ruff_hi
Live 4ever! Or die trying
Do you play Play By Email (PBEM) games? I do
slow but fun. I am playing in one game that has been running for over a year. The only downside to this is that I have to manually send the emails due to my ISP restrictions. The other week, I found that I could send emails via smtp using my gmail account. Thus, I set up this small utility.
If your ISP restricts your access to smtp or requires a UserID and password to send email, then the Civ4 in-game emailer is a total waste of time and this utility is for you
Once you have set up the utility with your PBEM games, then sending the save forward and sending out GPS emails is easy really easy. Start the game, check the games you want to send emails for and click Send. The game will automatically create the emails, attach the latest save to the save email and send it for you.
The GPS email is critical as there is often games that stall during a hunt the latest save period Do you have it? No, do you?
Get the installer for v2.2.0 here.
WARNING: I strongly suggest that you copy or backup your 'Civ4PBEMEmailer_Data.xml' before moving to a new version of this program and(!) moving your data file to a new location. I just accidentally over-wrote my data file (glad I had a backup copy of it).
New for v2.2.0
It has been a while since I updated this so I am not 100% sure what has changed since v2.0.1 ... anyway, here goes ...
New for v2.0.1
New for v2.0.0
New for v1.8.1
New for v1.8.0
New for v1.7.2
New for v1.7
If your ISP restricts your access to smtp or requires a UserID and password to send email, then the Civ4 in-game emailer is a total waste of time and this utility is for you
Once you have set up the utility with your PBEM games, then sending the save forward and sending out GPS emails is easy really easy. Start the game, check the games you want to send emails for and click Send. The game will automatically create the emails, attach the latest save to the save email and send it for you.
The GPS email is critical as there is often games that stall during a hunt the latest save period Do you have it? No, do you?
Get the installer for v2.2.0 here.
WARNING: I strongly suggest that you copy or backup your 'Civ4PBEMEmailer_Data.xml' before moving to a new version of this program and(!) moving your data file to a new location. I just accidentally over-wrote my data file (glad I had a backup copy of it).

New for v2.2.0
It has been a while since I updated this so I am not 100% sure what has changed since v2.0.1 ... anyway, here goes ...
- rearranged main screen (again)
- moved generic settings (ie xml data location) from game xml file to registry
- game prompts for data xml location if it cannot find it (or if the value in the registry is not set)
- option to encrypt / mask email password - thx to Hawklord for suggestion and testing
- WARNING: The encryption I added is some VB code that I found after spending about 10 minutes on google. As such, it won't be earth shatteringly good. I have spiced it up a little by adding some salt to the mixture (you can google that to find out what I mean). However, don't trust this encryption much - it will just make it a little bit harder for someone to hack your email.
- added a animated gif that plays while emails are being sent
- added the ability to send all players involved in a pbem game a 'nag' email (where the heck is the game??)
- game installs to new location (C:\ProgFiles\RuffCutCode\PBEMEmailer)
New for v2.0.1
- bug fix for bug mentioned in post 79 of this thread
New for v2.0.0
- main screen tidy up
- introduction of 'Quick Notes' - small messages that automatically get included in the outgoing 'SAVE' email - very useful for 1v1 games
- game now warns about upgrading XML file and attempts to create backup of existing XML before upgrading it
New for v1.8.1
- bug fix for bug reported by PoM
New for v1.8.0
- wider main screen
- more details about the game (name, save information, date of save)
- auto select (checks games that you haven't forwarded)
- hide confirmation (does not show the 'send this game' style dialog boxes)
- auto suppression of GPS emails if you are only playing against 1 other human
- ability to store the xml data file in any location
- validates game directories
- labels games as 'not started' if it cannot detect the directory or the directory is empty
New for v1.7.2
- generates a log file (same directory as the XML file) if you hold down the shift key when you start the application
New for v1.7
- program does not terminate after 'send' - it use to
- 'refresh' button included to refresh the game status
- 'Open' XML folder now opens the fold where the XML is stored - doesn't work very well for Vista due to the virtual storage and I am not going to put the time into fixing it
- Can now export individual game settings to a text file