terryl (05/26/82)
The version of empire we are running here at Tek is one for an 11/70, and it will blindly believe whatever date the system says. Recently, after a system crash, the date got set wrong (it was set to three months ago). When I logged into empire, it said I had -17,000 BTUS (approximately)!!!! Well, needless to say I immediately got out of the game, set the date to be the correct date, and went back into empire. Well, this time it said I had -19,000 BTUS (approxiamtely, again)!!!! Hey, Peter, how about doing something intelligent like checking to see if the current date is less than the last login date into the game, and if so print a message to that effect and don't do any updating and quit????? I had to go into the empnat file (this is the file that keeps track of such things) with adb and hand patch it to give me a positive BTU count. Well, this worked but when I logged into the game next time, quite a few of my people died, and my research and technology levels had shrunk quite a bit!!!!!!! Boy, what a drag!!!!! Also, when the DEITY tried to run fix from the user-id that it was supposed to, we get the message 3 != 3, and then welcome back to empire. Anyone know anything about how the DEITY is supposed to do this to be able to fix things up??? I know this would be the preferred way instead of going into adb to fix things!!!! Also, in adb I was just guessing which fields in the file contained the BTU count, which was lucky that I guessed the right field!!!! Terry Laskodi ucbvax!teklabs!terryl or decvax!teklabs!terryl
bch (05/27/82)
References: teklabs.1197 The damage would have been minimal if you had not tried to fix the problem yourself. Resetting the system date was probably OK, but then you should have waited for the Deity to go in and patch the sectors you had looked at and your nation record. Trying to do it yourself was asking for trouble. Trying to play *after* you had tried to fix it yourself was guaranteeing catastrophe! ->Byron (Valhalla) P.S. Be nice to Deitys. This buggy game makes it very trying to be one.
ber (05/28/82)
#R:teklabs:-119700:harpo:15500008:000:156 harpo!ber May 27 22:54:00 1982 You're right. And peter should fix the kernel too so when you create files with the wrong dates 'make' will know what the date really was, etc... brian
terryl (05/28/82)
And what's wrong with a little intelligence in a program, Brian??? That's the problem with a lot of programs. Too many bells and whistles that hardly ever get used, but let someone suggest that a program use a little intelligence for a little more predictable behavior, and boy, what sensitive issues are brought up!!!! Frankly, I thought my original request was totally reasonable. I just don't hope you'll ever play a game of empire where the date was set back, and you only find out about it the next time you try and play!!!! I wouldn't want to wish that on even my worse enemy in the game!!!(Makes it kinda unfair, especially when he can't defend himself). As to your comment about the kernel and make, well.... Terry Laskodi ucbvax!teklabs!terryl or decvax!teklabs!terryl
psl (05/31/82)
Unfortunately there are problems with trying to make the program too "smart", too. E.g. if I made it say "clock set wrong!" and dump you out when it sees that your last log in was "after" the current time then all you'd need is to have the same error the other way (i.e. Mortimer Snerd brings up the system and tells it that it's 1983) and you log in happy as a clam with lots of BTUs and then someone fixes the time and you can't log in for another year... No, I couldn't make it clever enough to catch that because is might only be off by a month and you don't want to be dumped out because you haven't played for a month either... Interactive Systems once got very "smart" in the tty driver and suppressed sending out any carriage returns when your cursor was known to be in the first column already. This probably saved five or six character transmissions a day on our system. Then one day we got an Olympia Electronic Typewriter hooked up to the system and it worked fine except it wouldn't double or triple space... Sure enough, the Oly was ignoring <LF> and doing carriage return and line feed on receipt of <CR>. I spent two weeks (off & on) wondering what kind of lemon they had sent us. I'd much rather have something go wrong in an obvious way when the circumstances are obviously weird than have a "smart" system handle one or two weird cases well and then blow up for "no reason" when everything should be copacetic. What? Me defensive? Peter (esquire!psl)