I have finished my online game, how do I?

[CraigStevenson]

I have been playing my first few online games of TOAW 4 and am really enjoying them but I have a few questions. I have been playing using the online system where you offer and accept challenges and access your turns through the TOAW 4 interface (ie. no emails are sent between players). My questions are:

1. I note that there are saved games (as pbl files) for each turn of the game that I have played. When I try to open one it asks me for a password but I never set a password when I started these games so how do I open them?

2. My first game has finished and my opponent had the last turn. The game is in my online section under finished games but the only option that I seem to have is to 'hide' the game. How do I open the finished game to view the last turn and find out the outcome?

3. Is there a way to take screenshots within TOAW 4 or do I need to use a separate program?

Thanks in advance
Craig

[Shadrach]

Hi,
the whole online PBEM play part seems to be jerry-rigged onto an old system and is kind of wonky. But it works so far as you're willing to deal with some strangeness.

1. There is probably some system password protecting the files. You're not meant to open these saves directly, but only through the online play system.

2. Yeah, this has been mentioned in several threads [1] - apparently they forgot to think about players wanting to review the final state and the last played turn. I think many players have their own systems though, based on email or Dropbox/Drive etc.

3. There is 'File > Create map image' (F3) which will create a huge jpeg of the entire map, useful for AARs. You can also press Alt+PrintScreen, and just paste it into an editor.

My biggest gripe with the PBEM system is the replay, why did they implement a whole different system for playback of the opponents turn, when they could've just used the existing view one sees when watching the AI turns. It would be much easier to see what is going on during the replay.

[1]
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[Lobster]

ORIGINAL: Shadrach

My biggest gripe with the PBEM system is the replay, why did they implement a whole different system for playback of the opponents turn, when they could've just used the existing view one sees when watching the AI turns. It would be much easier to see what is going on during the replay.

I think this goes back to the days in 199x when a big hard drive was only a small fraction of what it is today. The file to do it how you describe, and how most of us would like to see it, would be huge by the 199x standards. Today's computers with tera byte hard drives probably wouldn't be bothered much by it. Not sure how much programming would be involved but yeah, it sure would be nice. [;)]

[Shadrach]

ORIGINAL: Lobster

ORIGINAL: Shadrach
My biggest gripe with the PBEM system is the replay, why did they implement a whole different system for playback of the opponents turn, when they could've just used the existing view one sees when watching the AI turns. It would be much easier to see what is going on during the replay.

I think this goes back to the days in 199x when a big hard drive was only a small fraction of what it is today. The file to do it how you describe, and how most of us would like to see it, would be huge by the 199x standards. Today's computers with tera byte hard drives probably wouldn't be bothered much by it. Not sure how much programming would be involved but yeah, it sure would be nice. [;)]

Yes, I've heard this before, in the other threads. But I am not really sure what is meant by it.

Are you saying the player replay is saved as a bitmapped image, every move an image? That would be massive, yeah. But surely if the replay contains just the opponent moves, who attacks and in what direction etc, it shouldn't take up much space at all. And the current system must contain that information anyway.

Whether it's shown as max-zoomed out (like now) or zoomed in for more detail shouldn't really matter.

[larryfulkerson]

You guys DO realize that you can still use the legacy PBEM system
for your games, right?

[Shadrach]

Yes - and in fact I would recommend it, at least for safety. That way you don't send your username, password AND game serial-number in cleartext over the internet like with the "new" system...

[DanNeely]

It sends an unencrypted password over HTTP!?!?!

[Shadrach]

It does indeed. I could go into detail but probably shouldn't.

The silly thing is, it should be really simple to fix. The game executable is packaged with libcurl, so just change the url to https and set the curl option CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER to 0.
https://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/c/CURLOPT_ ... YPEER.html

Then again, that's not really all that secure, so to do it properly, the CA certificate of Slitherine, signed by GoDaddy, should be imported into the game. And I think it might even be.