saved game fails to load

[demonterico]

A friend and I are trying our first pbem for WitP (just finished our UV game). We're starting with scenario 4, just to break ourselves in easy. I'm playing Japan. I've completed my first orders phase, advanced the turn, and saved it. I email the file to my friend, and he downloads it into his save folder. He starts the game, goes into the save menu, and finds that the file is there. However, he cannot open it. When he tries he gets the following message: saved game failed to load

Can anyone help?

Thanks, Dave

[rogueusmc]

Did you save or use the 'end orders' button?

[demonterico]

Yes I did press the end orders button. After this problem started I rechecked the game file on my computer and it open up just fine in the allies order phase. It just will not open up for my friend.

[michaelm75au]

Are you both running the same version of the program?

A game saved in, say version 1.6, will not load under 1.3 -- slight save structure changes between some versions will produce that error.
However, a game saved with version 1.3 can be loaded up in version 1.6, but when it is saved will become a slightly different save that version 1.3 wont be able to read.

Michael

[demonterico]

Thanks Michael and rogueusmc for your responses,
I do appreciate your interest in our problem. I wish this would be such a simple problem to solve, but unfortunately for us, these are issues we've already considered.[:(]
We do have some experience as we've been playing a pbem UV game for the last couple of years, and have both owned WitP since it first came out. This is however, our first attempt at a pbem WitP game. After playing UV we weren't expecting any problems with transfering the game file, as we've been doing it for years. Thats what's so frustrating about this problem. We finally finished our UV game and we are both pumped to get started on a WitP game, and now this.[:@]
Actually, this is helping me, because as I sit here writing this I'm getting some new ideas I can try out. For one thing we haven't been using winzip to transfer the game file. I can try that. By the way the allied turn does open on my computer, and the file does load into his computer, and come up on his saved menu, so the problem probably exsists somewhere outside of the game. There are still a few things we haven't tried. I haven't personally taken the file to his computer and tried myself to load it, but I can't imagine this would solve the problem. Also, he hasn't tried to reinstall the game yet, but we hope to avoid that possibility as well. I'll try using winzip to transfer the file first. Then maybe I'll try starting a complete new game, and completely redoing my first turn, thereby making a completely new file. And, when I complete all that, I'll get back to you.

Thanks again guys, Dave

Any other ideas out there?

[dtravel]

When your opponent receives the file and loads it onto his computer, have him check to see if it is somehow getting set to "read only".

[rogueusmc]

ORIGINAL: dtravel

When your opponent receives the file and loads it onto his computer, have him check to see if it is somehow getting set to "read only".

I betcha that's it...

And as for zipping it, you don't gain much of anything but a pain zipping and unzipping. The game compresses the file I believe.

[TulliusDetritus]

Totally useless [:D]

[dtravel]

ORIGINAL: TulliusDetritus

Totally useless [:D]

No one else around here lets that stop them.

[:'(]

[michaelm75au]

Not necessarily.
Sometimes just zipping up a file will stop a mail program from "mangling" the contents of the attachment.

Michael

ORIGINAL: TulliusDetritus

Totally useless [:D]

[TulliusDetritus]

No sorry, there is a little confusion [:)]

My original post was totally useless. I edited it since it was useless. I thought I knew how to fix Demonterico's problem. Many times I had a similar problem in UV PBEM. The problem was: somehow the savegame file was duplicated (in the save folder). That's why I could not open it when my opponent sent his turn.

But I didn't read carefully (as always)[:)] Demonterico was sending the first turn of the scenario. Anyway, could his/her opponent have a duplicated file somehow in the save folder, from another game, etc.? In case of doubt s/he should delete all the files and paste the turn again.

In other words, that's more or less what I wrote before I edit the "useless" post.

[dtravel]

Seems like a reasonable possibility to me, Tullius.

[demonterico]

Hi guys,
Just to update you we're still working on this. My friend (he) is at work right now so we'll be trying the read-only idea and the duplicate file idea this evening. Tullius this is our first move for this game but the slot may have been occupied by another prviuosly made file. So your information is pertinent. We'll find out later. I will post any results here if we get this to work. I've already done as much as I can on my end, short of personally going over to his house and loading the file myself. I've remade the file in slot 100 and sent that today. I've looked at the file the properties menu of my file and Read-only is not checked. Yesterday I did send the file zipped, but that didn't help. Everything works well on my computer. The allied order phase opens up on turn 1 just fine. michealm you are correct, files can be corrupted when transfered. Zipping them should prevent this.

Once again I want to thank everyone for your interest and help. We'd be stuck without you. Dave

[Nomad]

Just a note, I had a lot of trouble trying to send and recieve turns using Yahoo. I have had no problems with gmail.

[Tankerace]

Have you tried redownloading it? I know sometimes when I download the turn, it doesn't download correctly, and has a file size of only 200-300k. It should by 734 or thereabouts. That's what always causes me to get the problem.

[demonterico]

Nomad and Tankerace,

Thanks for your input. Yes I have redownloaded this file a number of times already, but I wasn't aware of what the size of the file should be. Your suggestion has now allowed me to check the downloaded file and see that it should be correct. This file is 908k. Hopefully by process of elimination we'll figure this out. This weekend Ralph and I will try doing a transfer on a floppy. I also hope to get over to his place to see what he's doing to upload the file. If the floppy transfer works we can start looking at our email providers.

Thanks, Dave

[demonterico]

Its me again. We've tried everything we can think of, except completely reinstalling the game and patches, and the problem continues. We've even tried reversing the process ie: he starts the game and does the Japanese order phase, then advances the turn and sends it to me. I load the file on my computer and it opens just fine. However, that still hasn't help pinpoint where the actual problem is. Now we need to know is the file corrupted when I send it or when he downloads it. An easy way to determine this is for me to send the file to another person to see if it will open on their computer. Thats the purpose of this message. Is there anyone out there who can help by trying this for me? I'll be most grateful for your assistence.

Thanks, Dave

[Nomad]

send it to nomad(dot)pbem(at)gmail(dot)com

BTW, what version and map are you using?

[demonterico]

We're not smart enough to use any of the mods. We're using the oringinal Matrix map, and the our games are patched to 1.6.
Thanks alot for your help. I really appreciate it. I'll be sending the file momentarily.

Dave

[Nomad]

Got it and it worked fine. As I asked, have your opponent send me the same file.