Automated PBW Game Turn?
 

What is the best, easiest way to submit a game turn on a PBW Game?

I've been sending my game turn as an attachment to a e-mail.

But it is such a drag...searching for the .plr file and then submitting it. Not to mention the possibility of sending the wrong .plr file.

I notice some players upload their turns. One even has a "realtime upload game turn".

What is the difference? And is there a way to automate the process? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

Re: Automated PBW Game Turn?
 

I've been logging on to the PBW website, and useing the upload and download functions there.

On my Win98 computer, I put a shortcut to SE4's savegame folder on my desktop so I can find folders easily.

Useing email is a pain for me. I use hotmail, and there's ads, and a separate page for attachment download and upload. Really irritating. But I gotta do it for a play by email game I'm in. My friend insists I zip my game file before I attach so Hotmail and Yahoo Mail don't "screw up the data's extension and make the file unuseable". He is not clear on the mechanisim and the effect. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Now realtime may be the Java-ware realtime client. It automates a lot of the above steps, and polls the server on it's own, starts SE4 when it downloads a turn, sends the file as soon as you're done. It's on the SE4 CD. It sounds cool, but I have a dialup, so I will wait till I get a cable modem setup before I learn to use it.

[ September 24, 2002, 14:40: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

Re: Automated PBW Game Turn?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Check out the PBW Realtime Client. You can read about it in the F.A.Q..

Geoschmo

Re: Automated PBW Game Turn?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Exactly. And it IS cool, very cool. You can use it on a dialup, but you have to stay connected the whole time you play your turn. So if you take a long time to play your turns and you pay by the minute it might not be a good idea.

The shortcuts to the savegame folder is an excellent idea for those using the web interface to upload turns

There also used to be a PBEM helper, which IIRC automates the playing of the turns and should work with PBW just fine. IIRC it doesn't work with web based email like hotmail or yahoo, but you can get free email clients that will work with some of those web-based email accounts and use the PBEM helper I believe. I have never actually done it though so I wouldn't know how to set it up or anything. You should be able to find a link for it doing a search here for "PBEM Helper".

Geoschmo

Re: Automated PBW Game Turn?
 

Thanx guys. And I intend to install it.

From the looks of it I have to agree with George's assessment.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">A short discription of it is given in 4.0 of the FAQ's

Re: Automated PBW Game Turn?
 

The PBW Real Time Client requires JRE:

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I have been told in another thread that
-The main directory refers to the folder that holds SE4
-The default directory can be any one of a number of sub-folders within the main directory.

But there are many sub-folders! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif Which one do I install JRE?

EDIT: In the quote, the URL is in my message but is left out in the posting? Anybody know why?

[ September 24, 2002, 17:58: Message edited by: tbontob ]

Re: Automated PBW Game Turn?
 

In this case, the default would be the one that the installer starts with.

If you don't tell it to go somewhere else, it will go in the default folder for the RTC.

PS: as for the URL, you might have been trying to use HTML.

Try: [ URL=www.somewhere.com] This is the clickable text label [/url]
Which gives:
This is the clickable text label

[ September 24, 2002, 18:06: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

Re: Automated PBW Game Turn?
 

Hehe, welcome to the wonderful world of windows. There are sixteen ways of doing everything, but only 10 of them are the correct way. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

As with everything else the meaning is in the context. In this context when it says the default directory it is refering to the directory the the Java JRE tries to load itself to by default. This will have nothing to do with the Space Empires directories or anything else.

Once you have loaded the java JRE the PBW RTC client program (It will ahve a .jar extension) goes in your default Space Empires IV directory, that is the same one withthe Se4.exe program.

Hope that clears it up. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Geoschmo

Re: Automated PBW Game Turn?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Cool. To post my own clickable text lable, do I remove all the brackets? Or just the middle two. i.e.===> ] and [.

Re: Automated PBW Game Turn?
 

No, you just have to remove the space between "[" and "URL=..."

Re: Automated PBW Game Turn?
 

The number one reason I haven't used the RTC is based on an assumption. I have a limited amount of RAM and am loathe to install any program that sits in the background and uses up what little I have. Is RTC or JRE one of those programs? I've been assuming they are.

