2 File Format Questions

[Oniron]

Let me take advantage of a lull in the gaming to ask you two questions. Please feel free to reply to the first one even if you have no clue about the second

What steps do you perform before sending a Macintosh SMAC PBEM file to a PC player, and what steps does he perform before opening it?

Can a Macintosh player play SMACX by e-mail with a PC player, and if yes what additional requirements are there?

[-Ashman-]

I'll try and answer both...

1) AFAIK, Brad put a lot of work into making this feature work. You shouldn't have to do anything other than send the saved game file between the PC and Mac users. It should just work. I haven't tried it yet, so maybe there are problems that I am unaware of.

2) Yes, Mac SMACX will work fine with PC SMACX.

[Oniron]

Thank you Ashman. This was also my understanding of things until I actually tried it. I was wondering if anybody else had too For question 1, I believe the problem is on the PC side only and for question 2 at least on the Macintosh side.

Can anybody shine more light on the issue?

[Flomper]

On the PeeCee side you might need to add the file suffix. I don't know what it is, but if your friend looks at what his other save files end with ( meaning a period and three letters) just add that to the save you sent them and they should be fine.

[Oniron]

Thank you Flomper Question 1 is now answered!

Does anyone want to rise to the challenge for Question 2? I can provide a PC PBEM SMACX file for those who wish to try.

[illiria]

sure!

[Qualiciide]

ive done a SMAC PBEM before, but im not sure about SMACx, i just did it like a normal game

[Oniron]

Thank you for your replies. In fact there is a bug in the save code specific to SMACX that causes it to dump garbage to portions of the file. That data is such that it will freak out the Macintosh version but work on the PC one, hence the problem.

Huge thanks go to Brad Oliver for spotting it and fixing it.
[This message has been edited by Oniron (edited June 11, 2000).]

[illiria]

Yeah, the guys from Westlake are really kewl. We need more heroes like them!