The Replay Bug

[spence]

I'm in a PBEM as the Allied Player. My opponent always sends the Combat Summary along with every Replay. So far in the game (against fcharton: he's got an AAR) the Replay Bug has only occasionally reared its ugly head. And up to last turn it was never in a big way.

But last turn, 4 Jan 43, the Replay Bug showed an epic carrier battle which I apparently won; damaging 4 enemy carriers to damage to only one of my own. IRL my opponent did launch a smallish raid against an Amphib TF but nothing against my carriers and my carriers didn't launch at all.

Having played Uncommon Valor, Vanilla WitP, and AE it seems that the Replay Bug never reports an IJN victory that didn't happen, only Allied victories that never happened. Why is that?

(I know that the Replay Bug is actually several smaller bugs).

[GaryChildress]

I know this isn't the specific question you asked but isn't the replay bug often caused by hitting the Esc key during combat replays? Did your opponent maybe do that last turn?

[spence]

I don't think hitting the Esc Key has any effect. I do it routinely and the replay almost always agrees with the Combat Summary. Maybe I'm wrong but the overwhelming majority of turns show complete agreement.

[GaryChildress]

Hmmm. I guess they fixed that part of the bug then. I remember using the Esc key would always mess me up in WITP. So I always use the little button on the combat replay screen now if I don't want to bother watching the whole replay.

[Cpt Sherwood]

Gary, in WitP the ESC key would terminate the replay and that was a large cause of replay bugs. In AE the ESC key only sets all delays to 0.0 thereby speeding up the replay and hopefully not causing replay bugs.

[fcharton]

ORIGINAL: Gary Childress
I know this isn't the specific question you asked but isn't the replay bug often caused by hitting the Esc key during combat replays? Did your opponent maybe do that last turn?

I do this most of the time, and we fortunately seldom get the sync bug, but I doubt this could be the reason.

Looking at the files, I noticed that the 001 files (the replay I send spence) is produced 10 minutes before the Combat Report. So, the actual sequence seems to be:

- the japanese player opens the turn
- the 001 file is produced, but not the other text files, or the new turn
- the turn is replayed to the Japanese player,
- the combat report (and the new turn) is produced as the replay progresses.

For the Allies, the sequence is :

- the allies player opens the 001 turn
- the turn gets replayed, and is different from what the Japanese player saw
- but the files produced during the replay (as their datestamp, or a check if you look at them during the replay, attest), are the same as that of the Japanese player

In other words, action from the Japanese player during the replay don't seem to have an effect, because the 001 file is produced before, and the same combat report is produced on the Allied side, escape or not.

One thing I notice about the sync bug is that it seems to happen when the sea is cluttered in some area.

Francois