Kim

Re: Automated PBW Game Turn?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The program is all geoschmoe says it is. It automates almost everything...

Kim, if no one has answered your question before the next turn, I will try to get an answer on how much the programs are a memory hog. But, I need to wait till the turn to do it.

The only disadvantages, that I can see are
1) Additional memory useage.
2) Additional cost if you pay by the hour for your connection to the internet.
3) Free space on your hard drive is used to store the programs

Re: Automated PBW Game Turn?
 

There is one other downside, which I am hoping we can fix in a future Version. If you are in the middle of a turn and lose your internet connection, or PBW goes down, it closes SEIV. You don't get to finish your turn. It can be quite distressing if you are towards the end of a lengthly turn. Fortunatly it doesn't happen often, but the possibility is enough to turn some people off from using it.

Geoschmo

Re: Automated PBW Game Turn?
 

Kim

About the memory usage...

As many people know, I am a bit of a newbie in about the P4, but here goes... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Using Norton Utilities to identify the active processes, the only running process it came up with was JAWAW.exe

Going into the Systems information - systems, the memory it uses is 5.2 MB.

A number of points
1) This is the amount of memory used when it is in a non-game state. When I am actively processing a game the amount may be different.
2) When I downloaded JRE, we have the choice of selecting one of a number of Languages. I selected US English. Well, the sites program said it did not match my computers language (there was no Canadian English http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif ) and suggested that I download all the Languages, which I did. So, if you are able to select the appropriate language for your computer, there is a possibility that the memory usage may be less.

I hope this helps. I'll give you more information when I am actively processing a game.

Re: Automated PBW Game Turn?
 

As previously mentioned, RTC is very easy to use for PBW games. However, where the game requires a mod, things get a bit more complicated.

The instructions say "to use PBW for a mod game, you will need to manually modify the path.txt file in your Space Empires IV directory before joining the game in RTC."

As chance would have it, I have just started a new PBW game which requires a mod. Geoschmo was kind enough to e-mail me these instructions which simplifies everything.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">It worked like a charm. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Kim, I have not forgotten about you. I will get you the information I promised with a "regular" PBW game.

Re: Automated PBW Game Turn?
 

tbontob, thanks for your efforts. I would be interested in the numbers while running a game even though 5.2 MB is still pretty high for my machine. (Sorry, gotta get a new vehicle before a new computer!)

I wonder, does it run even when you are offline?

And thanks again for your efforts

Kim

Re: Automated PBW Game Turn?
 

Hi Kim

The size of the JAWAH.exe module in memory is as I have said 5.2 MB.

The total non-shared memory actually used is 3.25 MB when I am running it with a game.

In the Mac we can change the amount of memory a program uses through "Get Info". I don't know if this is possible with these non-Mac machines :-)

As to your question, I haven't checked it, but I am pretty sure that you will regain your memory when you go-offline. If you want me to check this...let me know.

If memory serves me right, in the older machines, if you load your programs into memory in the correct manner, you can make optimum use of it.

For example, loading a word processing program and then SE4, then quitting the word processor uses more memory than if you quit the word processor first and then loaded SE4. It has to do with where the program is positioned in memory.

When you are using your computer for another purpose, and then you want to get the most out of memory, you may want to consider trying a warm boot of your system and then load the programs you want.

Going back to your question, I am pretty sure (in the older machines at least), that memory is used sequentially. In other words, JAWAh loads first and then SE4. Then when you quit JAWAH, you probably regain the memory, but I am not sure it would be usuable memory.

For example, the memory in your older computer may be
JAWAH
SE4
Balance of memory

Then when you quit JAWAH, you have
Memory vacated by JAWAH
SE4
Balance of memory

The available memory then becomes fragmented.

But as I said, I am no expert (a novice in fact) on these machines and I could be totally out to lunch. There are others who are far more knowledgeable on this than I am.

Re: Automated PBW Game Turn?
 

When I try to run the RTC I get "Error: Main Class not Found"
What to do?

Re: Automated PBW Game Turn?
 

Ruatha, when you loaded the java JRE did you let it install itself to the default deirectory it wanted too?

Geoschmo