
Pangaea played this turn
Jotunheim played this turn

And there is the scoredump, which is an html ascii file. At the top is...
Dominions II Scores, Cradle_and_RandMod turn 2
and then the numeric scores of the players as far as armies, forts, dominion, etc

As you can see, both files have the turn number in them. And both files exist because we asked. Its true that Illwinter is unlikely to offer a full dump but if we can show a real (safe) use for some info then we can probably get it added to one file or the other.

As I see it, the stats file is meant as info for the host and game management. The scoredump is more the place for player info about the game. So as far as I can tell it might work to request that the stat info also include map name and mod names.

Anything else? Something with a reason, short of dump it all and let me play with it. Im a hacker and would love it but I understand not getting it.

[ May 13, 2004, 13:31: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]