Hi all!

I have a four-player (two computer players) play by mail game in progress which has been switched back and forth from network play to PBM several times - this all works great and is somewhat amazing!

The problem we're having is that one of the machines died.  The machine was replaced and Empire Combined was reloaded on the new machine (second player's new machine, same version of Empire).  When the saved PBM game (Linux machine, P2 turn 214) is sent from the first player to the new machine/second player (WIndows machine) it loads with questions about the "new" user (even though the account name added on the new machine is supposedly the same) and asks for a password before starting up.  From this point the turn plays normally on the new machine and the PBM saved game (now @ P1 turn 215) is sent back to the other player (the player that started the game).  When the first player tries to load the game (P1 turn 215) back on the first machine the message

is displayed.

We're going to try copying the game data directory from the old hard disk to the new hard disk -- I expect this may "fix" the problem, but the question of how to handle something like this remains if the hard disk was actually the thing that died.

Other than editing of accounts, the manual doesn't seem to address this... but the account name on the new machine is (believed to be) the same as on the old machine so the "key" being complained about is (probably) not the problem.

Does the name of the new account on the new machine need to be different?

If "archive" is the answer, then it would have to be archived by the first player in a state where it wasn't ready for the second player.  How do things get into sync again?

How does one handle picking up an in progress PBM game on a new installation?

Thanks,

Gary

Sounds like a bug. Could the broken pbm file be sent to mok@killerbeesoftware.com?

RE: Could the broken...

Yes, there's nothing special about the game.

My only concern is that we've done something dumb...  we're going to try exporting the account on the second/broken machine (which has been resurrected into a crippled state) and importing it onto the new machine -- results from that attempt should be available by COB tomorrow.  But my my last question is probably still pertinent.  If the second machine had completely died, what should we have done to get things going again or is a backup mandatory in this case (or was this supposed to have worked?)?

If we haven't wandered off of the reservation, haven't forgotten some step and aren't trying to do something dumb - I have the save game files for what was described above as P1 T214 (first machine sends to second - no problem at this point), and also the response from the new, second machine to the first (P2 T215) which won't load on the first machine and gives the error.  Both are approx 380KB each.  Would you also need player account names & passwords?

Which (or both) do you need/want (assuming that you still think this might be a bug).

Thanks,

Gary

Mark,

I've discovered that the events leading up to the problem are somewhat confused and may not be exactly as reported.  We've managed to side-step the problem and continue the game by temporarily running the game on the old machine and using a different machine's email.

I'm going to try and duplicate the events that led up to our problem (so far it seems to have been an email problem and does not appear to be a hardware problem as it seemed at first) and will re-email you games if we manage to duplicate the problem.

Gary