Zackary Posted August 12, 1999 Share Posted August 12, 1999 I attempted to play be email with another game (Sierra/Impression's CWG2). I think the PBEM programming itself had flaws, but one thing I noticed was that PBEM turns sent by America Online subscribers were always corrupted. I have no idea why that was the case, whether a game-related problem or an AOL problem, but I wonder whether you know about this PBEM problem with AOL and developed a remedy (assuming the problem is susceptible to a remedy other than by AOL itself). I am relatively new to this message board so I apologize in advance if I am covering old ground. I also apologize if this is an old AOL problem that has since been remedied (it happened to me in several games with AOL users, but I have not bothered to try in close to a year). ------------------ Zackary Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ralph Posted August 12, 1999 Share Posted August 12, 1999 Zachary, I am an aol subscriber and I have no trouble playing games pbem. I do not have the game that you mentioned so maybe it is at fault. A good thing to do is zip all of your turns and then send them to your opponent, it cuts down on the corrruption. Ralph Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Big Time Software Posted August 12, 1999 Share Posted August 12, 1999 Zackary, CWG2 has flaws? Impossible. I worked on that project until the wee hours of the night for several months Seriously, when I left Impressions I was not aware of any PBEM problems, and in fact we used PBEM to debug the online gaming multiplayer code. But, as we all know, programs have a knack of doing the unexpected, so I wouldn't be surprised to hear that there was a problem As far as AOL goes, there shouldn't be a problem with attachments any more than with any other TXT based file. However, it is safer to wrap stuff up as a ZIP file and then send it. Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moon Posted August 12, 1999 Share Posted August 12, 1999 I am using AOL at work and it does have problems with relatively big attachments. Anything over 1 MB is shaky, anybthing over 2 MB REALLY shaky... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pixman Posted August 16, 1999 Share Posted August 16, 1999 Steve, to quote The Lion King's Zazu, "sorry to bust your bubble" , but I have to chime in with Zack on the CWG2 PBEM thing. I have never progressed past the 13th turn or so of a large PBEM battle. I think it is tied directly to the "ghost unit" issue. Ironrod contends that the problem is caused by units routing out of the LOS of the enemy. Apparently the enemy sees a "ghost" unit at the last hex in its LOS and saves it as such on his computer. From that point forward the files on each computer are out of sync. When this happens in PBEM it locks or gives an error message and quits. Out of the 50 or so people I know well on WON, I believe all have pretty much abandoned PBEM. By the way, to this day Ironrod says they do not know how to fix the "ghost" problem. Maybe we just need to have "Unchained Melody" playing in the background, lol (Demi, where are you?.... ). I know this is not a CWG2 site. I just wanted to point up why Zack's question is a major concern. PBEM is a great option, especially if you can switch back and forth from TCP/IP to PBEM as you are planning in CM, which is very cool. ------------------ The enchanter may confuse the outcome, but the effort remains sublime. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Big Time Software Posted August 16, 1999 Share Posted August 16, 1999 Hmmm... well, seems that a serious bug showed up after I left. I'm really sorry that the problem hasn't been fixed. That isn't normal for Impressions. As far as CM's PBEM is concerned, it is rock solid at this stage. Several games have been played through to completion w/o any PBEM specific problems (usual bugs and stuff, sure, but nothing we can't fix!). Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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