Wrong Faction Bases

[Grail Quest]

I was playing against the AI. 7 Factions in all. It's about 100 turns into the game, and there are maybe over 100 bases on the map (the AI factions ended up pretty close to each other, and crunched out bases within 2 squares of each other -- especially the Usurpers, for some reason).

Everything seems OK, until the latest time I open the game to resume. Suddenly, the Consciousness is using the Pirates' base pics, the Usurpers have the Caretakers', the Spartans have the Believers (who aren't even in the game)...

No errors, no nothing. Not sure if the factions are still "themselves", but it sure was wierd.

Is this:

(a) a bug
(b) corrupted save file
(c) corrupted game file
(d) something else

[RedFred]

For some reason I see this a lot in MP games, but I have never seen it in Single Player mode.

[Mongoose]

(d) something else

When you LOAD a SMAX game, the factions' colors and graphics are determined by the 'factions section' (for want of a better term) in AlphaCentauri.ini. Sample:

Faction 1=CYBORG
Faction 2=ANGELS
Faction 3=PEACE
Faction 4=UNIV
Faction 5=GAIANS
Faction 6=CARETAKE
Faction 7=USURPER

So, what you're seeing, I believe, is the faction sequenced graphics from your last started game. For my SMAX pbems, I keep a seperate AC.ini file for each. Prior to playing my turns, I swap out the old and in the correct AC.ini file, to avoid the confusion of mismatched graphics. IIRC, there is another way to acomplish this...something about creating scenario folders maybe. *shrugs* Never learned it, never used it. My way is a bit cumbersome, but it works and I understand it.

If you opt to create those seperate .ini files, the faction names in the section shown above must match the corresponding *.txt file name. Hope that's clear.

[johndmuller]

In SMAX, the current factions are listed in the Alpha Centauri.ini file like so:
Faction 1=PIRATES
Faction 2=GAIANS
. . . . .
Faction 7=ANGELS.

If you only have SMAC or have yet to start a SMAX game, you don't have those lines in the file. Whenever you start a new SMAX SP game, it replaces the list with whatever factions you are using in the new game.

When you play an already started MP game, it does not refresh the faction list with the ones in use in the MP game; however, it does use the .ini file list to decide which graphics to use. This leads to the change in colors, bases, leaders, and whatever else. I don't believe that it affects anything really significant, like the personalities of the AI, but it is at the very least disconcerting, and at worst, difficult to play, especially if the color scheme leads to nearly illegible unit and base flags which have virtually no difference between the foreground and background colors . I find this particularly problematic when the Spartans are involved as the actual faction in the game (or possibly also when the Spartans are inauspiciously positioned in the .ini file - my theory is that there is a special hard-wired treatment for the Spartan faction forcing a light foreground color to accomodate their black background (it is the lack of the forced light foreground that screws up the presumed Spartan faction when they are mismatched in the game and .ini file. I don't think that there are any other factions which have this problem, but I could be wrong, as there are still some factions I have not experienced in PBEM.

If you want to fix it, just redo the list in the .ini file, either by starting a new SP game with the factions you want, or just directly editing the file. You could change the list before starting each PBEM, but if you play a lot of PBEMs, you might want to figure out a set of factions that you can live with and just put that in there. Unless you are careful to put the Spartans in the correct place, it is probably best to avoid using them in your list. As to the bases and faces, either put in the correct list, or get used to it .

Sorry for the cross posted essentially duplicitive posting (but not sorry enought to delete it all after taking the trouble to write it in the first place).

[mark13]

Yeah - my guess is you've started another SP game in the meantime, and the .ini file (which determines graphics) has changed to whatever factions you set that up with.

The easiest fix is simply to start another SP game with the factions you have in the original game (in the same order), quit it, and reload the game - that should fix the problem.

[mark13]

x-post with jdm - yep.

[Darius]

Originally posted by Mongoose
For my SMAX pbems, I keep a seperate AC.ini file for each. Prior to playing my turns, I swap out the old and in the correct AC.ini file

I've been trying to automate this process. In other words, once the new .ini file is set up for a particular game, I'd like to be able to have a batch file automatically replace the generic "Alpha Centauri.ini" file with the specific "game_x.ini" file and then run terranx.exe. But the only way I know to do this is using a DOS batch file, and it doesn't work because DOS can't deal with the space character in the "Alpha Centauri.ini" filename. Does anyone know how I can do this?

[johndmuller]

Darius, I think that if you put the filename in quotes it will work - as in:

Copy game_x.ini to "Alpha Centauri.ini"

You might also have to deal with the rest of the path in a similar fashion (Sid M's Alpha Centauri directory name also has spaces in it) depending on exactly how/from-where you were planning to execute this command.

I suppose you could also arrange to set/reset the various options to things you like that may chronically be set differently in some games - so you can get your planes snatched out of your control into an unwanted base for a pit stop if you like that option and can't remember to set it each turn . (Although some of those settings may be overwritten when the game loads anyway.)

[Chowlett]

The other option is to use DOS's internal 8.3 naming convention, which it applies to all files. Basically, this consists of truncating a filename by removing all spaces, then taking the first 6 characters and placing ~x after them, where x is a number (usually 1, depends on if there are other files with the same first 6 characters)

For example, the folder "My Documents" can be referenced as mydocu~1. You can check the DOS name by accessing the properties sheet for the file from the right-click menu.

[Darius]

I tried using the ~1 thing. But when I executed the command copy game_x.ini alphac~1.ini intending to replace "Alpha Centauri.ini", it instead created a new file actually called "alphac~1.ini". And if I leave the space in, it doesn't work either.

I will try it with quotes after work today.

[Darius]

The quotes around the file name worked. (Thanks, JDM.) Thanks to Mongoose and johndmuller's tips, I've set up a batch file that sets up a proper colors for a particular game and then launches it. I'll post more here tomorrow when I have more time.

[big_canuk]

So, this is the answer I've been looking for.

I keep a separate folder for each game, with the game saves, my notepad file on the game, and a link to the appropriate turn tracking thread. I will now keep a launch game batch file.

It will:

1. copy the appropriate ini file to alpha centari.ini
2. launch smac or smax as appropriate.

This will solve the improper faction problem *and* avoid the problem of starting smax for smac games (though I don't do that too often anymore)

Now, how to I make a batch file??? (I used to know in dos)

bc

[Darius]

Please see the procedure I have posted in this thread