Negative Errors

From: cocomax@aol.com (Cocomax)

Date: Sun, 01 Sep 1996 00:00:00 +0000

There is a new error that has popped up over the last 2 months,
for some unknown reason the players TRN file is coming back to host
with negative money values when a planet has over 65535 mega credits
on the surface.

Many people are upset about this error and blame the HOST.EXE for the
error. Many people have become so upset that they have quit playing
planets.

I suspect the error is being caused by a buggy 3rd party player side
addon program, but I do not yet know which one.

Planets.exe, host.exe and winplan.exe can all handle money values
of up to 2.1 billion metacredits.

Here is one of the best bug reports to date:
>>>
I have the following problem with Host3.22: I got a BIG DATA UNDERFLOW
error in one of my player's turn files. The reason for this seems to be
that more than 65535 Megacredits have accumulated on a planet. Since the
planet has Avian natives (Participatory) is owned by the Feds and has a
few Lizard HISSS-mission ships in orbit this wasn't hard to accomplish.
The problem is however that it is very hard to get rid of the money. The
player tried to build fighters on his starbase which resulted in the
error message. After a second or third try to buy something he got
attacked by the Tim Continuum for trying to cheat. Needless to say that
he's not playing anymore.
>>>

Tim

References

Galactic Traveller - Periodic Site Advertisment
jacko@jacobean.demon.co.uk (Jacko)
Sun, 01 Sep 1996 00:00:00 +0000