Re: PBEM helper now available
 

It is still not too late... it is probable that some of the people will not actually take part in the game. On the other hand there are some people outside of the list who are going to participate. So just send your empire file... it will take a few days before the game is generated.

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PBEM

Re: PBEM helper now available
 

How many turns will you be doing per day?

And a suggestion, set Events to NONE... reduce the randomness of player's success/failure. I also suggest HIGH TECH COST, it increases the diversity, as players will be forced to specialize in tech instead of getting a bit of everything. One final thing, turn off stellar manipulation. Ofcourse this is just my opinion.

I sent in a modified Version of the Xaiti for entrance into the game.

[This message has been edited by Trachmyr (edited 21 April 2001).]

Re: PBEM helper now available
 

OK, I got a problem with the PBEM halper... I have 5 diffrent installations of SE4, but only one is "clean" and to be used for PBEM... how do I select the correct installation?

Never mind, I figured it out (had to rename the "SE4-PBEM" folder to "Space Empires IV").



[This message has been edited by Trachmyr (edited 21 April 2001).]

Re: PBEM helper now available
 

You could also define the correct directory in PBEM.INI:

[SE4]
Directory=D:\Games\SPACEE~1

Re: PBEM helper now available
 

I spoke with Fuerte and was informed that we would be doing one turn per day, mon.-fri.

I was wondering if perhaps we might be able to get, say 5 turns per day... otherwise, a normal game running around 500 turns is gonna take about 2 years!!!

Re: PBEM helper now available
 

That is the downside to a PBEM game. It will take a long time at one turn a day.

Re: PBEM helper now available
 

Yes, that is the downside... because there are so many players and players from different countries, we can probably only do 1 turn per day. If we are very lucky perhaps 2 turns. I proposed that we play in weekends, too, and have the AI to take over for those players that can't play in weekends, but we will play Mon-Fri only, at least for now.

Every player will do the turn when he has time... of course this is also the upside of PBEM, because players are not tied to their computers for a long time. Using the PBEM helper to receive the turn, making moves, and using PBEM helper to send the turn, it all will probably take only a couple of minutes. Of course one player could take part in several PBEM games...

I have received about 6 empires so far, keep them coming... the game will not start earlier than Monday-Tuesday.

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PBEM

Re: PBEM helper now available
 

So, how's the progress? All .emp files in yet?

Re: PBEM helper now available
 

I sent the game status to all players by e-mail. In short, we have 9 players at the moment, perhaps 2 more coming in a day or two. We are close...

Re: PBEM helper now available
 

Finally! The game in under way, we have 13 players (I hope that this number does not mean what I think), we are using Version 1.35, the hosting can't be automated in this Version because of that bug, but we are all using the PBEM helper to the max, remember to set your password in Edit F2, so that you can start the game directly in the correct player by double-clicking the game or by pressing Play F9.

Re: PBEM helper now available
 

hey guys. I have been having some problems with the helper and sending out turns. here is what I have observed:

the MAPI mail features do not seem to work when another MAPI compliant mail client is open. at first I thought that multiple profiles were throwing it off, but it seems to work only when all other MAPI mail programs are closed.

The SMTP support seems to rely on having OPEN MAIL RELAYS. for those of you who dont know, this is generally considered a BAD practice and leads to spam portals, and is the very kind of thing those stupid nazis at ORBS go around DoS'ing fortune 500 companies for. basically what i am saying, is since the software is trying to drop mail onto an smtp server instead of actually logging onto (with username / pass) a POP mailbox, any properly configured SMTP server will only accept mail for local accounts, and therefore if i logged onto MY server, and tried to send mail to somewhere else, it would be denied since open relays are 'bad' and most SMTP ports are now only good for receiving mail.

<<edit: admiral says puke is dumb, pop is inbound only and even though it supports authentication it will do nothing here. puke is also dumb because he forgot dialup ISPs offer internal smtp servers that will relay without being visible to the public net. puke is sorry he is so dumb, but some of those issues still stand>>


..so, what I should be able to do is have it log on to my smtp server, send the mail to ME, and then I could forward it off to the correct destination with a POP, WEB, MAPI, or any other client in an ordinary fashion. when I tried this, the mail was not rejected as 'unknown address' or 'address not present locally' but instead I got some long string of output from the PBEM helpers smtp client window, and it scrolled by before I could read it, and the SMTP helpers error dialog stole context from me so I could not even access the scroll bars in the smtp dialogue.. so I cant figure out why that was not working, but I can tell you that it demonstrated the same behavior when talking to an exchange 5.5 and an exchange 2000 smtp server. I have not tried a sendmail server, if anyone would care to give this a shot, it would probably be helpful.

now dont get me wrong, this isnt a gripe. this is constructive input from the beta testing squad, and I have to appologize to the PBW guys out there that I have not been able to spend enough time on that service to put together the same level of feedback as I had promised, but hopefully when everything is fine-tuned, it will all be kosher pickles.

I think the PBEM Helper SMTP support may need to be changed to POP support if people dont have a mapi compatible client, but that still wont help the web-mail guys, whom are basically f-ed and will have to do it manually. the SMTP support would be perfect in conjunction with the play by web service though, since the SMTP server could just be pointed to the central web server that is hosting everything. that would even ensure faster turnaround and no email delay, since it would be dropped directly to the destination mail server from each player.


[This message has been edited by Puke (edited 30 April 2001).]

