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Re: New (?) Stars! Bug: 32k orders

Tue, 14 July 2020 05:31

russl5445

Crewman 3rd Class

Messages: 5
Registered: September 2008
Location: Tucson, AZ

I didn't realize that anybody was doing ongoing work to decode the Stars! files ... I thought I was the only one. Smile

I was just looking at the FileHashBlock last night, and the conclusion I came to is basically the same as you: that the first 2 bytes hold the length of the section(s) that follow. I wouldn't call that a "checksum," but that's just semantics. Smile

My assumption is that this was to solve races when a client might be trying to write out an update .X file, and the host might be looking for one. If the file length doesn't match the value predicted right up near the top of the file, then the host knows not to use the file (yet). I did some (very) quick experiments, and it seems like the rest of the block (15 bytes more) are constant - at least on a single machine. They seem not to change from turn to turn, or game to game. (Though I haven't done extensive testing yet.) I'm guessing that this must be where the "machine fingerprint" is stored.

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[Message index]

		New (?) Stars! Bug: 32k orders By: ricks03 on Wed, 13 May 2020 14:20
		Re: New (?) Stars! Bug: 32k orders By: russl5445 on Tue, 14 July 2020 05:31
		! By: ricks03 on Tue, 18 May 2021 04:35
		Re: ! By: ricks03 on Wed, 19 May 2021 00:32

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