Problem with PBEM

[lriedel]

I hope someone has some insight on the problem I am having on a PBEM game. My opponent is hosting playing the CSA and sends me the union trn file and I send back the ord file. The problem we are having is that my moves or purchases are not showing up his moves and purchase are working. My opponent is running Vista and I run XP, could it be a compatability issue?

[Pocus]

No, each time this problem occurs, it means the order file is not at the proper place on the host's side, or is not of the right turn. He should have gotten a warning message telling him he will proceed the turn without all correct orders files, except for the first turn only.

[lriedel]

Thanks Pocus for responding.

My opponent has serveral games going and ours is the only one not working. In his other games his opponents are using Vista like he is, I am on XP thats why I thought it was an Vista to XP issue. A weird thing is that on the first turn I purchase some replacements and when I get the trn file back the replacements don't show up. If I purchase replacements do a draft and bonds, everything is there. When we procede to the next turn I move some leaders around and do some more replacements and when I get the trn file back, no movement or replacements. Could my ord file be looking for the default location where XP saves games? I know Vista has a different path for the save games.

[SkyWestNM]

Thanks Pocus. We got it. Somehow in my using a zip process the file names got a little different. Spaces were inserted in one file ord and not in the other. Since the program could not recognize the different ord files, the CSA one got processed and the USA one was made a null order and all moves and replacements were zeroed out. Once I got the file names to match the turn processed quite nicely. Thanks for giving us the clues that led to a solution.

SkyWestNM (Irie's PBEM opponent)

[SkyWestNM]

There can a problem in PBEM when one player is using XP and one uses Vista. Vista allows spaces in a saved game's title. XP does not and furthermore XP REMOVES spaces in a title. Thus, when the two files are matched up, they don't, of course, and the XP player's files are run as a "zero moves, zero replacements" order without any screen advisory warning.
Took us 2+ days to figure this one out, but Pocus clue that one file was missing led us there. Thanks again Pocus.

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted

[Pocus]

Yes this is suspicious, I never saw any of my files having space removed on my computer (using XP). That would screw badly many things for me...

[Generalisimo]

mmm...never noticed that. I play this game on Vista, so will check today if the spaces are removed or not...

[Gray_Lensman]

deleted

[Generalisimo]

It's possible that the file name gets altered if he's not packaging it in a .zip or .rar prior to email transmission. This file name alteration occurs occasionally when transmitting "unpackaged" files directly over the web. In that case it's a mail server alteration and not any thing associated with either operating system.

That's probably the case, because I have just checked and nope, what he said is not true, the spaces are still there on my saved games on this PC running Windows Vista. So, it's not a "game problem".