pbem crash

[balenami1291]

I and my opponent are playng a pbem game v.1.0.1. this is 8th turn of the second game.

So we can tell we have played about 20 turns without problems.

Today I can't merge files: the game crashes loading merged files during "loading interface" sequence.

The only news is today I start a second email game with another player.

can you help me ????

[Mad Russian]

I had the exact same thing happen to me with THREE seperate PBEM games. One set of emails they all worked just fine. The next time I got them not any of them will merge and it crashes my system the moment I select a PBEM file. Everything else works fine. I can start any scenario I want. Only if I select any of my PBEM files the game crashes.

Whatever is doing this affects every PBEM game I have going.

I have the log that shows there is some sort of a security issue?

I don't want to have to completely restart every PBEM game after you get turns into them....what's causing this?

I sent the log to Erik more than a week ago. Was hoping to have heard something back by now. Maybe it got lost in all the things he does...I know I couldn't keep his work load and my sanity both.

Do I need to send the log somewhere else?

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

Okay, I think I've figured some of this out.

I archived the PBEM files from the 4 games I had going at the time of the "incident".

I uninstalled and then reinstalled PCK. Then I put all the game files back in place.

Results. It crashed again.

I had my opponents send me their game files zipped in case the internet was corrupting them.

Results. It crashed again.

That's when I started to do some closer looking at the PBEM sequence. When a gamer picks a game file, to start a PBEM turn and merge files, that very first file in the process is his own. In this case, I pick my own game file first.

What that means is that the other gamers files aren't corrupt. Mine are. Now whatever did this got all 4 PBEM games at one time. I'm not sure if I played them all on the same day or not. It's been a couple weeks since this happened.

I think I have my old game files in archive though and I'm going to pick a single game and see if I can go back to find where the game files became corrupt. I"m not sure if it was something that happened in email that came into my system and caused the files to corrupt or it was something the game did all on it's on my computer.

At the moment I'm not concerned with that so much as I am losing 4 games worth of PBEM turns.

Erik, has this happened to anyone else you know of besides mi1291 and me? Or is these VERY isolated cases?


Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

Have we found out anything about this problem?

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

Okay, it just happened AGAIN.

All my PBEM's are locked down.

This was after some work to try to get MM working and Stridor gave me a program that did "something" to 3 game files. I have no idea if that was the cause or not. I have no way of knowing.

What I think may be the issue is making ANY changes to PCK. If you do it's not a guarantee that it will lock the PBEMs but there is a good possibility that it might. Think long and hard about making ANY changes to the game while doing PBEM. If you do you just might lose them.

I have twice now. One game we are in is on turn 20 of a very big scenario. I hate to lose all that time and effort for something that apparently nobody can figure out why this is happening.

Maybe once the new release for PCK is out we can figure out what is happening. The problem is the longer the time goes by the less anybody remembers about the circumstances that cause these issues.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

I just spent the afternoon trying to see what I can find out about these crashes. I know that Stridor and I were working on my PCK directory. Soooo....I reloaded PCK with a new clean install to see if there was any correlation.

There wasn't, the files were corrupt on the clean install, the same as they were on the install we had been working on.

Whatever is causing this doesn't seem to be have been affected by the work we did on my computer with the MM.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Stridor]

ORIGINAL: Mad Russian

Whatever is causing this doesn't seem to be have been affected by the work we did on the MM.

Thank god.

[Erik Rutins]

We've looked into this several times. We have not yet received good save files that can duplicate the issue. From the logs we've seen, it appears to be an issue with an invalid scenario date field, but that makes no sense since that would prevent the battle from starting, not somehow corrupt it multiple turns into an existing match.

[Mad Russian]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

We've looked into this several times. We have not yet received good save files that can duplicate the issue. From the logs we've seen, it appears to be an issue with an invalid scenario date field, but that makes no sense since that would prevent the battle from starting, not somehow corrupt it multiple turns into an existing match.

Last time I think all the PBEM's were my own scenarios and several games of the same scenario. This time they are different. Two of the scenarios locked were mine, two different ones this time, but one belongs to Mobius off the PCK disk.

I have all the game files for all 3 games this time. I've saved every file we played just in case we needed them. Let me know if that will help.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mraah]

MR,

Sorry to bud in on your trouble shooting but I have a few observations/questions ...

1. From your posts, it sounds like your scenarios don't work in PBEM ... Remind me, you've seen this PBEM with Pck stock scenarios?

2. Are there any reinforcements arriving on that turn when the PBEM fails? (shot in the dark kind of question)

3. Have you played your scenarios to the end with the AI? If something is broke in the scenario it might help narrow it down.

Perhaps you can play a PBEM with Erik ... If it breaks then Erik's will break too.

Rob

[Erik Rutins]

Yes, please zip up and e-mail to me say the last three turns of PBEM files for both sides for one of your broken games. That will be a big help.

[Mad Russian]

ORIGINAL: Mraah

MR,

Sorry to bud in on your trouble shooting but I have a few observations/questions ...

1. From your posts, it sounds like your scenarios don't work in PBEM ... Remind me, you've seen this PBEM with Pck stock scenarios?

Yes, one of the scenarios that crashed this time was a stock PCK scenario.

2. Are there any reinforcements arriving on that turn when the PBEM fails? (shot in the dark kind of question)

Not sure about the stock scenario but for mine the answer to that is no. Everything we are doing here is shot in the dark kind of thing, so don't let that worry you.

3. Have you played your scenarios to the end with the AI? If something is broke in the scenario it might help narrow it down.

Oh yes. I've played my scenarios through many times vs the AI before I ever take them to a gamer for playtesting. One of those that has crashed has been played through by gamers at least twice before now.

Perhaps you can play a PBEM with Erik ... If it breaks then Erik's will break too.

Rob

I offered to do that but I think Erik is too busy.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

Sometimes when selecting a file in PBEM it immediately crashes your game. Everything else works just not PBEM. It seems to affect all the files in the folder equally.


After having had this happen to me twice now, I've been doing indepth research on how to combat this.

Here are some of the things I've learned.

First, the first file you select when you go to multiplayer and it shows you the file you want to match up, is yours.
That very first file is the one has caused all the trouble in my case. When there is an issue as soon as I select it the game crashes.

Second, you need to keep an archive file for PBEM games. After every new set of files is generated archive the old ones. DON'T DELETE THEM. You may need them later.

Third, restoring a point where the game can be played again is pretty simple. You put all of your own PBEM files in the outbox. Then you start the game and select multiplayer. Start with the next oldest file from the one that makes your machine crash. If that one crashes your machine go to the next oldest.

What you are doing is working your way backward through your files until you find one that works. Then just meld that file with the one your opponent previously sent you. This will generate an extra file or two being played over but better that than losing the entire PBEM.

While this doesn't fix the problem it does at least identify how to work around it hopefully for you. It has saved 3 PBEM games for me this time. I lost 4 or 5 the first time it happened to me. Now I can find the problem file in probably 10 minutes or less and even have my opponents file in my archive to replay them and send them back to him.

Hope this helps you as well.

Good Hunting.

MR