Combat Mission: "One Click to Combat"
A PBEM Utility
Overview
Requirements
Quick Start
Configuration
How Do I?
Known Problems
Future Enhancements
Uninstall
History
Acknowledgements
Contact the author
Overview
This utility provides an easy way to manage and play Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord play by email (PBEM) games. Launch this application instead of Combat Mission, and you are just one click from combat! No more searching sub directories for the latest email file, no more remembering different passwords for each game in progress. This utility takes care of it.
This utility automates CMBO email games such that:
- no longer do you have to search directories for the latest email file
- no longer do you have to type in your password
- facilitates keeping each game in a separate subdirectory
- One click in this app --> launches CM, loads file and starts turn. You are then watching the movie or issuing orders
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Requirements
Windows operating system (will not work on Macs)
PBEM games must use the convention of incrementing a 2 or 3 digit number at the end of the filename, and the root filename must remain the same throughout the game. For example, player 1 sends "SteveVersusCharles01.txt", player 2 sends "SteveVersusCharles02.txt", player 1 sends "SteveVersusCharles03.txt", etc.
CMBO opening movie must be disabled (starting game while holding "shift" will disable it I think)
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Quick Start
Here are the quick and easy steps to getting up and running with this utility:
- Copy the utility executable to some location on the harddrive (main CM directory is a
nice place to put it)
- Make sure that CM is not running, and that CM disk is in the CD-ROM drive
- Launch the utility executable
- Select "System->Configure..." from the menus
- Verify that the path and filename are correct for your CM executable (the defaults
match the CM install defaults). If they are different, then change them manually, or
press the "Browse" button to select the appropriate executable
- Press "Ok" button to get back to main dialog box
- Select "Edit->Add..." from the menus
- A dialog box will pop up...select the PBEM game you want to set up
- Fill in your password for this game
- If you are receiving the even numbered files from your opponent, check the "Receive even turns"
checkbox
- If this opponent doesn't want zip files, check the box which says "Never send zip files to this opp."
- Press "Ok" button
- Main window should now have the game listed either in the top listbox (turn is waiting for you),
or the lower listbox (waiting for email from opponent)
- If the game shows up in top listbox, select it and press "Play!" button on menu. Voila!
- If the game shows up in the bottom listbox, wait for an email from your opponent, copy the email
file to the games pbem directory, then launch the utility. The game will now show up in the top listbox,
and you can select it and press "Play!".
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Configuration
CM:BO Executable
-
This field should point to the CM:Beyond Overlord executable on your hard drive.
Retrieve Incoming Email
-
If your email program dumps attachments to a certain folder (or if it is convenient to save the PBEM attachments in a different directory than
the CMBO pbem directory) point this field at the folder where incoming emails arrive. When OneClick runs, it will look in that directory for
matching PBEM files and move them to the appropriate directory under the CMBO pbem directory.
Program Options
- Leave CM Running - if not checked, CM will exit when One Click exits
- Zip files greater than xxx kbytes - If checked, One Click will zip output files which are larger than the entered numbers (number is entered in kbytes).
- Check for CM CD - if checked, One Click will display an icon indicating whether or not the Combat Mission CD is currently in a drive. Also, when pressing "Play", if the CM CD is not in a drive, One Click will prompt you to put it in a drive, then it will wait for the CD.
Outgoing Email Configuration
- SMTP Server - Enter your SMTP server name. The easiest way to find this is to go into your email client
(Outlook/Eudora/Netscape/etc.) and look for a similar setup option.
- Your Email Address - The address you enter here will be put in the "Reply-To" field of your outgoing emails.
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Known Problems
If an incoming file is zipped, and has directory information in it, it may not get unzipped into the correct location. A manual unzip is required.
File names with spaces in them will not work correctly. After processing a turn, you will be left in the CM main screen, instead of popping back to One Click. Pressing exit at the main CM screen will get you back to One Click, but this won't be necessary if you don't have spaces in the file name.
SMTP Authorization is not supported yet.
Only the following CM resolutions are supported:
- Everything up to 1280x1024
- 1600x1200
- 1920x1440 might work (I can't test it)
- 2048x1536 might work (I can't test it)
After a game ends, it will still show up in the "Ready to process" list
Problems will occur if user interferes with CM startup menu selections after starting the utility
If you delete or move all of the old email files, game will show up as "Not started yet", but will still work correctly.
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Future Enhancements
Allow you to enter a directory which will be ignored by the "Add..." dialog box. This would be handy for ignoring games which are finished.
Command line interface to automatically process movie only turns
Automatically email resulting file to opponent
Automatically update turn number when saving file
Automatically save file
Allow you to go back and play old movies (currently not allowed)
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How Do I?
How do I get started?
How do I add new games?
Oops! I made a mistake when adding a game - how do I correct it?
How do I delete games which are finished?
How do I make an icon on the desktop that will launch this utility?
