XyliGUN wrote on Mon, 12 July 2010 16:56

Marduk! You just gives me a hint! Thanks!

You are welcome. All the best discoveries are accidents...

Quote:

PS: So far of 46 blocks these 6 remain unknown: ## 11, 15, 18, 22, 25, 41. But to be fair I've never seen them in files that I have, so I probably have to make some sort of Stars! file analyser, which will do nothing (no decrypting required), but just checks and logs, which blocks are in specified file, and asks you to check files you have.

Just a thought, could any of these be related to multiple players playing on the same computer? Perhaps one could have something to do with the Emperor cheat, those messages have a Goto to enter a serial number. What code is given for the Goto field?

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XyliGUN wrote on Tue, 13 July 2010 00:56

PS: So far of 46 blocks these 6 remain unknown: ## 11, 15, 18, 22, 25, 41. But to be fair I've never seen them in files that I have, so I probably have to make some sort of Stars! file analyser, which will do nothing (no decrypting required), but just checks and logs, which blocks are in specified file, and asks you to check files you have.

My research on Stars! files mostly completed, at least I was able to read and extract data from all files I have in my Archive games folder. There are still 6 blocks (##11, 15, 18, 22, 25, 41) that I haven't found in my files (block #41 seems ralated to AI state), but may be they are in your files?

At that stage I need some input from you Stars! players. I guess many of you have a very nice Stars! games archive with different gams, races, etc. It would be nice if you can download & run simple command line tool that will looks thru your files and check whether they have blocks that I'm looking for. Here you can download StarsFileStat.zip file (it will be available by this link for about 1 month) that contains StarsFileStat.exe and ReadMe.txt with a simple instructions. It shouldn't take more than a 5 minutes. In its' output you will see what block types are in each of your files, and in the end there will be a note on whether your files contains blocks with id mentioned above.

[Updated on: Wed, 14 July 2010 17:44]

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XyliGUN wrote on Wed, 14 July 2010 14:29

XyliGUN wrote on Tue, 13 July 2010 00:56 PS: So far of 46 blocks these 6 remain unknown: ## 11, 15, 18, 22, 25, 41. But to be fair I've never seen them in files that I have, so I probably have to make some sort of Stars! file analyser, which will do nothing (no decrypting required), but just checks and logs, which blocks are in specified file, and asks you to check files you have. My research on Stars! files mostly completed, at least I was able to read and extract data from all files I have in my Archive games folder. There are still 6 blocks (##11, 15, 18, 22, 25, 41) that I haven't found in my files (block #41 seems ralated to AI state), but may be they are in your files? At that stage I need some input from you Stars! players. I guess many of you have a very nice Stars! games archive with different gams, races, etc. It would be nice if you can download & run simple command line tool that will looks thru your files and check whether they have blocks that I'm looking for. Here you can download StarsFileStat.zip file (it will be available by this link for about 1 month) that contains StarsFileStat.exe and ReadMe.txt with a simple instructions. It shouldn't take more than a 5 minutes. In its' output you will see what block types are in each of your files, and in the end there will be a note on whether your files contains blocks with id mentioned above.

Well there's 6 AI types if that's of any use, but I don't think they're related since they don't appear in this one major AI game I have. How do you know about those blocks if you haven't found them? Are they just holes in an otherwise sequentially complete sequence?

Do you suppose they could just be obsolete blocks?

Have you checked race files and also the HST? Also, I used your tool to scan all the games I have (some 500-700 megs of files) no matches.

[Updated on: Wed, 14 July 2010 18:47]

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[Updated on: Thu, 15 July 2010 04:01]

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XyliGUN wrote on Thu, 15 July 2010 09:57

Anyone else would like to try?

Is there like a ... reward?

mch

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XyliGUN wrote on Thu, 15 July 2010 09:57

Anyone else would like to try?

I would like to try tinkering with the source code. It's been ages since I fed something really interesting to my old compiler.

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Micha wrote on Thu, 15 July 2010 15:24

XyliGUN wrote on Thu, 15 July 2010 09:57 Anyone else would like to try? Is there like a ... reward? mch

OK, one who found these blocks (## 11, 15, 18, 22, 25) first will have a right to give his/her name to that block.

