(April 20th, 2020, 15:29)SDragon Wrote: Since kyrub's v1.40m patch has been around for years and is pretty stable, I've repackaged it without the autosave every year debugging help that was added. It now uses the previous v1.3 autosave of saving every 5 years and only saved to SAVE7.GAM. That way people can play and enjoy his patch without having to worry about having their directory saving every year that they play.
No other code was touched in regards to his patch.
Thank you so much for this. Today I started trying out 1.40m and I noticed that it was saving every turn. Not good when playing on a REAL 1997 Pentium 166-MMX with a 6.5 GB HD that's 99% full :-). I decided to search for any info about how I might disable that "feature" and to my utter delight I found exactly what I was looking for right here. Wow. Hmm I think I better pinch myself to make sure I'm awake. Hmm pinching doesn't really do much LOL. Guess I didn't choose a sensitive enough spot ;-)
Anyways. Thank you 10^100^100.
p.s. I also DLed the other patch for battle scanner display. Question: does the no auto save starmap.exe also patch that when used with the new resources.lbx from the battle scanner patch or does one have to choose which of the 2 to use?
Each to their own - I've really enjoyed having every turn saved myself! Nothing quite like it for going back and regenerating screenshots you should have taken but forgot to during SGs. Or actually being able to go back enough turns to "fix" a mistake in less formal games .
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
(April 20th, 2020, 15:29)SDragon Wrote: Since kyrub's v1.40m patch has been around for years and is pretty stable, I've repackaged it without the autosave every year debugging help that was added. It now uses the previous v1.3 autosave of saving every 5 years and only saved to SAVE7.GAM. That way people can play and enjoy his patch without having to worry about having their directory saving every year that they play.
No other code was touched in regards to his patch.
Thank you so much for this. Today I started trying out 1.40m and I noticed that it was saving every turn. Not good when playing on a REAL 1997 Pentium 166-MMX with a 6.5 GB HD that's 99% full :-). I decided to search for any info about how I might disable that "feature" and to my utter delight I found exactly what I was looking for right here. Wow. Hmm I think I better pinch myself to make sure I'm awake. Hmm pinching doesn't really do much LOL. Guess I didn't choose a sensitive enough spot ;-)
Anyways. Thank you 10^100^100.
p.s. I also DLed the other patch for battle scanner display. Question: does the no auto save starmap.exe also patch that when used with the new resources.lbx from the battle scanner patch or does one have to choose which of the 2 to use?
Each to their own - I've really enjoyed having every turn saved myself! Nothing quite like it for going back and regenerating screenshots you should have taken but forgot to during SGs. Or actually being able to go back enough turns to "fix" a mistake in less formal games :mischief: .
If you read my post carefully you'll see that I've got a full old hard disk. If I was running this on my Linux Laptop under DOSBOX (which works very nicely) I doubt I'd have even noticed with a 128GB SSD... but as actually happened the 512 MB disk filled up after only 20 turns and I was puzzled why the game suddenly was in slow mo.
Good point about being able to go back for screenshots. I'm having some fun with that. Although it is trivial under Linux/DOSbox to make a screencap under DOS it needed a special TSR called ScreenThief. It works just as well, but I did have to identify and then find and download and install it (which meant writing it a batch file too : ) since I'd never used one before.
"I think most people posting on a MOO/MOM forum in 2020 BC probably count as Time Travelers." : )
Hello all; first time poster. Somehow, I never before got the 32000 ship bug. That's something considering I played MOO when it originally came out. Well, now I have it. I have applied the unofficial patch, and can tell that I have done so from the Map screen's date display. Does anyone know how to find the utility that deletes the negative/32K fleets from save games? I'm in a fun one right now and would hate to have to start over.
Welcome to the forum, jkk! I don't know which utility you mean, but if you can attach a save file here (zip the save, then upload the .zip file using the browse button under "Attachments" below your post, then click "Add Attachment" once the file is selected) I should be able to edit the file to remove any 32K fleets. (Sargon0 created a map of MoO save files which I have lying around somewhere, and I think still exists on this forum, and taught me to use rexx to edit the saves to create e.g. Imperium games where events are delayed or everyone is guaranteed to have Controlled Radiated Environment in their tree.) It might take me a little while, as I haven't done this in years ... maybe even a decade? But it should work.
(I can probably also create a rexx script so you can do it yourself, but that would take a little longer. It's also possible that there are others on the forum who are better-versed in savefile editing than I am and can do it more quickly.)
I'm glad you're enjoying MoO, and - secretly - I'd kind of love to see the save file in part just to see what your game looks like, as it sounds like you're having a lot of fun with it!
[attachment=24656 Wrote:RefSteel pid='814197' dateline='1661409198']Welcome to the forum, jkk! I don't know which utility you mean, but if you can attach a save file here (zip the save, then upload the .zip file using the browse button under "Attachments" below your post, then click "Add Attachment" once the file is selected) I should be able to edit the file to remove any 32K fleets. (Sargon0 created a map of MoO save files which I have lying around somewhere, and I think still exists on this forum, and taught me to use rexx to edit the saves to create e.g. Imperium games where events are delayed or everyone is guaranteed to have Controlled Radiated Environment in their tree.) It might take me a little while, as I haven't done this in years ... maybe even a decade? But it should work.
