PBEM helper now available

[Fuerte]

The PBEM helper supports now SE4 (among many other PBEM games).



From the readme:

"Both Turn Based and Simultaneous modes are supported, and in Simultaneous both Host and Player modes. If you are running Host, leave the e-mail address empty, and set the host (and player) password in Edit F2. When all the player files have been received, the game status will change to Host. If you then execute Play F9, the turn will be generated automatically, and the status will change to Send (after pressing F3 or F5)."

Readme: http://www.sci.fi/~fuerte/pbem.htm http://www.nic.fi/~fuerte/pbem.htm

Download: http://www.sci.fi/~fuerte/pbem.zip http://www.nic.fi/~fuerte/pbem.zip

Warning: The SE4 support has not been tested thoroughly. Please send me bug reports and feature wishes.

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PBEM

[Puke]

sounds good, but i have not tried it yet. can some one tell me, can you run an unattended server with it that will generate a turn on a daily basis? if someone writes the code for a turn generator that will run unattended that people can just drop their files to, i will gladly throw up a server to run public PBEM games.

[Fuerte]

You can't use this program for unattended server, at least not yet. Unattended operation would require two things:

1) Do the Host routine automatically (generate a turn in Simultaneous mode). Now the program won't do it until all the files have been received.

2) Do the e-mail sending automatically when the turn has been generated.

Both of these are quite easy to implement. I will do it if someone requires it. But of course the full unattended operation requires some other things as well:

3) Process the incoming turn from e-mail automatically to the SAVEGAME directory (PBEM helper will do it, but not completely automatically, you have to Open the attachment).

[greghacke]

Actually, for those using OUTLOOK 2000, you can auto-save the attachments into a specified directory. It's an advanced rules option. The key is to insure the e-mails are subjected the same. For instance, if the outbound is Galactica24011, use this as the subject and have everyone reply as Re: Galactica24011 This can be matched and the files saved properly. I'll post the technique here once i get back to my Office2K machine

[Fuerte]

This is how PBEM helper works:

1) If the .PBM format is used, then the e-mail subject is always "PBEM file", and there is only one attachment called PBEM.PBM.

2) If the .ZIP format is used, then the subject is "SE4 file" and there is one attachment called SE4.ZIP.

3) If the file is sent as it is, then the subject is "SE4 file" and the attachment name is something.PLR.

In the first case, when the attachment is opened in PBEM, then it will automatically decompress it into the correct SAVEGAME directory. So the Outlook rule should just open the attachment in PBEM. There should be an option in PBEM to quit after the file has been decompressed into correct directory.

In the other cases, the Outlook rules should be used to decompress or copy the attachment into correct directory.

After that the PBEM could then be executed at regular intervals to generate the turn and send the e-mails. Yes, it could be done... the hosting and sending of ready games could be done at one hour intervals, for example, and the forced turn generation once a day, even if some client file is still missing.

The only tools that would be needed are Outlook, task scheduler and PBEM, with some added features.

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PBEM

[geoschmo]

If I understand this correctly you really only need outlook on the server that is hosting the game right? The players would run and execute their turns manually as always so they could use whatever email program they have.

The outlook is just needed on the server to automate the host portion?

I think this has the potential to make PBEM a LOT more common if the process can be worked out to automate the hosting portion.

Geo