Victory 109

[Panzerleader]

Lowlands, your time is limited in this game.

[Panzerleader]

And Portugal, too bad your invading army is trapped in Portalegre.

[Saint Michael]

We're still here

[Marklen X]

Who you playing Mike?

[Saint Michael]

15 hours ago, Marklen X said:

Who you playing Mike?

Southern Russia

 

[Spartan]

Question for everyone in reference to the Turn Entry Program. 

In the last two turns, I've had single orders, MCR's in both cases nullified because when the turn was run the Victory turn processing program seemed to have omitted a letter within the spelling of a single location along the path. For example, instead of xkulebaki showing in the MCR rail path, xkule aki. The letter was missing and the gap was present. This does not show in the Turn Entry Program you as a player are/were working on so there is no way to catch the omission/error on the players end. Even if you open the .trn file to see the actual text line by line, it doesn't look like it shows there either. 

Is anyone else seeing any of their turns have this issue? If so, we need to all let RTG know so a fix can hopefully be worked on.

Michael    

[Sun Tzu]

I had the same thing in turn 2. Also in a MCR order. Pete repaired the effects to the best extent possible and we hoped it was just a glitch.

He suggested it was caused by the transfer process to feed the orders to the old apple hardware on which the program runs and reformatted all the disks he uses for that.

Now you have the same problems we can rule out hoping it was "just a glitch". 

[Sun Tzu]

PS. I informed Pete you are now having the same issue.

Hopefully the cause can be identified and repaired rather than this being a sign of old age of the system.

[RTGPete]

I've seen that happen, but given the incredibly vast number of orders that run just fine, it's really rare.  Replacing hardware is tricky because the processing computer is so old; still, I'll see what I can do to mitigate or otherwise minimize the chances of the dropped letter issue.

Update:  I picked up a small hub today that offers a nice, tight connection for the device needed to translate data from the PC to the Mac.  It worked fine on some simple tests I just ran--with any luck this will clean up the very rare but also very annoying dropped letter issue.  There are other steps I can take in case that doesn't work, but hopefully this is all that will be needed.

[wlcmlc]

Spartan/Sun Tzu,

I and other people in my group have had this issue also and almost always in an MCR order.   We have also noticed extra characters randomly in our turn sheets.

Two things we have done that seem to have helped are to (1) delete and then re-download the order entry program.  This resets the Sheets.mdb file back to its starting size.  The second thing we do is always use the drop-down box when selecting a location for an MCR order (don't just hit enter).  Start typing the first location, once it shows up on the list click on it.  For all subsequent location click on the drop-down arrow, click on the location and hit enter.  For other orders where it isn't as easy to use the drop-down arrow, I will start typing the location and then click on it when it shows up on the list.

These 2 steps have significantly reduced the amount of missing character errors we have had.

Matt

[Hamish]

On 4/27/2024 at 4:03 PM, wlcmlc said:

Spartan/Sun Tzu,

I and other people in my group have had this issue also and almost always in an MCR order.   We have also noticed extra characters randomly in our turn sheets.

Two things we have done that seem to have helped are to (1) delete and then re-download the order entry program.  This resets the Sheets.mdb file back to its starting size.  The second thing we do is always use the drop-down box when selecting a location for an MCR order (don't just hit enter).  Start typing the first location, once it shows up on the list click on it.  For all subsequent location click on the drop-down arrow, click on the location and hit enter.  For other orders where it isn't as easy to use the drop-down arrow, I will start typing the location and then click on it when it shows up on the list.

These 2 steps have significantly reduced the amount of missing character errors we have had.

Matt

Have you ever checked the generated order file for missing characters? I have never encountered the problem so I have nothing to troubleshoot, but I am very surprised that resetting Sheets.mdb would have any effect on the order file that is created.

[Sun Tzu]

When I had this issue, first thing I did, was to check the file I sent to RTG and the location name in there was ok.

Last turn in my "Army General Report" I had a force from which the last digit of the maximum munition capacity was missing so it appeared as if it was carrying 3x the munition it was able to carry.

No harm done but as this concerns a program calculated value it looks like the problem does not sit in the VOEP generated order file.

I guess the program properly calculated the maximum munition capacity but it was not properly written to the report.
In case of the characters dropping out of the location names something went wrong in the reading process.

I expect that maybe a disk that is being used to transfer the orders to the aple machine and to which the reports are written still has some bad spots even after being reformatted. Worst case would be if the IO hardware from the disk drive itself is starting to suffer from old age. 

[wlcmlc]

Hamish,

Like Sun Tzu, we checked the file we sent to Pete, and it did not contain any errors and the name/location was in it correctly. In regard to the Sheets.mdb file it may or may not have helped to reset it, but it had grown from ~ 1,000 KB to over 7,000 KB by the time I re-downloaded the program.

Matt

[Hamish]

On 5/6/2024 at 6:14 AM, wlcmlc said:

Hamish,

Like Sun Tzu, we checked the file we sent to Pete, and it did not contain any errors and the name/location was in it correctly. In regard to the Sheets.mdb file it may or may not have helped to reset it, but it had grown from ~ 1,000 KB to over 7,000 KB by the time I re-downloaded the program.

Matt

The file growth is to be expected, it is a database that contains a copy of all order files you created with it. You can also just delete those from within the program. Not sure if the file will get much smaller, but I think it should at least prevent further growth for a while. Deleting the file and putting a clean copy is not a problem as you experienced.

Hamish