Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » The Bar » Reporting in!
Reporting in! |
Tue, 14 January 2014 16:58 |
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platon79 | | Chief Warrant Officer 3 | Messages: 185
Registered: February 2004 Location: Norway | |
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I'm back!
I played a couple of games on stars autohost in ca 2005, and this Autumn, I met up with another guy on a board game convention here in norway, and we talked about stars and how we and a couple of other Norwegians played a couple of games together some long time ago.
Well, it ended up with us four actually setting up a game again, using Google drive to store the game files, and I myself, not having Windows 7 on my laptop (to play stars in xp mode) but Windows 8, installed good old Windows 3.1 on my dosbox to make it running (ah, the good old days ).
Well, long story short, we have played until 2406, but now when I open the hst-file, I just get a Message saying that "The X are not on the right year" for EVERY player.
I tried copying the hst-file from the backup-directory, but the problem persists.
Anyone who can help us with this problem? I really liked stars back in the days, and I still do (read a lot of threads to brush up on old strategy before this game), so I would really like to play this game through.
When we are finished with this game, and if we don't decide to start another one just after the first, I think I'd like to try another autohost game again, if there are any games starting nowadays, but first we must solve our problems with this game, so that I will not forsake stars altogether...
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Re: Reporting in! |
Tue, 14 January 2014 22:31 |
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skoormit | | Lieutenant | Messages: 665
Registered: July 2008 Location: Alabama | |
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platon79 wrote on Tue, 14 January 2014 15:58I'm back!
I played a couple of games on stars autohost in ca 2005, and this Autumn, I met up with another guy on a board game convention here in norway, and we talked about stars and how we and a couple of other Norwegians played a couple of games together some long time ago.
Well, it ended up with us four actually setting up a game again, using Google drive to store the game files, and I myself, not having Windows 7 on my laptop (to play stars in xp mode) but Windows 8, installed good old Windows 3.1 on my dosbox to make it running (ah, the good old days ).
Well, long story short, we have played until 2406, but now when I open the hst-file, I just get a Message saying that "The X are not on the right year" for EVERY player.
I tried copying the hst-file from the backup-directory, but the problem persists.
Anyone who can help us with this problem? I really liked stars back in the days, and I still do (read a lot of threads to brush up on old strategy before this game), so I would really like to play this game through.
When we are finished with this game, and if we don't decide to start another one just after the first, I think I'd like to try another autohost game again, if there are any games starting nowadays, but first we must solve our problems with this game, so that I will not forsake stars altogether...
A couple thoughts/ideas:
Are all players on the exact same version number (e.g. 2.6j-rc4)?
Could you have inadvertently copied over the .hst file with a version from a prior turn? Check the version history in Google Drive and see if the timestamps are off. I've had occasional problems with Dropbox when compiling my turn on different PCs. Always user error, and version history makes it plain.
Could you have inadvertently genned the last turn twice, but sent the first files? Again the version history in GD should tell the story.
Try a Google search of this site for the exact wording of the error message. I tried but didn't get anything...perhaps the exact wording is a little different than what you typed out?
Plenty of much savvier blokes around here, and some of them probably have some better ideas. Worst-case scenario (I think) is that you get the .m, .x, and .hst files for the prior turn (via GD version history) and re-gen.
Nice to hear that pockets of old players are still out there. I'm jealous that you have local friends to play. The last time I managed to get a local game going was...geez, 7 years ago.
Plenty of games still to be found here. Check the New Games Announcements thread. It can take weeks (or months) for games to fill up, but that's probably a good thing since it keeps some of us from playing too many games all at once, going mad that much faster.
What we need's a few good taters.Report message to a moderator
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Re: Reporting in! |
Wed, 22 January 2014 13:03 |
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skoormit | | Lieutenant | Messages: 665
Registered: July 2008 Location: Alabama | |
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Aha! I might have found the cause of the problem. Or at least, one way to cause the same symptoms. Here's how:
1) Create a multiplayer game and start generating turns like normal.
2) At some point, move all the game files (.hst, .xy, .x*) to a new folder. We'll call this year Z.
3) After all the .x files have arrived for year Z, open the host file (in the new location). Everything looks good. Generate the next turn.
4) Now the host says the game is in year Z+1 and the host says that all of the races are not on the right year.
What happened?
It was this:
When you generated the turn in step 3, the hst file tried to copy the .x files to a BACKUP folder, but there wasn't one to be found under the new folder.
Therefore the .x files from year Z are still in the game folder, and the host is warning you that those x files are from the incorrect year.
Solution:
Create a BACKUP folder manually in the new location. Copy the .x files from year Z to that folder if you like. The host file will use that folder from now on.
[Updated on: Wed, 22 January 2014 13:04]
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Re: Reporting in! |
Sat, 25 January 2014 06:16 |
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m.a@stars | | Commander | Messages: 2765
Registered: October 2004 Location: Third star to the left | |
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skoormit wrote on Wed, 22 January 2014 21:19I've never noticed a delay of even one second between me saving a file and Dropbox starting the synch job.
There is a delay after starting my VM, though. For some reason, Dropbox doesn't sync right away when I start the VM. That delay might be a minute or more. I don't know how long it is, because I always force Dropbox out of that delay by pausing and restarting syncing. Perhaps that is the technique you are looking for.
Looks like they're probably doing something smarter than a simple poll, then, such as inserting handlers into the I/O chain to make sure they catch every new bit as it's written to disk. But VMs insert things too, which could lead to conflict.
Anyway, there's a significant difference between not noticing any delay and there being no delay. It's always useful to check that your Stars! files have the correct timestamp before closing your painstakingly drafted turns.
So many Stars, so few Missiles!
In space no one can hear you scheme! Report message to a moderator
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Re: Reporting in! |
Sat, 25 January 2014 07:22 |
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XAPBob | | Lt. Commander | Messages: 957
Registered: August 2012 | |
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watch is a fairly well baked concept in most OSes. A program can register for a watch on file writes (for instance) in a directory. The kernel will wake it up as appropriate, no need to eat cpu.
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