PS: Just kidding. Any result will help to make better understanding on what does Stars! files contain and how to play with it.

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XyliGUN wrote on Thu, 15 July 2010 14:34

Any result will help to make better understanding on what does Stars! files contain and how to play with it.

Is there any glaring absence in the block types already decoded? A.I status? Player2player comms? "Emperor Bug" notices? M.T antics? Winner announcements? Changes of Password and/or Serial key?

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m.a@stars wrote on Thu, 15 July 2010 06:56

XyliGUN wrote on Thu, 15 July 2010 14:34 Any result will help to make better understanding on what does Stars! files contain and how to play with it. Is there any glaring absence in the block types already decoded? A.I status? Player2player comms? "Emperor Bug" notices? M.T antics? Winner announcements? Changes of Password and/or Serial key?

He said those 5 or 6 blocks were the only omissions in an otherwise continuous sequence of decoded block types.

Well I know at least one of the games I scanned used player to player messages extensively. (The time interval between turns on that game was so long often times that I was regularly posting self to self mail notes just to keep myself informed as to the state of things. I also contacted my ally via p2p messages as it also was the only reasonable way to communicate with him at whatever time he played a turn.)

I cannot vouch for anything else you listed.

Can you link me to this "Emperor Bug"? I thought that was just copy protection that nerfed your empire if your serial matched anyone else's serial.

Anyone know what sort of old versions of stars may have had something odd enough to warrant a few extra block types?

I don't have anything but version 1.0, 2.6J and 2.7I. And J and I are pretty much the same for the most part. And version 1 is REALLY different.

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Captain Maim wrote on Thu, 15 July 2010 21:23

Can you link me to this "Emperor Bug"? I thought that was just copy protection that nerfed your empire if your serial matched anyone else's serial.

Yup, that's it. It sometimes plagues team games due to lack of care. It might also have its very own exclusive block type.

Quote:

Anyone know what sort of old versions of stars may have had something odd enough to warrant a few extra block types?

Starbases "mined" limited amounts of fuel per turn, among other things.

Then there's that message list that wasp unearthed. Some of them, like the Transfer of colonists, look definitely unused in the modern versions of the game. Perhaps some reverse-engineering could be applied by crafting an "artificial" block of the desired ID# and seeing what Stars! does with it.

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[email

m.a@stars[/email] wrote on Fri, 16 July 2010 01:13] Captain Maim wrote on Thu, 15 July 2010 21:23 Can you link me to this "Emperor Bug"? I thought that was just copy protection that nerfed your empire if your serial matched anyone else's serial. Yup, that's it. It sometimes plagues team games due to lack of care. It might also have its very own exclusive block type. Quote: Anyone know what sort of old versions of stars may have had something odd enough to warrant a few extra block types? Starbases "mined" limited amounts of fuel per turn, among other things. Then there's that message list that wasp unearthed. Some of them, like the Transfer of colonists, look definitely unused in the modern versions of the game. Perhaps some reverse-engineering could be applied by crafting an "artificial" block of the desired ID# and seeing what Stars! does with it.

I'd imagine mined fuel (which I've seen) was probably part of the planet block as well as the planet scanner type (as back then they were independent and manually upgraded at cost to the player.) Both of these things I'm SO happy are no longer issues to deal with.

I have a very good guess what Stars will do with any ignorantly constructed synthetic block of the aforementioned types. It shall do one thing in my expectation. Crash. But in the off chase that it doesn't it likely will just do nothing what so ever and ignore the block which is probably why it might not crash. But I believe the far greater likely hood is that it will just die when you try to load the modified file.

Course I'd laugh so hard if it did work and you could drive MT ships around. That'd be just epic. Or if it did something completely unexpected and cool. But like I said, I figure if it's obsolete and coded out, it'll either crash the game or be ignored.

Whatever those 5-6 things are it's something extremely exotic, since it shows in none of the games I have. Even the ones with AI. Though I dunno if I had expert AI or if I had the right settings for that. I dunno. So if you can think of something really exotic that isn't categorically applicable to anything else, then it's worth a look I think.

