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Dethgod74 said:3) If all the above fails, I've seen something called PBW, which is what I will assume is Play By Web, and should be just like we are trying to do. What I'd like to know is, has someone come up with an EASY TO USE front end to host SE4 and 5 games in this fashion, and possibly, written a webserver especially for SE 4.
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Play By Web is EXACTLY what you're looking for. I have never had trouble figuring out how to use it, and it was designed and created by fans specifically for SE4. It has recently been expanded to also handle SE5, but that makes no difference for people playing SE4.
How to host an SE4 game on the internet:
Step 1: Go to
Play By Web and register. Use a real email address, it's required for some of PBW's functionality and will not be revealed to third parties.
Step 2: Create a new game on PBW, specifying whatever settings you want.
Step 3: Have all players register on PBW and join the game.
Step 4: Have all players create an empire file. To do so, they will have to click New Game on the main SE4 menu, set the Racial Points setting to whatever was announced, and create their empire just as if they were about to start the game then and there. No settings other than Racial Points matter for this. Once the empire is finished, select it on the list and click Save To File. This will produce a .emp file that each player should upload to PBW.
Step 5: Once all players have uploaded their empire files, the game host can download them all and start the game. In SE4, create a new game, set all the settings to whatever was announced, make sure that Play Style is Different Machines, Turn Style is Simultaneous Movement, and Connection Type is Manual File Moving. Add the player-provided empires
in the order the players are listed on PBW. Click Begin Game to produce the .gam file.
Step 6: Upload the .gam file produced in step 5 to PBW. PBW will then automatically email it (in a zip archive) to all players.
Step 7: Each player opens the game file (it can be downloaded direct from PBW as well as email), logs in, and plays his turn. When he hits End Turn, a .plr file will be made. Each player has to upload this file to PBW.
Step 8: Assuming the game is set to Fully Automatic turns on PBW, PBW will automatically process the turn when all .plr files are uploaded or the time limit expires, whichever comes first, and email the new turn to all players.
Repeat Steps 7 and 8 until the game is over.
PBW can also be set to process the turn only when all .plr files are uploaded, only when the time limit expires, or only when the game host tells it to.