dom2 save games

[Nagot Gick Fel]

OK, here's my own small, quick & dirty backup utility. It runs in the background and check your game folders periodically, so you don't have to remember about clicking on an icon each time you submit a turn.

It's written in Java (thus you need a Java VM to run it) and is Linux and Windows-friendly (and should probably run on other OSes as well).

Basically it manages subfolders named 000, 001, 002, etc. in your game folders, and reuses the oldest entry when the maximum # of backups is reached. A new backup folder is created/overwritten when a new .trn is generated, otherwise the most recent backup folder is updated when a .2h is generated or updated.

You can specify the # of backups, and dom2 location in a property file. There's also a property that lets you specify which games you don't want to save, and one that lets you specify the delay (in seconds) between checks.

It's a bit crude - no GUI, no restore function, and it may throw an exception if you manually delete a game folder it's tracking. That's mainly because I didn't want to spend too much of my free time on it. However it works, and what's nice is that once it's started you can forget about it.

Zipfile contents:

DomIIBackup.java - the source
DomIIBackup.jar - the executable JAR file
domIIbackup.props - the property file

Just unzip in your Dominions directory, or any directory of your choice. If the latter, you'll need to update the d2backup.d2home property in the property file to point to your Dominions directory. Eg, for Linux:

d2backup.d2home=//mylinux/home/Users/myself/dom2

and for Windows:

d2backup.d2home=C:/games/illwinter/dom2

or

d2backup.d2home=C:\\games\\illwinter\\dom2

The other options should be self-explanatory. If you want to tell DomIIBackup to NOT track the games 'mayhem', 'bloodfest' and 'armageddon', use the d2backup.exclude property:

d2backup.exclude=mayhem:bloodfestageddon

While running, DomIIBackup will automatically start tracking every new game you create, unless the game name is listed in the d2backup.exclude property.

To run, use the command:

java -cp DomIIBackup.jar DomIIBackup

in the unzip directory. Of course you can put that command in a shell script or batch file.

This Version was compiled/tested with Sun Microsystems' J2SDK 1.4.2_04, which is available for download on Sun's website. Although you only need the JRE component to run the utility.