Pitboss 18 IT and Tech Issues Thread

[novice]

I did a little digging and I think civstats just monitors the pitboss server window and changes there i.e. I feel it would be quite a lot of work in that approach.

Wow, that is quite the hack... I was wondering what interface I didn't know about that civstats was using.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Boldly, and after you've tried what Xenu said, if it still doesn't work, go back to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\sid meier's civilization iv beyond the sword\Beyond the Sword\Mods\RB Mod 2.0.6.2\ in your file explorer and click Organize->Folder and search options->View->Show hidden files, folders and drives and click OK. Is there a hidden desktop.ini file in that folder?

(If you normally don't display hidden files and you've been moving the mod files around, the hidden file may not have been moved along with the rest of the files. This would trigger the "protected assets" warning.)

I do not see a hidden desktop.ini file in that folder. I searched for one on my computer and one exists, but it does not appear to be in any way related to Civ (located C:\Windows\System32).

I'm going to have to take a break on this for now and take my dog to the vet. Thanks for the help.

[yuris125]

That looks like a firewall issue. I see the same thing from work, and I have to bypass my workplace's firewall by using mobile wireless to connect to the game.

Wouldn't firewall block all games, not just this one? I just played Pitboss 17 turn without problems

PB17 is hosted on dyndns.org on port 2064, this game is hosted on no-ip.org on port 2058. So there might be a difference. Are you able to ping caledorn.no-ip.org from your computer? I'm not, but I am able to ping sunrise089.dyndns.org.

You can try connecting using the IP address instead of the dns name:
87.252.66.245:2058

Thanks! I'm back in the office now, but will try after work tonight

[novice]

Boldly, and after you've tried what Xenu said, if it still doesn't work, go back to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\sid meier's civilization iv beyond the sword\Beyond the Sword\Mods\RB Mod 2.0.6.2\ in your file explorer and click Organize->Folder and search options->View->Show hidden files, folders and drives and click OK. Is there a hidden desktop.ini file in that folder?

(If you normally don't display hidden files and you've been moving the mod files around, the hidden file may not have been moved along with the rest of the files. This would trigger the "protected assets" warning.)

I do not see a hidden desktop.ini file in that folder. I searched for one on my computer and one exists, but it does not appear to be in any way related to Civ (located C:\Windows\System32).

I'm going to have to take a break on this for now and take my dog to the vet. Thanks for the help.

Umm... I may have led you down a garden path. The desktop.ini file was in a previous version of the mod but apparently it's been removed in this version (as it should be).

Another thing for you to try then: Redownload the mod, and before extracting the zip file, right-click it and select properties, and see if there's an "Unblock" button showing in the property page. If there is, click it before you unzip the file.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I suspect I'll be looking into this tonight.

[Caledorn]

I am deliberately postponing the restart of the game until things like this mod issue has been resolved, just as an FYI to everyone.

[Fintourist]

Thanks for everyone here for trying to fix the Civstats (and Boldly's) problem!

If we actually need to create our own replacement here is my priority list (not that this is useful at all):

Very important
1. Time left of the current turn
2. List of players showing whether they have finished their turn (so that we can send PYFT mails)
3. The time when players ended their turn (minimum requirement for avoiding double-move mess

Also very useful
4. All the log in and log out times of all players

Useful but we would survive
5. Score changes

[scooter]

I know someone is already looking into a large game that worked fine on Civstats, but here's a 28 player game that worked fine on Civstats:

http://www.civstats.com/viewgame.php?gameid=1015

If anyone still has contact with Munro, he may be a good person to ask. That appears to be the largest game ever recorded on Civstats.

[WilliamLP]

$GD_Players[$i - 1][$PB_ARRAY_FINISHEDTURN] = 0
^ ERROR

Error: Array variable has incorrect number of subscripts or subscript dimension range exceeded.

So judging by Google, this error comes from the scripting language AutoIt which I've never heard of. (It superficially looks like PHP but PHP has no problem with "dimension ranges" since its "associative arrays" are really dictionaries with arbitrary keys and values.)

"AutoIt v3 is a freeware BASIC-like scripting language designed for automating the Windows GUI and general scripting." So it really is a screen scraper!

There is an "Exe2Aut" decompiler out there. I tried running it on the executable "CivStatsUploader.exe", but it complained "Either it's not an AutoIt3-Executable or it's protected." Then I tried uncompressing the .exe using a tool I'd never heard of called "upx" and that worked, but the uncompressed version still wasn't recognized by the decompiler.

So maybe someone could get somewhere with pursuing this further?

I bet if we could decompile and recompile this it would be as simple as changing an array dimension on initialization. Failing that, there is the option of sniffing the outgoing packets (like was suggested) and re-writing a new server side script that would send the same stuff, but that would be quite a bit of work.

[Old Harry]

I've PMed Barteq, Raptorous and Haram, to ask if the admin for KAC 25 had to do anything to get CivStats to work.