Synch problem in pbem game

[RGA]

Hi Calvinus.

Playing a 4 player pbem game as Russia and we are upto the May 1915 military phase. In my game Bulgaria is still neutral but in the other players games they are at war on the side of the Central powers (since Jan-Feb 1915). Is there anyway to get back in synch ?

Regards,
Rob

[calvinus]

Ask an opponent to send you the savegame files. Once received, tweak the .SAV (header section) to make your side as a human player (the other must be computer). So you can continue the game using that tweaked save. If you need, send me the file to be tweaked (post it here).

[RGA]

Thanks Calvinus, we'll give that a go.

[RGA]

Bad news. I received a copy of another players save game and was able to edit it quite easily to resume as the Russians with Bulgaria now in the war. However my force deployment was so different to what I had in my previous game. I suspect we got out of synch a long time ago. We will have to stop this game just as it was getting interesting.

[calvinus]

Can't you all continue the game starting with one save shared with all other players?

Any idea of what could have caused the loss of synch? Battle results not matching? A Redeployment or stack split not reproduced on other PC(s)?

[Mitra]

Difficult to tell, as far we know can be also a human error (change of a move after the PBEM file generation or sending of a wrong file) or some problem linked to a single nation routines because, apparently the main problems of desync are on east-balkan front just for now as military and as diplomacy and I think the desync started from the last turns of 1914. On west front and italian front RGA file is the same of mine. RObert when the Romania enter in war in your game? In mine in October 1914? but now searching in one of your old strategy email appears like in your enter in war very soon. (august or september). This mean the problem is generated from the start.

[ZardozLord]

hi Mitra and Calvinus, I think the chances are it was human error, and I also had some CTD's while doing my orders for some reason...

Stefano the Austrian player had some trouble with his players ord files, he had all the correct files but the turn file button was still grayed out and he couldn't progress, that happened about 5 times or so, the only way we managed to get him to progress was for one of the other players to zip up there 4 player orders and email them to him...

Me and Stefano where playing the central powers, in mine and I think Mitra's game Bulgaria and Romania had joined the war and in Roberts and Stefano's game they were still at peace, I think somewhere between my CTD's, Stefano's orders file problems and human error it went out of sync.. very hard to tell where it happened though...

I am playing a 2 player game against Robert at the moment, so I will report any problems if any happen...

[RGA]

In my game Rumania entered the war in August so right at the begining. I didn't see Bulgaria join the war. Also, I redeployed all my Russian armies to make a front line in the first redeployment phase (Jan-Feb 1915 ?) but no one else saw this in their games.

[calvinus]

CTDs!!! That's the reason, damn!!!! I'm sure...
CTDs caused a missed storing of actions in the ORD file.

Example:
I run the game, do actions (that are applied immediately on my game) and schedule orders (that are added to the savegame). Both actions and orders are stored into memory, so when I generate the ORD file, all these elements are put inside it. If the game crashes, all these elements are lost from the PC memory! So, if I resume the game (using the latest savegame), I loose all actions and orders previously added to memory since the savegame to the game crash! Thus, when I send the ORD to my opponents, they will never reproduce the actions and orders lost from my PC memory.

My advice is: whenever you save the game, also save the ORD file. Then, if you quit and resume, you resume both the savegame and the ORD file, adding any new action to it.

On my side, for 1.08N, I'm going to add an automatic generation of ORD file, whenever a game is saved!

[calvinus]

To continue the current game, choose the savegame of one player, be sure it's been saved at the beginning of a game phase, when no ORD file has been generated yet. Then share this savegame with all players, who have to tweak it as explained before. So start all from this common position.

For the future: every time you save, generate also the ORD, even if not yet for email sending.

[RGA]

I think this explains my problem. I was redeploying all my troops and it was such a long task that I saved my game and came back to it later and resumed the task. I only generated the .ord file when I had finished. Yes, automatically generating a .ord file when you save would be very good.

[calvinus]

I think this explains my problem. I was redeploying all my troops and it was such a long task that I saved my game and came back to it later and resumed the task. I only generated the .ord file when I had finished. Yes, automatically generating a .ord file when you save would be very good.

I'm 101% sure this is the cause!!!!

I already have coded and tested the automatic generation of ORD file upon save.

My advice is you share your savegame with all other players, of course.

Btw, herewith I attached a preview of the PBEM Manual update to 1.08N, where I added infos for synch recovery and aggressivity settings.

Please forgive me for the PBEM bug you encountered, but as I wrote 1.08M is a beta and I simply never thought of what happened to you... PBEM indeed is a mess of particular situations, like this one!

[RGA]

No problem.... it is good to know it was something we were doing rather than a bug in the game

[ZardozLord]

Hi Calvinus, thanks for all your hard work on the this game, I am really enjoying pbem games I have played, looking forward to getting our 4 player game going again, when do you think the patch with the new feature of saving the ord file when exiting will be finished ?

[calvinus]

Hi Calvinus, thanks for all your hard work on the this game, I am really enjoying pbem games I have played, looking forward to getting our 4 player game going again, when do you think the patch with the new feature of saving the ord file when exiting will be finished ?

I have to fix the last scheduled bug, then I must do some internal tests for PBEM, because I added more randomness in die rolls PBEM synchronization. This stuff requires hard testing before the official patch is delivered, as you can understand...

So I have to ask you to wait. For your game, as soon you've recovered the situation, please save the game and generate the ORD every time you quit, always.

Thanks for your patience,
Calvinus.

[Mitra]

Don't worry Calvinus, we played the beta also for test and eventually signal all the problems before the official