How do I support more than one CM executable at a time (multiple patches)?
How do I uninstall the utility?
See the Quick Start section of this manual.
- Select "Edit->Add..." from the menus
- A file open dialog box will pop up...select a PBEM file you want to setup
- Fill in your password for this game.
- Fill in number of turns for the game.
- If you are receiving the even numbered files from your opponent, check the "Receive even files" checkbox.
- Press "Ok" button.
Select the game in the listbox, and select the "Edit->Edit..." menu item. Make the
corrections, and press the "Ok" button.
Simply select the game, and select the "Edit->Delete..." menu item. A dialog box will ask for confirmation.
Right click on the desktop (a menu should appear). Select "New->Shortcut". A dialog box will appear, press browse, and select the utility executable.
When new versions of CM are released, PBEM games are usually not compatible with older versions. It is desirable in this case to be able to run both versions of CM on the same machine. Use the following steps if you want to do this. Rename the old CM executable to something distinctive ("Combat Mission 105.exe" e.g.). Rename the currently existing utility executable to something distinctive as well ("CM OneClick105.exe" e.g.). Install the CM patch, so that a new "Combat Mission.exe" is created. Copy the utility executable to a new name ("CM OneClick.exe" e.g.). Launch the newly named utility and delete all of the games (they will still exist in the renamed version of the utility). Configure (press the "Configure..." button) both utility executables so that they are both pointing to their respective CM executables. Now you can launch the utility executables, and they will automatically launch the correct version of CM.
The utility only creates one ".ini" file, nothing else (no registry entries). Uninstalling is simply a matter of deleting the utility executable, this file, and the ini file. The ini file will be in the same directory as the utility executable, and will have the same root name.
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History
- Version 1.0.4.0 Release 02/11/2001
- Added button to batch send all unsent games
- Added a game configuration selection to never send zip files for that game
- Fixed bug where sending filenames with spaces in them did not get sent correctly (the filename might be truncated by the receiving client).
- Version 1.0.3.0 Release 02/03/2001
- Added feature to check for Combat Mission CD
- Fixed bug which prevented program from working in Windows ME (might also fix problems in Win2K)
- Added support for resolutions 1600x1200, 1920x1440, 2048x1536
- Fixed bug which failed to fetch incoming email if the game was being stored in a subdirectory under PBEM
- Version 1.0.2.1 Test Release 11/22/2000
- Zipping is now done after playing, instead of before sending. So even if you don't use this program to send files, it will still zip them.
- Gave priority to .txt files over .zip files when game is active. This is in case the zip file was already unzipped before running One Click.
- Retries added when looking for file name control box. Some reports of error entering file name should be corrected.
- Retries when copying txt file after playing a game. Some reports of unable to copy files should be corrected.
- Fixed bug with zip byte limit not working. Was always zipping.
- Version 1.0.2.0 Test Release 11/20/2000
- Added zip and unzip ability
- Added capability to copy PBEM files from a common email receive directory
- Version 1.0.1.0 Test Release 11/19/2000
- Added ability to email files from within CM One Click
- Commonly used functions are now buttons (Play, Play All, and Send)
- Fixed bug with case-sensitivity in file names
- Added one retry when trying to open CM files
- Added ability to minimize dialog box
- Added option to leave CM running when exitting One Click
- Added size of file and whether it has been sent in list boxes
- Added configuration setup for zipping files (Zipping not implemented yet)
- Added double clicking of list boxes to play or send depending on list box
- When adding games, all available games are listed, instead of picking file
- Added "System->Refresh" menu item to re-scan the disk for new/changed files
- Added configuration setting for retrieving incoming email files (not implemented yet)
- Version 1.0.0.2 Test Release 11/11/2000
- Fixed problems at various resolutions. Following resolutions now supported: 640x480; 720x576; 800x600; 960x720; 1024x768; 1152x864; 1280x960; 1280x1024
- Major re-haul of the interface (from buttons to menu)
- Fixed problem running on non-English Windows installs (should work with all languages)
- Small tweak to PlayAll transitions - should be smoother
- Removed separate "Name" for each game. Games are referenced strictly by their PBEM filename
- Added interface elements for emailing, but they are not activated yet
- Version 1.0.0.1 Sent to testers on 11/8/2000
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Acknowledgements
- The Zip/Unzip code is ZipArchive version 1.1 by Tadeusz Dracz. ZipArchive was slightly modified to compile under VC5.
- ZipArchive uses zlib (version 1.1.3) by Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler.
- The SMTP code is a highly modified version of a class written by Wes Clyburn, downloaded from http://www.codeguru.com.
This class was modified mainly to support asynchronous operation (in a worker thread). It was also modified to use a CStringList for attachments rather
than one big CString.
- The dialog box to select a folder (configure a directory to retrieve incoming emails from) is a CDirDialog class downloaded from http://www.codeguru.com.
Source code is available by emailing me at kyleneet@yahoo.com