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AlexTheGreat wrote on Thu, 19 June 2008 04:10

For the 3rd or 4th time this year my .x file has become corrupt. I'm not aware of any repair utility or whatever. Does anyone else know anything or is my 4 hours down the drain?

Ask Wumpus. He *may* have something that could have some effect.

As a sufferer of the same problem, all I can recommend is to save & exit from time to time, then copy your x file to another drive, then resume work.

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m.a@stars wrote on Thu, 19 June 2008 23:44

As a sufferer of the same problem, all I can recommend is to save & exit from time to time, then copy your x file to another drive, then resume work.

There are programs that can help you with that kind of backups. IIRC Filehamster can do that for you ... you can set it to watch over file changes and make copies to the backup directory with a time stamp ... has been a while since I used it.

And John, if Wumpus can't help you than it's indeed deleting the .x file and starting all over again ...

mch

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[Updated on: Sat, 21 June 2008 10:04]

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bigcanuknaz wrote on Sat, 21 June 2008 16:03

My understanding, is that all the "moves" in stars are stored in the m file. The x file is just a special "final moves submission file" that gets generated or updated when you hit "save and submit."

The m file stores the *results* of your moves (after interacting with everybody else's) as decreed by the server. The x file stores your orders for new moves.

So, yeah, deleting the "bad" x file allows you to start clean, but that's something that still hurts if you just spent 5 hours crafting that x file.

[Updated on: Sun, 22 June 2008 01:35]

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m.a@stars[/email] wrote on Thu, 19 June 2008 23:44] AlexTheGreat wrote on Thu, 19 June 2008 04:10 For the 3rd or 4th time this year my .x file has become corrupt. I'm not aware of any repair utility or whatever. Does anyone else know anything or is my 4 hours down the drain? Ask Wumpus. He *may* have something that could have some effect.

Sorry, not yet. The Race file corruption problem (which I can fix) appears to be completely unrelated to the X file problem :/

I made a run up at analysing the issue previously, and what I remember was: the X files I had really were broken (orders which couldn't possibly be correct &c... IIRC there were things like cargo amounts being moved around which were in excess of what was in a freighter and such).

Some points are clear though:
* There is nothing the player or host can do using stars! itself which will "fix" a broken X file.
* It seems highly unlikely that it will be possible to write an external tool to fix such files. The only way it MIGHT be possible is if someone can establish exactly what causes the problem, AND the "appearance" of this CAUSE (rather than the effect: broken X file) can somehow be detected in the X file. Thats HIGHLY iffy.
* It SHOULD be possible to take a given X file and remove the problematic commands. Note that this is NOT the same as "fixing" the file, since presumably there will be some loss of data - IE, whatever it was that the player MEANT the corrupted order to be. Any orders entered later in the turn, which dependned on an action in a corrupted order, will also be problematic.

So for now, and for a while yet, the answer is as others have suggested in this thread: Redo your turn

Sorry there's no better news.

-- Michael `Wumpus' Z

[Updated on: Sun, 29 June 2008 15:14]

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m.a@stars[/email] wrote on Sun, 22 June 2008 07:35]The m file stores the *results* of your moves (after interacting with everybody else's) as decreed by the server. The x file stores your orders for new moves.

This is probably clear already from m.a@stars' post, but just to be absolutely explicit: The player never modifies the M file at all; the host writes it once (per turn), and that's it.

"Game creation": Reads: R files, game parameters. Writes: XY file, HST file, M files
"Host mode": Reads: XY and HST file, as well as any available X files. Writes: M files and (new) HST file
"Play mode": Reads: XY and M file, as well as the H and X fitting to the M, if present. Writes: X and H files.

[Updated on: Sun, 29 June 2008 15:30]

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