American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

I am currently playing in a battle using the old 4.0 version. We are a good portion of the way through the battle. I'd like to update though so I can play another scenario from the same title against a different person. Assuming my 4.0 opponent updates at the same time as me - can we keep playing? Will we get an error message and ruin our game?

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Gen. Mitch Johnson
GENERAL IN CHIEF

General Johnson <salute>

Sir,

Definitely a Q for WDS Support. I personally wouldn't run the risk of corrupting the files.

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Karl McEntegart
Major General
Officer Commanding
Army of Tennessee





Make my enemy brave and strong, so that if defeated, I will not be ashamed.

I normally ask my opponent if he wishes to update, if he is playing more than one pbem game on the same engine it will affect all of his games. Once you update if you notify your opponent you did so he should update his game before opening your file. Provided you both update things should work fine, at least it has in the past. The problem comes in when one player updates and the other doesn't as not only is the engine itself changed sometimes they update maps, pdt and/or oob files which can cause problems in saved game files since the game engine does access those when playing and a change in the structure of the OOB file can definitely cause a saved game to crash while changes in the main engine, pdt or map file may only effect gameplay.

You can play different versions in different games (3.0 Gettysburg and 4.0 Antietam) but unless you make a separate copy of the game you can't play two games using different versions of the same game. I've done this when playtesting updates for games I am currently playing. I copy the game folder to a different folder and update that one for the testing.

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Gen. Ken Miller



The McKeesport Union Guard

1/1/I
AotP

It would seem more likely than not that if you update part-way through a game you will encounter problems. When v4.01 was issued WDS advised "that you complete on-going games prior to applying these updates" because changes were made to parameter data. I don't think all such changes were specifically listed in the Changelog so it's impossible to predict what problems you may encounter.
I'm surprised that anyone is still using v4.0 given the problems that were encountered with it. Best to finish your game up a.s.a.p. as it will not be too long before v4.01 is replaced.

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Paul Swanson
Lieutenant-General
First Division
First Corps
Army of Northern Virginia