(I can probably also create a rexx script so you can do it yourself, but that would take a little longer. It's also possible that there are others on the forum who are better-versed in savefile editing than I am and can do it more quickly.)
I'm glad you're enjoying MoO, and - secretly - I'd kind of love to see the save file in part just to see what your game looks like, as it sounds like you're having a lot of fun with it!
Thank you very much, RefSteel, for the offer and the warm welcome. To be honest, I didn't know what utility I meant either, and maybe that was kind of hopeful thinking. Evidently the rexx script is the thing, and I was ready to try it if I could find that one, but the link was out of date. I last hex edited anything back in the mid-1990s (as in when MOO1 was new and I thought it was the greatest thing since voice mail) and I am quite confident I have zero idea what I'd be doing with that.
You might find that I was ultraconservative in my game. It was my first time playing MOO1 in a while and it was more or less a learning game, with a really lucky corner start. After a few nasty outcomes in combat, I decided to seriously beef the missile bases. I'm now just getting to where it's about time to respond to the next lunatic declaration of war with: "Okay, you want to be first? Very well. Let's see how you like this." But I would rather not try doing that against 32K fleets. I used the unofficial 1.4n patch so I don't expect this with new games, but this is the one I have (zipped and attached, properly I hope). Thanks again.
Turns out there was a faster way than relearning rexx, using 1oom's saveconv feature and a text editor! If you want a utility you can use yourself without risking spoiler info, I can still look into a scripting solution, but that probably would take at least until this weekend, whereas this should work right now. I just went through and deleted any stacks of exactly 32000 ships and converted the save back to standard MoO format, then zipped and attached it here. Let me know if it works as expected!
(August 25th, 2022, 09:17)jkk Wrote: You might find that I was ultraconservative in my game. It was my first time playing MOO1 in a while and it was more or less a learning game, with a really lucky corner start. After a few nasty outcomes in combat, I decided to seriously beef the missile bases. I'm now just getting to where it's about time to respond to the next lunatic declaration of war with: "Okay, you want to be first? Very well. Let's see how you like this." But I would rather not try doing that against 32K fleets. I used the unofficial 1.4n patch so I don't expect this with new games, but this is the one I have (zipped and attached, properly I hope). Thanks again.
Sounds like a lot of fun! I haven't had a chance to open the game up myself, but it's always great to read game reports, whether brief or in depth!
(August 25th, 2022, 13:15)RefSteel Wrote: Turns out there was a faster way than relearning rexx, using 1oom's saveconv feature and a text editor! If you want a utility you can use yourself without risking spoiler info, I can still look into a scripting solution, but that probably would take at least until this weekend, whereas this should work right now. I just went through and deleted any stacks of exactly 32000 ships and converted the save back to standard MoO format, then zipped and attached it here. Let me know if it works as expected!
It works exactly as expected. I haven't seen any more 32K doomstacks, and not a hitch. Now I'm just blatantly spying and stealing their techs just to see which one will finally decide to drop the gloves. Thank you very much for taking time to help me, and so quickly, too. May all your investments go continuously up with increasing dividends to boot.
One thing I came across was Remnants, essentially a MOO1 remake with very similar mechanics (a few nice options but nothing that makes it not feel like MOO1 with sharper images). If you have not tried it, it's at this site. I only had to play it for a few hours before deciding to go back and pay the developer double his suggested amount. Ever since they came out, strategy games (board, then computer) have been a ridiculous level of bang for the buck. I've probably spent a grand total of $100 on MOO1 and MOO2 in my life. I have probably spent a thousand hours of that life playing them. By my arithmetic, that means they have cost me a dime an hour. Can't beat that value anywhere!
Again, enormous thanks to you. If you ever need some editing support, that's what I do in life. I would love to return the kindness.
I'm glad I was able to help, and that you're enjoying the game! (I've played "Remnants of the Precursors" some too, and even wondered if there'd be enough interest for a Succession Game.)
It's also incredibly kind of you to offer a return favor, but honestly it's been return enough to hear about your game, get a chance to see the save, and find out I could help! In my own real life, I'm a librarian (not by job title, but by job description) and a writer (of fiction, mostly for the sake of the characters and stories themselves) - for me, figuring out how to fix an Orion save file isn't anything like work. (Neither is writing stories actually, though it takes a whole lot more time - including silly first-and-only-drafts about e.g. a Mrrshan free matriarchy struggling for survival against insane machines - and I sometimes wonder, if I tried to make a living from my writing, if it would start to feel like work ... or if it would just be like never needing to work at all! In part because I really love my job at the library, I've never tried to put the question to a serious test.)
Is there a rough ranking in AI difficulty for the various MOO versions and mods? Kyrubs seems much harder than 1.3, but where do 1oom, 1oom-fork, or RotP slot in?
(November 7th, 2022, 10:35)Bionic Commando Wrote: Is there a rough ranking in AI difficulty for the various MOO versions and mods? Kyrubs seems much harder than 1.3, but where do 1oom, 1oom-fork, or RotP slot in?
I haven't played all the forks, and I've never completed a game of RotP (playtested some early builds) but my impression is that RotP probably has the strongest AI (but the difficulty levels may not line up in terms of production bonuses) - probably followed by kyrub's patch, though it's possible some of the 1oom forks do better than others.
I've been thinking off and on about doing a playthrough and write-up of Remnants, but so far haven't found the time and motivation.
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