anarres
anarchist revolutionary
I am thinking of writing a program that helps manage your PBEM games. I forsee it being useful to people in more than 1 PBEM game.
One of my biggest problems is getting home form work and having 4 or 5 PBEM games in my inbox. I save each to their sub-directories, and start playing. What I often find is that there is a game that I saved to the hard drive, but forgot to play and send, or one that I played, but still forgot to send.
Another problem I have is that I use hotmail for outgoing mail, and so I use outlook express as my email client. I can never save sent messages as my 2mb limit would fill up very quickly (I would have to empty it a couple of times a night), and so there is no record of whether or not I have sent the save.
For this reason, I want to write a PBEM handler. For it to be really useful it has to integrate in to outlook express for me, and consequently it is fairly trivial to also get it to integrate with outlook as well (not 100% sure, but I think so).
As I see it, a PBEM handler should do the following:
1) Configure the save game directory location
2) Add each new PBEM, and store the (sub)-directory name, and the email to send games on to.
3) Automatically check the save directories for new saves, tell you that they need to be played.
4) Tell you when you have played games that need to be emailed on to the next person
5) Keep a record on what turn number you are on.
the next points are a possibility, but I need feeback on the most commonly used email programs
4) Pulg in to MS Outlook or MS Outlook Exress (both possible)
5) Automatically copy new saves to the correct locaion when you recieve them (based on subject name)
6) Email on the saves after they have been played, although I would want this to be conrolled through the UI.
Maybe ultimately it could look in the .sav files to determine which game/turn number it is, but for the moment I will control it through the naming of the saves to the hard drive (such as 001.<mygamename>.<before/after>.sav , or something like that).
So, please take part in my poll. I would like to know if you would use such a program. If you have comments or suggestions for features then all the better.
One of my biggest problems is getting home form work and having 4 or 5 PBEM games in my inbox. I save each to their sub-directories, and start playing. What I often find is that there is a game that I saved to the hard drive, but forgot to play and send, or one that I played, but still forgot to send.
Another problem I have is that I use hotmail for outgoing mail, and so I use outlook express as my email client. I can never save sent messages as my 2mb limit would fill up very quickly (I would have to empty it a couple of times a night), and so there is no record of whether or not I have sent the save.
For this reason, I want to write a PBEM handler. For it to be really useful it has to integrate in to outlook express for me, and consequently it is fairly trivial to also get it to integrate with outlook as well (not 100% sure, but I think so).
As I see it, a PBEM handler should do the following:
1) Configure the save game directory location
2) Add each new PBEM, and store the (sub)-directory name, and the email to send games on to.
3) Automatically check the save directories for new saves, tell you that they need to be played.
4) Tell you when you have played games that need to be emailed on to the next person
5) Keep a record on what turn number you are on.
the next points are a possibility, but I need feeback on the most commonly used email programs
4) Pulg in to MS Outlook or MS Outlook Exress (both possible)
5) Automatically copy new saves to the correct locaion when you recieve them (based on subject name)
6) Email on the saves after they have been played, although I would want this to be conrolled through the UI.
Maybe ultimately it could look in the .sav files to determine which game/turn number it is, but for the moment I will control it through the naming of the saves to the hard drive (such as 001.<mygamename>.<before/after>.sav , or something like that).
So, please take part in my poll. I would like to know if you would use such a program. If you have comments or suggestions for features then all the better.
I am in six PBEM's and don't really see a problem here. I do the same: get the saves out of the emails, put them in the subdirectory play, remember the person to sent it to, put them in an email and there you are. Heavy alt-tabbing is a must but everybody is able to do that nowadays.
very often for chatting and file transferring in our anarres vs. ERIKK PBEM game.
For this reason I have to use crappy internet mail, and I can't record what I've sent.
