Problems for beggining a PBEM

[gladiatt]

Gentlemens.
I had agreed with my opponent (John_Smid) to play scenario 15;stock; historical first turn OFF; surprise ON;
At first, John send me a file that i cannot open, because it was asking for "player1 password". I thought that John didn't ended his turn, and i told him so by mail.
He send me another file. I managed to save it in the right folder, and it asked me to write a password of 8 character. I choose a password, it opened, i gave orders, i ended the turn: it get directly to the "save game file". I saved on the same slot as what wassend to me
(first error ? Or not?). Then i send the file to John.
His reply was that the game opened as ALLIES !
i have read many time the "must read thread" about begginning a PBEM in order to make it properly, but yet i am lost. I am even frighten that John could have "read" all my orders, i hope he will be fair by not taking a look.
FOR the moment, the problem is : what is going wrong technically ? Does someone have a clue ?

Edit: i wanted to check my file to see if i made something wrong; it asked me once again the "Player 1 password", so it seems it go back to the japanese side, but with a date of file from this morning when i saved my allies side file. So i really can't understand what's going on.

Thanks in advance.

[rtrapasso]

Even if by some strange reason you BOTH chose the same password, he should not have been able to open your turn IF YOU FINALIZED IT CORRECTLY.

i am thinkng from your description that you did NOT finalize the turn... and he tried to open the turn and it told him to enter the Allied PW... unless he somehow guessed it, this is as far as it went... he should not have been able to see anything more than "enter pw".

So here is what i do, and maybe it will help you:

1) i frequently save games as i am entering orders. i use one slot for each game turn, and start at usually game slot 20 or something for 7 Dec, game slot 21 for 8 December, etc... the actual number doesn't matter, except that i don't use below 20.

2) i save orders after i have worked on the file a while... that way if i do something stupid (typical stupid mistake is in transferring aircraft via "pick list" and click on the wrong city and end up with your aircraft all damaged half a continent from where you wanted them), i can reload the saved work and not have to start from scratch. This file is what i call the "working file".

3) After i am completely done with orders, i save one last time. Note that the turn is NOT finalized!!!

4) THEN i finalize - i always save to the same slot (generally slot 10, but it really doesn't matter as long as you make a habit of saving to the same one... and it is NOT the same as your "working file".

5) Send your FINALIZED turn (WIP010.PWS in my example) to the Japanese player.

He will then be able to "run the turn" and generate the WITP001.PWS file.

In this way you have a non-finalized turn you can look at in case you have a question about what your orders were... once a turn is finalized, no one can look at it (which is why troubleshooters are always asking for a pre-finalized turn when bugs show up.)

NOTE: edited for clarity and typos!

[gladiatt]

Bob, as usual, you are the "Superman" of this Forum.
Goods hints in there: i'll take the habit of making a "working file".
Jan have just send me an e-mail, stating that everything is ok. I hope it is.
As far as i know, i did the "end turn" before saving, but as the file that is now on my computer ask for the "first player password", i can't guarantee. That's something i will look two times in the future. I also thought that we choose the same password, that would be really crazy . Next time i'll find a password really challenging (this time i choose one i could easily remenber, but don't try to find my cat's name, or my wife: it's not that [;)] ).
Jan is now gone for the week end, he'll send me his turn on tuesday. If something goes technically wrong, i will re-open this thread at this moment.
For the moment, Bob, i'd like to thank you once again !
And i'd like to thanks Jan (if he read this) for his patience with my poor ability with computers.