PBEM problems - total no go

[AndrewT]

My friend and I have the problem where as soon as we clicked on "load a PBEM game" the game crashed. Came on the site here and found 1.06 seemed to fix exactly that bug so we both applied it. We both started new games, zipped them and sent to each other.

When we hit "load a PBEM game" now it pops up a message about bad or old game files. I deleted the old files so there is only his new game and mine in there, it still says this! I can't even read a file I generated in the same game a few minutes ago. Any idea what the problem is? I can't see anyone else here reporting it but we're both having this problem.

BTW we're in Australia and we use a different date format than the US, could the game be trying to read the dates and judging the games are old from that?

[Hubert Cater]

Date format should not have any sort of effect on it, could you send me the contents of your PBEM folder and I can take a look to see what the potential problem may be.

Hubert

[Der Panzinator]

Make sure that the version number in the lower right hand corner of the start up screen says v1.06 for both you and your opponent.

You may want to move any old game files into a back up directory and leave the PBEM directory totally empty before you start a new game.

If you do both of these things then you should be okay.

[AndrewT]

Originally posted by Hubert Cater:

Date format should not have any sort of effect on it, could you send me the contents of your PBEM folder and I can take a look to see what the potential problem may be.

Hubert

Thanks Hubert, I've sent you problem saves in a file pbemfail.zip, one from my friends machine and one from mine. Both fail on both machines. My SC certainly says v1.06 in the startup screen and he assures me he installed 1.06 too; in any case my SC can't even read a .sav it itself creates.

[AndrewT]

Originally posted by Der Panzinator:

Make sure that the version number in the lower right hand corner of the start up screen says v1.06 for both you and your opponent.

You may want to move any old game files into a back up directory and leave the PBEM directory totally empty before you start a new game.

If you do both of these things then you should be okay.

'fraid not. Mine is certainly 1.06, I can see it. I even deleted the whole pbem dir and recreated it, no dice. Very strange.

My suspicion is it's to do with the date on the file, which is 10 Dec, in non-US format that is 12/10/02, which if read in US format would be 12 Oct, before 1.06 was released.

[Hubert Cater]

Ok checked the files you sent me and one of them was created with SC v1.0. This results in an improper reading of files located in your PBEM directory in this case files pbem_act1 and GW2.

I believe the directory contents are read in alphabetical order so it will read files and display them in the LOAD PBEM DIALOG until it fails on an incompatible file, in this case GW2 was created with v1.0 and so it fails before it even has a chance to read pbem_act1 thus showing no files in the dialog list. Try removing the faulty GW2 and it should read your contents properly once again.

Hope this helps,

Hubert

[AndrewT]

How embarrassment! And we're both computer professionals too ... it certainly never occurred to us that one bad save file would stop the whole dir from being read.

I'll get him to re-apply 1.06 and try again. Is there some simple way a non-programmer can tell a 1.06 sav file from an older one, to save bothering you any more? Thanks.

[Hubert Cater]

No easy way other than to remove all the older files or to try one file at a time until you find one that raises an exception. Glad to hear that you are both up and running though and enjoy the PBEM matches!

Hubert