So it's NOT a:
Ship,
wormhole,
starbase,
planet,
anything built on or stored by planets,
mine field,
message,
MT,
apparent event,
device,
piece of tech.
piece of history,
graph,
user message,
race file,
race,
map coordinate,
battle replay,
battle summary,
packet,
piece of debris, (I'm pretty sure I had SOME debris on those maps I scanned.)
score,
battle plan for a fleet,
and not an AI of any apparent and known sort.

So what's left? I have no idea.

Which is why I say if it even exists still it must be something truly exotic.

Correct me if I have listed anything you haven't already mapped.

I long wanted a tool that would pick up fleets that went to the edge of the map and teleport them to another galaxy where a stub of their host race (either by overriding a dead race or adding them) was so they could invade another galaxy. Then you could totally have 2 games match off, down to 1 winner each, and then INVADE and wage cross galactic war with each sending colonists to the other's galaxy and showing which of those two winners is the greatest. Or just invade your old games with exo-galactic doom fleets. Yeah, I always thought that that'd be cool.

If that worked it'd be cool to have 16 players face off in 4 small galaxies with 4 native races each and 12 stub races and then invade the other galaxies as you go along. Teleporting ships as they reach the edges of each map in a sort of wrap around map teleportation deal. 4vs4vs4vs4.

[Updated on: Fri, 16 July 2010 04:57]

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Captain Maim wrote on Fri, 16 July 2010 20:31

I long wanted a tool that would pick up fleets that went to the edge of the map and teleport them to another galaxy where a stub of their host race (either by overriding a dead race or adding them) was so they could invade another galaxy. Then you could totally have 2 games match off, down to 1 winner each, and then INVADE and wage cross galactic war with each sending colonists to the other's galaxy and showing which of those two winners is the greatest. Or just invade your old games with exo-galactic doom fleets. Yeah, I always thought that that'd be cool. If that worked it'd be cool to have 16 players face off in 4 small galaxies with 4 native races each and 12 stub races and then invade the other galaxies as you go along. Teleporting ships as they reach the edges of each map in a sort of wrap around map teleportation deal. 4vs4vs4vs4.

Actually I suspect, PaulCr or <name that won't come out of my brain who helped me with Pirates! and the wiki isn't responding dammit - ah ha! Wumpus!> might actually be able to achieve something close...they can craft .hst & .m file far more than anyone else I know of and could probably craft the four smaller games to not use the same planets and then combine their end results into a single game twice as wide/high.

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Well, I suggested small galaxies just cause people like them, not cause you can't find something that's 4x larger. Also each race could employ a different set of ships in each galaxy. Course once I think of it, you'd have to synchronize their tech levels in all 4 maps or you invade with nubians but can only reproduce destroyers. On the other hand, you'd have a lot of pop you could bring with you to do the research and all the minerals from home. That could be interesting all by itself. But take way too long to do 4 times so yeah sync the techs. But that's probably up to whom ever hosts.

Another fun part of it, is to reach a particular galaxy you have to MAKE IT across the existing one to one of the sides perhaps even a far side (always a fun journey for most races.) And the universe becomes wrap around (as long as you have just 4 galaxies. Ships arrive at the edge, next year they arrive at the edge of a different galaxy. And then move out. I guess if they stay put they'd oscillate between the two every other year.

A player to self message noting that "Fleet # has just traveled to galaxy <Filename> From the <directional> edge of the map." Would be a good idea. The "Directional" would be "top", "bottom", "left" or "right". The server utility adds this to your M file after the server gens I guess. That way it arrives at the right time for you to load said file and move them before they jump back. And a self to self message on that arrival galaxy will read that "fleet # has traveled from the <filename> galaxy arriving here on the <directional> edge of the galaxy please move them before they head back."

If a galaxy is full either of ship designs, fleet counts or races your fleet doesn't jump and is told that the destination galaxy <filename> cannot sustain the incoming ship types from fleet #. (For too many designs.) Or that "You already have too many fleets in the <filename> galaxy." And last, "The <filename> galaxy cannot support another life form, please wait till an existing life form has been exterminated, then attempt to enter again." (This displays if you have too many races. Course I suppose you could turn over an abandon race to the new comer. He gets all the ships there in addition to his invasion forces. Since abandonment is more common than extermination.)

