More silly questions - savegames this time...

[Locutus]

Thanks again all for helping me out with the servers.dat questions but I have a few other questions about another issue: I understood there is some kind of utility for renaming auto-save files from MP games so they are saved and can be inspected when cheating is suspected for the WC. My questions: what kind of tool is it exactly? Who made it? Where can I get it? Is it (or can it be made) compatible with CtP2? What else do I need to know? Reasons for asking: because it's a potential addition to the file database, but moreover because I'm considering to run a MP Tournament for CtP2 as well and would need such a tool to detect cheating (if you might be interested in participating/helping out, here is the thread).

[Solver]

AFAIK, our WC moderators are just going to monitor all the turns, checking each one for evidence. Don know if there's an utility they use... our Chief Moderator, Blackice would be nice if he replied here.

[Locutus]

Yeah, but isn't the auto-savegame overwritten every turn?

[Solver]

Don't know .

Blackice, come here.

[blackice]

Autosave does rewrite the save so it is useless in this type of environment. Players have to save each and everygame turn. As I previously pointed out in the Original tourney thread "H" has made a utility for saving turns when not the host of the game. This is handy as both players can then save the other players turns.

A good windows shell utility for renaming files is Better File rename it can be found here:

http://www.publicspace.net/windows/BetterFileRename/index.html

It's free (trial version)but like anything that is free if you like it write the author a nice "thumbs up" letter for his promotional use. or buy the product for just $14 bucks or so cheap really.

Or go to my saved google search there are many different programs there :

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=utility+for+renaming+save+files&btnG=Google+Search

Hope that helped.

[Grandpa Troll]

Originally posted by Locutus
Yeah, but isn't the auto-savegame overwritten every turn?

To answer this one question,YES each turn the autosave overwrites the previous turn. Thusly, when you say go to George ashington-Americans saved folder, it is there at top, but as for autosaving everyturn?? I have not not heard of a tool or program for this..of course, I aint the Shiniest Apple of the Bull with the Biggest B@()$ so maybe someone out there knows of it??

~sigh~ I only know how to check by putting the old chat screen up and /A to advance to various member turns, or should I say various civs which will scroll through each time you put the chat screen up, and for each /A, including Barbs!

Troll

[Locutus]

Thanks for the info...

So, how do you guys do it for the WC then? Save every turn manually? Or is that everyone's own responsibility?

Anyway, never mind the shareware tools. I appreciate the info but I just got my good old JDK out and it took me less than half an hour to write a Java program that does the renaming for me (it's not tested on actual CtP1/2 autosaves though, my pc is broken and I don't have the games on my backup - but it works like a charm on regular files; VBasic would be a better language for such a tool anyway, but I don't have that on this PC either). It's free, small, fast (well, as fast as fast goes in Java anyway), clean, efficient, open source and optimized for personal use. No shareware in the world can beat that...

[Solver]

Haha, you don't have VBasic! You can't then be called a real programmer! Shame on you .

[Locutus]

No VB -> not a real programmer? Obviously you haven't seen the Dijkstra quote yet that's in the forum quote database, and which I wholehartedly agree with ("programming Basic causes brain damage" or something)

[Locutus]

Ah, here's the original (I suspect):

BASIC /bay'-sic/ n.
A programming language, originally designed for Dartmouth's experimental timesharing system in the early 1960s, which for many years was the leading cause of brain damage in proto-hackers. Edsger W. Dijkstra observed in "Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective" that "It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration." This is another case (like {Pascal}) of the cascading {lossage} that happens when a language deliberately designed as an educational toy gets taken too seriously. A novice can write short BASIC programs (on the order of 10-20 lines) very easily; writing anything longer (a) is very painful, and (b) encourages bad habits that will make it harder to use more powerful languages well. This wouldn't be so bad if historical accidents hadn't made BASIC so common on low-end micros in the 1980s. As it is, it probably ruined tens of thousands of potential wizards.

C rulez!

[Solver]

A good one, you say it's in the quotes? Haven't seen it...

Well, yeah, BASIC does give some awful habits, but I just love it for a few reasons, and I hate Pascal for even more reason.

Though it's obvious that it's C++ that drives most of it, but...

[J Bytheway]

It should be noted that VBasic bears very little relation to the BASIC described there (they probably had line numbers - *shudder*) - Just to prove I'm no real programmer I'll admit I wrote CTPEd (c.f. CTP2 forums) in VB - it exceeds 10,000 lines, and was not painful to write in the least. The main reason I like VB is because it's so easy to debug. I've never found a decent way to debug C(++) so I can never locate problems, and never learn from my mistakes. Thus I never made any real progress with 'real' languages...

[Solver]

Well JBTW, if you write 10k line programs, you are a programmer. Sure, VBasic has a nice IDE, but in my experience, debugging in Borland c++ is even better...

[J Bytheway]

Borland is one I've never had experience of - presumably you have to pay for that? I got Visual Studio under student liscence so I have Visual C++ but can't install it under W95... With luck I'm getting a new computer soon, so maybe I can rectify that.

[Solver]

Sure, you got to pay for Borland. If you want free, you can get Delphi, based on Object Pascal, but I think, and Locutus will agree, that Pascal completely sucks.

Borland C++ has a trial version, so you can well see what's the buzz about.