Thanks for continuing the investigation Andy
I have to agree with embis that it shouldn't be necessary to lock players out because of a 'security breach'. Better to warn *both* players that something failed on the other end so that they could sort things out between themselves, for instance - if one user had to re-install the game and told the other then it should be no problem.
My opponent and I have not had this error again in our latest 4 games so things are looking good for us. Both still using PBEM Helper. Neither me nor my opponent have changed directories for the game or changed computers since installing the game.
But - I admit that the first time I got the error I had 'accidentaly' (ok ... I was curious) deleted PBEMRegistry.dat since I didn't understand what it did. I tend to do these things when my curiosity gets too high
The game worked fine afterwards but I got the error after my opponent had played and sent me his turn. So, it could be related or not, and people here have been very firm in that PBEMRegistry is not the culprit so I don't know.
Anyway, as I understand it the PATH to the game (for me 'e:\games\WinSPMBT\') gets saved in the SpEml001.dat file (encrypted), and then the game runs a check on the path every time it's opened? But even with this check, what's to stop a cheater from playing the same turn over again just by overwriting the old game? The path hasn't changed so the check should pass.
However I've noticed that if I try this (and just for *testing* thank you), the loads/quits/fails counter still gets increased, which is nice since that would still let the other player check for signs of cheating without locking them out of the game. But does this not also mean that the number of turns played are recorded *somewhere* else than the savegame .dat file since this just gets overwritten?
I'm not asking *where* it's saved, just wondering if...
And please don't misunderstand and think I ask this because I want to *cheat* - It's just that I'm curious as to how the security measures work in PBEM games, since obviously it's a lot different than SPWAW which I've got more experience with.
Looking forward to the patch!
Stian