Re: PBEM helper now available
 

It's getting very late here in Finland, and we has that serious spring party (Wappu) going on, but I will post here the same thing I posted in e-mail:

"In my point of view, the PBEM helper supports two things: Simple MAPI (Outlook Express, Outlook, Netscape, Eudora, or any Simple MAPI compliant e-mail client).

And SMTP, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. You need to set up your SMTP e-mail address and the SMTP server address correctly in PBEM helper in order this to work.

These two interfaces should cover 99.9% of the e-mail clients out there.

But if you have some web based e-mail system, these do not work, I'm afraid."

Re: PBEM helper now available
 

Status update: We are in year 2400.6, in the beginning of long game! http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif

The initial problems with e-mail systems and PBEM helper have been sorted out. We have 13 players, one player (Chewy) has not sent any turns, though.

I just made a new release of PBEM helper, 1.0.128. If you want to host (and play) a PBEM game, you should try this. Because of that bug in SE4 1.35, the hosting can't be automated fully.

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PBEM

Re: PBEM helper now available
 

Have you heard anything from malfador about the 1.35 problem with it not running turns from the command line?

Geo

Re: PBEM helper now available
 

Is there any way for the PBEM helper to run a game with a mod (like mine? =) ). If not, how difficult would it be to add support for that? And if you need help to do that, I could probably offer my services as an HTML/Javascript/Java/Perl programmer.

Re: PBEM helper now available
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Devnullicus:
Is there any way for the PBEM helper to run a game with a mod (like mine? =) ). If not, how difficult would it be to add support for that? And if you need help to do that, I could probably offer my services as an HTML/Javascript/Java/Perl programmer.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

as long as everyone has the same mod, it should not be a problem at all. it would not automatically change the path file or anything, but if you had seperate installs of the game for mod / unmod / Version 3 /Version 35 then you could even point the helper to different paths to run the game from. its pretty open-ended that way.

Re: PBEM helper now available
 

Very cool. Is there documentation anywhere that tells a new user (like me) how to accomplish all this? =)

My interest is in setting up a PBEM game using my mod.

Also, Last I heard, the PBEM helper wouldn't work with Version 1.35 of SE4. Has this problem been fixed?

[This message has been edited by Devnullicus (edited 10 May 2001).]

Re: PBEM helper now available
 

actually the helper works great with any Version, the play by web host is the one that wont run the newest Version.

i have not seen any docs from the helper, but if you download it, its all fairly intuitive. be aware that you will need to edit the .ini file a little bit to get your paths working. Fuerte could probably provide some better answers

Re: PBEM helper now available
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Puke:
actually the helper works great with any Version, the play by web host is the one that wont run the newest Version.

i have not seen any docs from the helper, but if you download it, its all fairly intuitive. be aware that you will need to edit the .ini file a little bit to get your paths working. Fuerte could probably provide some better answers<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Actually the problem is not that PBW can't run the 1.35 Version, it's that the 1.35 Version has a bug. It can't run the host part of the game turn from the command line, and this prevents any auto compiler, PBW, or PBEM helper from working. That part of PBEM helper that has nothing to do with running the game from the command line still works.

Geo

Re: PBEM helper now available
 

Yes, the bug is in SE4 1.35. I have not contacted Malfador but I know that Admiral has. So we have to just wait...

PBEM helper supports mods, it knows about the path.txt file. And if you have several SE4 installations, you can change the folder in PBEM.INI:

[SE4]
Directory=D:\Games\SPACEE~1

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PBEM

Re: PBEM helper now available
 

[This message has been edited by Admiral (edited 12 May 2001).]

Re: PBEM helper now available
 

[This message has been edited by Admiral (edited 12 May 2001).]

Re: PBEM helper now available
 

I have informed Malfador twice. I have not received a response one way or the other, but 1.35 definitely does not work under any circumstances from the command line, and 1.30 only works in certain circumstances (the ideal ones).

Cheers,

Admiral

Re: PBEM helper now available
 

The game has reached the interesting state, where alliances are being made, the first battles are fought, and there is even a rumour of stealth ships flying somewhere!

I'm eagerly waiting for each turn now.

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PBEM

Re: PBEM helper now available
 

Huh, and now we have the first victim of these stealth ships! Luke is dead in year 2401.8 ...

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PBEM

Re: PBEM helper now available
 

Hey Fuerte, what was the Luke's Empire?

Re: PBEM helper now available
 

You will know when you get the next turn... did you do it? http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif

Re: PBEM helper now available
 

I don't know. Everybody can research the stealth armor...

Edit: Now I'm sure that I was who "destroyed" the Luke's Empire.
Sadly, Luke still had a lot of resources to fight, but he surrended their empire to other empire that I'm also attacking (this other empire was in a worst position than the Luke's Empire).

I'm considering to leave the game too (but not because I'm losing).

[This message has been edited by Master Belisarius (edited 29 May 2001).]

Re: PBEM helper now available
 

There is a new Version of PBEM helper available, 1.0.141. It has improved support for both hosting a simultaneous game and playing it. Click the signature.

The status with the game is that Master Belisarius decided to leave the game (because the player he was killing surrendered to another player). He is now under computer control.

We have now 10 active players (2 under computer control and 1 dead).

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PBEM

Re: PBEM helper now available
 

PBEM helper 1.0.148 supports SE4 1.41. Hosting finally works! It has some other new features as well...

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PBEM