ACDG3 - Turn tracking II

[Zeiter]

Sooo...I guess I can now close out the game that is still running on my machine...right? Because there appears to be no way forward from this save file that I am working from, right?

[Googlie]

I guess so - I've e-mailed Kody to see if he can think of any solutions (and he has replied that he'll have a look) but I think that any solution will involve doing something to the current turn as a save (ie, before we open and play it) to allow the transference from mac to windows

If K is successful, then a replay will be in order - if not, then it's prolly curtains for this particular demogame - after all, you can't be expected to have your PC hanging on for a day or two locked into smax

[Kody]

I can save the file fine, but my game hangs after I quit. I opened some old ACDG II turns and had the same problem. Guess it's because I've changed to XP and used to play the game under 2000.

The turn you seem to be having trouble with saves okay for me. I'm not entirely sure of the problem, but I'm guessing it might be because of the filename that that the previous user used is incompatiable with your version of windows (and I do mean I'm guessing). I noticed macs used colons for their filename which is invalid under windows.

I made an attempt at changing the default save filename in the file, the obvious place where you can see the filename in notepad isn't actually where it keeps the filename. I was kindof surprised by that, and eventually gave up since I'm not sure that's the problem and it requires a bit of effort tracking down where they're storing the data.

I attached the file after I resaved it. You won't see the turn messages, but you said you could open the original, just not save it right? Anyway see if it works now.

[Zeiter]

I've exited the game. I guess we will just have to replay it and hope it works now. Thanks for the tip Kody! That sounds like a very reasonable explanation--going from mac to windows and the file names not working. Hopefully it will work now.

[Kody]

Try just opening and saving, if it doesn't save you're wasting your time playing the turn.

[Googlie]

works for me - but I'll let Zeiter play the turn as he played the original

Thanks a bunch, Kody

GGLIE

[Kody]

Thanks for the sentiment, but all I've really done so far is opened the turn and resaved it. It would be nice if the exact problem was found and a something more than a band-aid solution was used.

I've had a bad run of bugs in some of my work recently and so I'm a bit halfhearted at jumping in for more debugging during my spare time.

[vyeh]

Geo and I did a little experiment in the DA private forum with another save. It looks like the problem is that I use a Mac.

[Zeiter]

There should be exactly one reload warning. My computer crashed while I was doing the turn again (this has been one heck of a doozy of a turn, that's for sure).

2204 ---> Gaians

[Sperber]

Hi! I was made aware by Kody of your problem. I can't do too much right now as I'm not at home with my notes and my programs, but if this problem is really related to the unusual macintosh savefile names, I can offer you a quick'n'dirty solution for now:

Take any hex editor, open the file from the max and go to byte a position "08FF". Alter that to hex code "00". What it does is to put an early stop marker (zero bytes mark end of strings) to the savefile's name that is stored there in encrypted form.

So instead of the previous filename being "EZQuest HD:MacHD52605:Applications (Mac OS 9):Alpha Centauri:Saves:ACDG3:acdg3-Spartans-2203-4" which works fine for Mac but contains a tad few too many :'s for Windows, you'll end up with it just being "EZQue" (the game appends '.SAV' automatically).

I hope that helps. If not, I could give you a method to replace the string with something more complete like "C:\dummy" once I got home, but I think it's really just the :'s that give Windows a problem.


If I ever get around to making a pbem-between-turn-processing program for SMAC, I'll add "retrieve, save and restore individual player's prefered save directory on their turn files" to the feature list.

[Maniac]

Originally posted by GeoModder
My (personal) opinion is that the bugs don't warrant the pleasure anymore, and that Sparta will win this demogame in any case.

Yeah I guess we could have declared ourselves Supreme Leader already if it weren't for those ever-enduring sunspots due to the year being stuck.

[vyeh]

If the problem is that there are too many :'s for Windows, I can save the game to the root directory.

I tried that and am attaching a test save. If one of the Spartans could download it, open it up, do a game move and then see if you can save it, I'd appreciate it.

[Googlie]

Naw - that doesn't work either

[Chaos Theory]

2204 -> Angels

[vyeh]

2204 -> Spartans (will need Kody to DL, open, save and forward)