Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

Gents,

I'm running a training game with russian recruit. On receiving 8th turn I bumped into the following problem: try to open the file, input encryption key and receive message "Error reading battle file". I deleted pbem.xxx and pbem.yyy files. No joy. What can it be?

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<center><b>Eyo Imperatorskogo Velichestva Leib-Kirassirskogo polku
General-Mayor Anton Valeryevich Kosyanenko
Commander of the Second Army of the West </b></center>

The next thing to check is to be sure you are both on the same patch number.

Feldmarschall Freiherr Gary McClellan
Generalissimus Imperial Austrian Army
Portner Grenadier Bn
Allied Coalition C-in-C

Anton,

If you are using pw encryption make sure he advanced the phase.[:p]

Major General Ed Blackburn
Commanding Second Div, II Corps, AAA
3rd Bn / 1st Regiment of Foot Guards

I occasionally get this bug. Too late to delete the xxx and yyy files, your opponent will have to replay his last turn and resend it.

As Gary also suggests though, ensure you are both using the same patch.

Generaal
2de Brigade
2de Nederlandsche Div
I Corps
Anglo Allied Army

Same patch, the turn was advanced as the programme asked for correct password, i.e. french side. WManaged to set it on running by redoing the last turn.

Thank you all, Gentlemen!

<center></center>
<center><b>Eyo Imperatorskogo Velichestva Leib-Kirassirskogo polku
General-Mayor Anton Valeryevich Kosyanenko
Commander of the Second Army of the West </b></center>

Generally, deleting .xxx and .yyy helps best when done regularly BEFORE a problem like this occurs. [:)]

I still think the game software should clean up its temporary files automatically before closing down. Would seem simple enough to implement.

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[url="http://home.arcor.de/dierk_walter/NWC/16thLD.htm"][/url]
Maj. Gen. D.S. "Green Horse" Walter
~ 16th (The Queen's) Light Dragoons ~
4th Brigade, Anglo-Allied Cavalry Corps
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~ 3rd (Prince of Wales's) Dragoon Guards ~
[url="http://www.geocities.com/militaireacademie/"][/url]
</center>

I thought Rich H had a little homemade program set up that cleans up his xxx and yyy files occasionally.

Colonel Al Amos
1erè Brigade Commandant
2ème Division de Dragons

To answer the questions about the temp files:

1. Sometime back I and others offered up a batch program that is VERY easy to use that takes care of deleting the temp files. Here is the code. Just copy it into a new text file and call it something like HPS_Temp_Delete.bat making sure you use the .bat extension. Then double click on the file to run it from time to time to delete the files.

C:
cd hps simulations
del *.yyy /s

The first line is for the drive letter. The default is the C drive but I put mine in the E drive instead. If you did something like that just change the drive letter.

The second line is to tell the system to change to the directory where you installed all of your HPS games. This is the default name. If you titled it something differently (must be a masochist as the updates look for the default name and you would have to change the path each time you updated one of our products) then you will have the change the text on this line to correspond with your path.

The third line tells the system to delete all files in the path and all subdirectories that have an extension of .yyy. You can also delete the .xxx files too if you like by adding in a similar line and changing the extension name to .xxx. I dont think its neccessary as the .yyy files tend to be the culprit in messing up the .bte file.

2. Now to answer Dierk's concern: we DID have John change the code to allow for deleting the temp files. What happened was that a couple of our playtesters had issues with the game after that. John didnt have time to spend on the problem and thus its been unresolved.

And since this batch program is so easy to put together and run ... I will not persue asking him to spend more time on the problem. I would prefer to see him get other things done on the game engine or put out new titles! Yes, its probably something that he should address but I dont see it as a hot item.

I just ran my batch file and it only took about 8 seconds. Might be longer for older systems. I have a Athlon 64 2.4ghz processor with 2 GB memory.

These instructions are now permanently on my website at:

http://www.fireandmelee.net/helps/temp_bat.html

Lieutenant Colonel Bill Peters
Armee du Rhin - V Corps, Cavalerie du V Corps, 20ème légère Brigade de Cavalerie, 13ème Hussar Regiment
HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram, Jena-Auerstaedt and ... more to come)

[url="http://www.fireandmelee.net"]Fire and Melee Wargame site[/url]