And linking maps of unequal size should scale the edges to match, so a entering a map that's twice as large would mean that you can only enter on an even numbered coordinate (every other in this particular case, or every 3rd or 4th coordinate if the map was 3 or 4 times larger.)

[Updated on: Fri, 16 July 2010 18:52]

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Captain Maim wrote on Fri, 16 July 2010 10:31

I have a very good guess what Stars will do with any ignorantly constructed synthetic block of the aforementioned types. It shall do one thing in my expectation. Crash. But in the off chase that it doesn't it likely will just do nothing what so ever and ignore the block which is probably why it might not crash.

Indeed. Thus a crash would actually give more information than a silent ignore. Such are the ways of reverse engineering.

Quote:

Whatever those 5-6 things are it's something extremely exotic, since it shows in none of the games I have.

I guess then there are known blocks that carry around player to player messages, the Player Relations matrix and the IA alliances?

Quote:

I long wanted a tool that would pick up fleets that went to the edge of the map and teleport them to another galaxy where a stub of their host race (either by overriding a dead race or adding them) was so they could invade another galaxy. Then you could totally have 2 games match off, down to 1 winner each, and then INVADE and wage cross galactic war with each sending colonists to the other's galaxy and showing which of those two winners is the greatest.

Heh, that would be truly epic, but most players are scared by Large/Huge universes, so I'd imagine only a select few would even dare try your version.

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Captain Maim wrote on Sat, 17 July 2010 00:45

you'd have a lot of pop you could bring with you to do the research and all the minerals from home. That could be interesting all by itself.

That would be like the AFON start, which old chronicles say is really fun.

Quote:

Ships arrive at the edge, next year they arrive at the edge of a different galaxy. And then move out. I guess if they stay put they'd oscillate between the two every other year.

Make it a one-way trip. Once transferred, there's no way back.

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I've played an AFON start it is rather fun, You have to find a home before you can plant down and start playing. Now mix that mid way into a regular setup where all 4 people of a galaxy are allies. And you have invaders from another galaxy. Which must always arrive planetless, and must gain a foot hold in a foreign galaxy. You can either make it 1 way, which doesn't seem as much fun. Or limit the years that a galaxy or galaxies can be invaded. Such as only on the years 5 and 0 of each decade. That is, if you don't want free invasions. Or make the edges rotate based on the year. Which eliminates the whole traveling to another galaxy to the far edge of the map then. Any edge at the right time works. Course you can do any or all of these, it's flexible.

Four tiny galaxies are probably less than a medium. If not equal to it? I bet they are equal to a small and 4 smalls equal a medium. Well within player's likes. Now 4 Huge? Uh. No way. Not unless we get this whole MM thing cranked up into super drive and you can actually manage a huge empire without snapping from the stress of dealing with all that. (No one would want to actually rule the world cause it's like playing a 4x huge game of stars. You'd snap from the stress of it all. )


Yeah I all the mundane blocks are mapped I'd figure. If 41 only exists on one rare game then it's an exotic and I really can't imagine what could be contained cause I just have to wonder why it wasn't present in my AI games at all?

Hey did that scanning program you gave us flag 41 as a block of interest? (Sorry can't recall what his name was, just that it had X's in it.)

[Updated on: Sat, 17 July 2010 06:03]

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I think it's safe to say XyliGUN, that you can start working on your API and if you want to, you can stub out those blocks just in case. But it's my guess that they are obsolete or so exotic that our odds of having to worry about them in the foreseeable future are slim to nill.

So unless you need any further help mapping out the array of known blocks, I don't see why not get started on your API now.

I didn't scan the whole history I have of files, just the latest of each game. I've got yearly file backups of several games. If you want I can scan them too. Or, if your tool did recursive directory scans that'd save me a LOT of work.

