John Kettler Posted September 27, 2001 Share Posted September 27, 2001 I'm trying to play a game in the Invitational against Ben Galanti, but Treeburst155 and I have run into an absolutely baffling problem. The German setup file, whether sent to me zipped or unzipped, tournament saved or not, has everything it's supposed to have except the terrain. My guys, no matter what we do, consistently face a clear October '44 day on a pancake flat sward graced by a single small VL. Treeburst155 has sent me many scenario setups before, but this didn't happen then, nor has it happened before during PBEMs with others. He's tried everything he can think of on his end, including opening the file after E-mailing himself to make sure it's all there. I have an iMac (233 MHz w 64 MB RAM and 2 MB VRAM (ATI Rage Pro). OS is 8.6. I use Netscape Communicator 4.5.1 for my browser and E-mail. Can anyone help, please, so I can actually fight? Many thanks! John Kettler 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hoopenfaust2 Posted September 27, 2001 Share Posted September 27, 2001 Don't use Netscape. The people I PBEM with, that were using netscape always garbled up the message in outlook. The file was never attached, the code always showed up in the e-mail message. Get outlook express...its free 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted September 27, 2001 Share Posted September 27, 2001 Is the scenario unusually large ? The only thing I can suggest is to send a different setup file, compressed, to see if this phenomenon repeats itself. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Kettler Posted September 28, 2001 Author Share Posted September 28, 2001 Schrullenhaft, It's a 1500 point battle. All that it consists of in the setup file are a map and my troops. There's not even a briefing file. Treeburst155 has sent me the file as a regular E-mail attachment, zipped, even as tournament saved. I get the exact same result in every case, even after pitching the old .cmb and opening a new one. Everything's there except that I have a green pool table where I should have hills. What baffles me is that he's sent me many setup files before, and we never had any such problem. We are having solar flares and geomagnetic storms, but that doesn't explain why we consistently get the same glitch. Were they the source of the trouble, I'd expect files with variable levels of corruption or likely unopenable. Treeburst155 can send you the files you need for your own tests, should you be so inclined. Messenger (part of communicator 4.5.1) is my E-mail program, and I've played dozens of PBEMs using it. Regards, John Kettler 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted September 28, 2001 Share Posted September 28, 2001 John, You can have Treeburst155 send me the file and I'll see if the problem appears on any of my computers (I've only got PCs though). I will end up opening the file in either Outlook Express or via Hotmail's browser client. If the file is compressed I wouldn't think that the email client would make much of a difference if you can actually open the file. To reiterate, the problem that you're seeing is that there are no elevations to the map. Do you see the appropriate textures for terrain (brush, trees, etc.) or is it just the grass texture (and the VL flag) that is visible and nothing else terrain-wise ? [ 09-27-2001: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kmead Posted September 28, 2001 Share Posted September 28, 2001 I run on a RevB 233 and a 400 slot loader imac so I would be happy to look at the file as well. [ 09-27-2001: Message edited by: kmead ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Kettler Posted September 28, 2001 Author Share Posted September 28, 2001 Schrullenhaft, It's green, flat as an optical bench, has a setup box for my troops, my troops, and a single small centrally sited VL. Period. I'll have Treeburst155 send you the file directly. kmead, I'll forward you what I got. My thanks to both of you! Sincerely, John Kettler 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Kettler Posted September 28, 2001 Author Share Posted September 28, 2001 Troops, kmead somehow solved the problem. I've asked him to post the how and his thoughts on what was happening. As for me, I'm thrilled to finally see the map. Looks great! Thanks for all the help! Sincerely, John Kettler 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kmead Posted September 29, 2001 Share Posted September 29, 2001 I was able to open the file on both my iMacs so I am not sure what the problem was. I sent the original file several ways to John, to no avail (using my @home account whcih uses Outlook as its gateway as I primarily use MSIE). As a last resort, I opened the file, chose a side (John apparently has an affinity for the Axis at least in this case) according to his preference in his original post. Saved it, the new file showed the correct Mac icon from CMBO (the file he sent me did not but I was able to open it anyway) and sent it using my Hotmail account as an attachment. He was able to open it, so for him all is now well in regards to the tourney. So, what happened? Either CMBO was ignoring the .CMB ( which does not seem likely given that CM opened it albeit in a flawed fashion) or the way Outlook encoded the file which was only 6kb. I don't know what software Treeburst uses to send email/attachments but if he uses Outlook it may be doing something to the file when it embeds it. The only thing I can think of is that some seemingly minor byte got dropped and Johns CM assigned some default in its place. In other word I haven't a clue. I will send another test to John using the file that worked for him using Outlook. recently I enumerated some odd problems I have had with Outlook in PBEM file transfers that are larger than 500kb where we had to zip them for me to be able to open them in CMBO. We are certain this was an encoding/embedding problem as the text file in Outlook is embedded in the file as text and is not a attachment to the file, so one does a save as to end up with the pbem text file. That or Outlook has a max text file limit (I know this as Outlook often displays an error message saying it cannot display the entire message even though you can save the file). I may go back to the Netscape email solution and suffer their ads and so on 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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