Security - Player 2 has already played this turn?

[Mobhack]

Stian said:
Hi I just got this weird bug in WinSPMBT:
This is the second PBEM game I'm playing with a friend, and after we've both moved on turn 1 we keep getting the message "Security - Player 2 has already played this turn?" and the save won't load at all.

I've never seen this error before, and it seems quite illogical as an error - I mean, *of course* player 2 (which is me) already has played the turn, and it's now player 1s turn!

Any ideas what might cause this message? We are playing scenario 103 Chess France 1952, france vs france, and we both use windows XP - if that helps.

regards,
Stian

Actually - on deeper investigation, I will need to reword this security message, as it arises when:

a) it is player 1's orders phase
and
b) The current path to the game EXE differs from the original saved player 1 path to the game EXE

b can arise from:
- trying to play the game in a different installation of the game
- Trying to play on another machine

Both of which are end-user errors in trying to go around the requirements for a PBEM game.

- or (possibly) something - another programme would be the culprit - changing the current working directory. Did you have anything else running?. That one is an outside chance really.


The error message should really be "Player 1 is trying to play this turn in a different directory from the original one he started the game in" (or something shorter to fit the error message box !!)

Cheers
Andy

[DRG]

QUESTION

Have any of you who reported this earlier had any further incidences of this problem once you had played a few more times??

Becasue neither Andy or I have had this happen to us we tend to treat this as a procedural probem based on player inexperience so we want to know if anyone had this happen early on but they are playing OK now

The problem is, it's very difficult to debug something that hasn't happened to us and only seems to occur rarely. I have to assume there are more than just a dozen of so people playing PBEM and if everyone was getting this we'd be flooded with bug reports, However, maybe some of you have just given up reporting ( ?? ) if yes..DON'T. If you've had this happen a dozen times and only reported it once tell us. If you've been reading these threads and had this happen to you and haven't reported your peoblems then please tell us as we need all the info we can.

Don

[Mobhack]

Mobhack said:

Actually - on deeper investigation, I will need to reword this security message, as it arises when:

a) it is player 1's orders phase
and
b) The current path to the game EXE differs from the original saved player 1 path to the game EXE

b can arise from:
- trying to play the game in a different installation of the game
- Trying to play on another machine

Both of which are end-user errors in trying to go around the requirements for a PBEM game.

- or (possibly) something - another programme would be the culprit - changing the current working directory. Did you have anything else running?. That one is an outside chance really.


The error message should really be "Player 1 is trying to play this turn in a different directory from the original one he started the game in" (or something shorter to fit the error message box !!)

Cheers
Andy

An additional thing would be - if you reinstalled the game for some reason, and then tried to continue an ongoing PBEM, as that will often nuke PBEM security info.

Did you reinstall the game or apply a patch, install the CD edition etc?

Did you change the path to the game by renaming folders?

Cheers
Andy

[embis]

I just had it happen in a second game now.

I wont send you the files because I havent used the default path for the install.


Starting to feel rather cautious about starting anymore PBEM games now.

Is it really necessary for the game to lock you out after a security breech?

Couldnt it just be set up to alert you and then load the turn anyway...at least then the player could choose to decide "my opponents a cheat I dont want to finish this game" instead of having the game make this decision on the players behalf.

[Mobhack]

embis said:
I just had it happen in a second game now.

I wont send you the files because I havent used the default path for the install.

Starting to feel rather cautious about starting anymore PBEM games now.

Is it really necessary for the game to lock you out after a security breech?

Couldnt it just be set up to alert you and then load the turn anyway...at least then the player could choose to decide "my opponents a cheat I dont want to finish this game" instead of having the game make this decision on the players behalf.

Did you do any of the things I mentioned to your path or file names etc?

if not - perhaps your opponent did (perhaps without realising the side effects ?).

As this particular message ensures that the player cannot load the save game onto a different computer or path and try the turn several times - then it really should stop play, IMHO.

I'd like to get to the bottom of why a very few players seem to be getting this particular message. It would be very nice to find some way to reproduce the error!.

The version in the patch will be dumping a text file with debug info on a PBEM load attempt (including the current path you are trying to play in, and the expected path for both players).

Cheers
Andy

[embis]

Thanks Andy,
I do have three installations on my system,(I know!!) One for Mods OOb edits and the like, (which I dont play any pbem games in) One to finish my old pbem games and one (from the CD) for my new games.

The problems have occoured once in the CD version and once in the D/L version.

Once the error occured when it was my turn and once when it was my opponents turn.

I tried deleting the old "faulty" turn restoring the previous "good" turn and then re-playing the "faulty" turn. still the same message.

Although I havent installed to the default paths in any version, neither have I changed the paths since the games were installed.

Obviously with two competing versions of the game on my system there is the risk that I inadvertantly unzipped to the wrong game but, obviously, I dont think that happened.

Anyway as my PBEM games fail the need for having more than one version on my system is rapidly becoming academic

I understand why you believe that the game should halt if a security breech is recognised...but if it didnt do that at least we could all have finished our games.

[Stian]

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

[Mobhack]

We will get to the botom of this one, somehow.

What I really need to have for debugging is some idea of the steps needed to get to the condition (ie a reproducible fault).

Nb - you can have several installations on the same PC, it is just that you MUST play your PBEM game in the exat same installation as you started it in. and basically with no file changes to that installation in the meantime (applies to both players

None of the following
- Changing file names to different PBEM slot numbers
- installing the game again to that path as that will reinitialise counters etc
- trying to play a turn in a different installation
- renaming the file path to the instalation in Windows or DOS etc


I have changed the file path comparison routine to be case-insensitive in the patch version (just in case for some odd reason something is returning the path in say uppercase only).

I have also added a routine to dump out some path and player details to a text file on loading a PBEM. This may help us debug any such problems in the future. The bug seems to affect only a few players (and I assume these folk know thier opponent and can verify the opponent has not done any of the above at his end ?) and only in some games. It may take a bit of time to track it down.

Unfortunately - none of our playtesters have managed to reproduce this problem, as yet.


Cheers
Andy