[Updated on: Sat, 17 July 2010 22:30]

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Captain Maim wrote on Sun, 18 July 2010 06:24

I think it's safe to say XyliGUN, that you can start working on your API and if you want to, you can stub out those blocks just in case. But it's my guess that they are obsolete or so exotic that our odds of having to worry about them in the foreseeable future are slim to nill. So unless you need any further help mapping out the array of known blocks, I don't see why not get started on your API now.

Actually, it's already in progress, but it will take some time before first version will be ready enough to publish it. At the moment I can only said that it will be COM object (i.e. you can use it from Java Script, Visual Basic Script, C++, VB, C#) with minimal dependencies (should be Windows 2k or higher + atl90.dll). Also I'm going to create somekind of simple UI for testing and demo purposes it will be written in C# (which will require .net 2.0 i.e. Windows XP or higher). So, whish me luck.

Captain Maim wrote on Sun, 18 July 2010 06:24

I didn't scan the whole history I have of files, just the latest of each game. I've got yearly file backups of several games. If you want I can scan them too. Or, if your tool did recursive directory scans that'd save me a LOT of work.

The tool actually do subtree scan if you run it with /f switch. Readme shows /f switch example, you just need to specify root folder.

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I don't suppose it could also do command line parameters too?

I'll run it again with /f then it'll process whole game histories.

<Several minutes later>

I think I figured out how to properly run that program, since it found stuff in the same place I'm sure I've checked. Just some more rare examples of block 41. All expert AI H files. I've sent you those files as well as the log history. Curious that it only has those blocks once out of 70 years. I don't understand what changed, since it processed basically every year of the game (except 0 that got overridden by accident. And some others that got glitched when I was archiving them.)

The rapid genning directory is where my friend and I decided we were tired of waiting for the MT and so we tried to induce an MT to show. He didn't and we gave up. So I dunno why that year was special and was the only one to get block 41 on it.

[Updated on: Sun, 18 July 2010 06:31]

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XyliGUN wrote on Sat, 17 July 2010 12:53

What I'm really like to do is StarsPlayerAPI, which, I hope, would allow others to make cool things (starting from "notebook", which will read data directly from xy/m/h/x files, mm automation tools, like managing your pop and minerals, and probably somebody can bring up a better client).

And, necessarily, a submitted-x-file checker/sanitizer, to keep any bugs/cheats from taking over the game.

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XyliGUN wrote on Thu, 15 July 2010 14:34

Micha wrote on Thu, 15 July 2010 15:24 XyliGUN wrote on Thu, 15 July 2010 09:57 Anyone else would like to try? Is there like a ... reward? mch OK, one who found these blocks (## 11, 15, 18, 22, 25) first will have a right to give his/her name to that block. PS: Just kidding. Any result will help to make better understanding on what does Stars! files contain and how to play with it.

Naming them would be hard ... I found 5 of your bogeys. And I only have 1 name! ... Wait, maybe my 2 daughters. And of course Captain Maim came across 41 already. Took some time for the app to get through my archive, I've got +400MB of (battle) testbed files and +1GB in my ended games folder (granted, there are screenshots of ship designs and .xls files in there as well).

Anyway, what I found:
A lot of 41 in AI .h files, nowhere else.

A few 25 blocks, only in .x files.
A lot of them in one of Xdudes AFON games, in two races (possibly both played by me at that time), also in consecutive years.

3 times 22 blocks, all in .x files.
Once with a 41 block in the file as well, unfortunately I don't have the .m file anymore (which is weird since I have an archive of the entire game), but it was a team game so maybe one of my friends still has it.
Second time only block 22.
Third time with a block 41 again *and* with a block 11. On these two occasions the .x file was corrupt when I tried to open it ...
The first two are from the same (team) game and I remember it was indeed plagued by corrupt .x files. All three are not mine, however they are from the same player. I assume that first one (without .m file) is corrupt as well.
We played several team games and constantly mailed our .x file around. Possibly have the corrupt ones in my archive because I didn't get his final version. He had to delete the .x files and completely redo orders, the files couldn't be fixed. Painful enough if it has already cost you 3hrs the first time ... They were fine on his jRC3 but SAH running jRC4 rejected them.

Found one block 15 ... in a corrupted .x file (again one of the two games mentioned above, same player).

mch

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