Security - Player 2 has already played this turn?

[DRG]

hogrider18 said:
I finally got fed up and deleted the PBEMregistry.dat file and set up a small 1000pt game, which has gone well so far into turn 3.
What is the file used for anyone? The game seems to play OK without it, so far. Biker

It's not used for anything at all. It's left over from an old idea that we didn't pursue but may in the future. However, if you suddenly find you can play OK please do let us know and we'll see if it helps anyone else having this problem. There is one (1) line in the code for that file but it's quite literally calling nothing since none of the code that uses PBEMRegistry.dat is "hooked up" to anything connected to a regular PBEM game.

What I *seem* to be seeing here is a few people having repeated problems. I would assume if everyone couldn't finish a PBEM we would have been flooded with these reports by now.

At this time all I can suggest is if you have more than a couple of instances of failed secure PBEM to.....

1] re-install the game

2] DO NOT be too quick to zip up the turn after ending it. If anyone is zipping it up before exiting the game completely....stop doing that. I don't *think* that's casuing a problem but I don't know that for sure either

3] Always......... ALWAYS remember that any attempt to play the game in anything but the game you started it on will eventually end in failure. I'm not saying that is the problem now but we have had cases in the past where people try to play a turn at home then finish it on their laptop on the way to work so I'm just reminding everyone ( gently ) you CANNOT DO THAT!

When Andy gets back I will review these issues and we'll see if we can figure out what may be happening. Keep in mind both he and I DID test this and what is being reported DID NOT happen to us. Rest assured I DO understand that having a game crap out just as it's getting interesting is not fun and does not generally give people a warm and fuzzy feeling. IF it is the game getting confused we'll obviously need to fix this but right now I'm leaning towards a file handling issue

Let us review for a minute.

a]Player one is sending a turn to player 2 and when player 2 tried to open it the message " Player two has already played this turn" pops up???

b] This is accompanied by unusually high reports about loads and saves??

[Suurajatollah]

Let us review for a minute.

a]Player one is sending a turn to player 2 and when player 2 tried to open it the message " Player two has already played this turn" pops up???

b] This is accompanied by unusually high reports about loads and saves??

In my case:

a)Player 2 sends his turn and Player 1 gets message: "Player 2 has already played this turn"

b) This was accompanied by 10-20 player 1- and 15-30 player 2- loads and saves. Plus 2 or 3 player 1 fails and 5-8 player 2 fails. For what I remember...

[DRG]

Here's what I need for someone. I don't care who.

I need the turn that gives the "Player 2 has already played this turn" message AND I need the passwords for both players AND this has to be a game set up to the default folders the game installer was set up to extract the files to. If you've moved it somewhere else I don't want the saves.

I also need the same thing from anyone who is seeing an extraordinary number of loads and saves or fails messages. I need to see that and I need as much information as you can give me about it and everyone NEEDS to be honest here... Has someone been doing some un-official "testing" of the security?? ( that's the polite way of saying they have been trying to cheat. If yes... PLEASE just admit it. It's just too easy to blame the game when someones " creativity" goes badly wrong. I'm NOT saying that IS what has happend but I am say that COULD be what happens SOMETIMES). Has either side done a lot of "save and finish the turn later? exits??

If anyone HAS had the "Player 2 has already played this turn" problem but cannot send me a save I need to know what save slot you were using when it crapped out ( it might be important.....or not. I won't know until people tell me )

I also need to know if there was an extraordinary event during the turn that was sent that gave the message. For example, did ten ammo dumps explode ? was there a big para drop ? Did someone's HQ die? Did your power fade out just as you were zipping up the turn? Did you zip up the turn using Windows Explorer WHILE the game was still running?

Don

[Thexder]

I'm changing my laptop to a new one in two weeks time and was wondering if this causes any problems with the WinSPMBT game files. I'm currently playing four games and at least two of them wont be ready by the time I receive my new laptop and give the old one to my sister.
So should I just istall the game to the new laptop and unzip the old games to the PBEM folder or do I need to do something more complicated in order to make them work?

Thanks,
Jukka

[Suurajatollah]

Here's what I need for someone. I don't care who.

I need the turn that gives the "Player 2 has already played this turn" message AND I need the passwords for both players AND this has to be a game set up to the default folders the game installer was set up to extract the files to. If you've moved it somewhere else I don't want the saves. ...

What is the email address where I can send the files?

[hogrider18]

Hi Andy, MD and I played a 1000 point game to completion, then played another 6000 point game,Russia vs Brits,May 1946,120x100, 20 turns. Got all the way to turn 17 before we got the same message as before. Really getting pissed now, that makes twice this has happened towards the end of a game.
We don't zip our files, we are both using Yahoo and upload the files and send them to each other. This has worked in our 1000 point game and worked up to turn 17 of 20 turn game, and turn 20 of a 40 turn game.
MD did mention something about turning off his bridge for some reason, and that is around the time the game quit.
Tell you the truth I am at the point that I no longer want to PBEM if the game is going to quit towards the end. I'll just go back to beating up on the AI...Biker

[Mobhack]

hogrider18 said:
Hi Andy, MD and I played a 1000 point game to completion, then played another 6000 point game,Russia vs Brits,May 1946,120x100, 20 turns. Got all the way to turn 17 before we got the same message as before. Really getting pissed now, that makes twice this has happened towards the end of a game.
We don't zip our files, we are both using Yahoo and upload the files and send them to each other. This has worked in our 1000 point game and worked up to turn 17 of 20 turn game, and turn 20 of a 40 turn game.
MD did mention something about turning off his bridge for some reason, and that is around the time the game quit.
Tell you the truth I am at the point that I no longer want to PBEM if the game is going to quit towards the end. I'll just go back to beating up on the AI...Biker

"turned off his bridge" means what exactly?.

What does "upload via yahoo" mean - are you using some sort of chat room software?.

Cheers
Andy

[Pyros]

Hi hogrider18,

Have you checked the loads, quit and fail stats ?
Did you notice anything unusual?

My early conclusion is that all people (that I know) who play a game without any kind of reload, crashes, quick zip problems etc... don't experience any kind of problems.

IMO, this problem relates with the action of "unzip" and "replay" the turn, for any given reason.

cheers,
Pyros

[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