How to Send and Receive Gamefiles by Email

Last revised 20-July-97 by Bob Heeter

This page explains how to send and receive gamefiles by email. This is the only non-Warlords skill required to play in the tournament.

  1. Tournament File Transfer Standard:

    2. The tournament standard is to "ZIP" gamefiles to compress them, and then to either "ATTACH" them (if your email software supports attachments) or to "UUENCODE" them for transmission as plain text files. For Mac-only games, players may use StuffIt and BinHex instead.

    PC Users must have PKZip and possibly UUencoding software.

    Mac Users must have version 4.0 or later of StuffItExpander (free).

  2. Sending Files:

    1. Filename Warning for Mac Users:
      Mac users must remember that DOS files have an "8.3" format, meaning an 8-letter filename followed by a three-character extension. (like P05T01S1.ZIP) We will use the 8.3 convention for the duration of the tournament.

    2. Compress the File First:
      Before sending files, you must compress them into .ZIP files (for PC and cross-platform games) or .SIT files (for Mac-only games). PC players should use PKZip or the equivalent. Mac players should use a flavor of StuffIt for .SIT files, and for ZIP we recommend ZipIt 1.3.5 (shareware).

    3. "Attach" Files If Possible:
      Once a gamefile has been compressed, the next step is to email it. The easiest way to transmit a file by email is as an "attached" (MIME) file. If you have a TCP/IP connection to the Internet (so that you can use Netscape, do FTP, and so on), then your email software (Eudora, Pegasus, AOL, etc.) probably supports file attachments. AOL and many other Internet Service Providers also provide file-attachment capabilities. If you're not sure, you should look carefully, because file attachments are *much* more convenient than the alternatives.

      Once you attach a file, simply send the message normally. It will take a little longer than normal because the attached file must be sent as well. To test whether your file attachment worked, simply send yourself (or a friend) an email message with an attached file.

    4. Cut-and-Paste When Attachments Don't Work:
      If you don't have the ability to attach files, there is still hope - it's just that the alternatives are a bit more tedious! You will need software that can UUencode files (PC and cross-platform) or Binhex files (Mac-only). Both UUencoding and binhexing are ways of translating binary data into plain-text data. These are necessary because email is a plain-text system that chokes on binary data. To send a file this way, you need to UUencode your .ZIP file (or binhex your .SIT file), and then use some convenient method (such as cut-and-paste) for inserting the encoded text into a mail message.

  3. Receiving Files:

    1. Receiving Gamefile Email:
      Sometimes a message will come through which your email software does not automatically decode. In this case it will often look like there is a lot of gibberish in the message. This is not a life-threatening disaster - simply save the message as plain text, and then run various decoding utilities on it until a nice .ZIP file emerges. Below is a list of useful utilities which have handled all our problems so far. For a more detailed explanation, see the extensive Appendix on Extracting Gamefiles from Gibberish

    2. Uncompressing Files You Receive:
      Once you have the .ZIP (or .SIT) file, you will need to uncompress (unzip) it. PC users can use PKZip for .ZIP files, and StuffIt Expander for Windows for .SIT files. Mac users can use StuffItExpander to uncompress both .ZIP and .SIT files.

    3. Opening Files In Warlords:
      (Relevant to Mac users.) Macs may not recognize that a DOS player's file belongs to Warlords, so you may not be able to open a gamefile by double-clicking on it. But if you run Warlords first, and then open the file using Warlords itself, Warlords will peek inside the file and usually recognize that it's a gamefile.

      If you want a more elegant solution, read this advice from SSG:

      You can set your Macintosh up so that .Sav and .Scz files that are transferred from DOS computers are automatically recognised as being Warlords II files. There are two places you need to set this up: the PC Exchange control panel for files copied by floppy, and Internet Config for files transferred by e-mail. These notes do not attempt to instruct you on just how to use these programs. Check the documentation that comes with them. PC Exchange is a part of the Macintosh System Software, and Internet Config is available from http://www.quinn.echidna.id.au/Quinn/Config/

      PC Exchange: Set up a type of .SAV, with Warlords II Deluxe as the application, and a file type of 'W2DD', and also a type of .SCZ, with W2 Scenario Installer as the application, and a file type of 'SCZ '.

      Internet Config: In the File Mapping's window, add an entry with the following details:

      Name: Warlords MS-DOS save game
      Extension: .sav
      MIME Type: leave this blank
      Binary data
      File Type: 'D2DD'
      File Creator: 'W2D ', Warlords II Deluxe
      Turn off Not for Outgoing, Not for Incoming, and Post Process.

      and add another entry with:

      Name: Warlords II Scenario Package
      Extension: .scz
      MIME Type: leave this blank
      Binary data
      File Type: 'SCZ '
      File Creator: 'W2DC', W2 Scenario Installer
      Turn off Not for Outgoing, Not for Incoming, and Post Process."

  4. Critical Utility Collection:

    5. We have created a small collection of useful utilities for the tournament. Some of these are available for direct download; others require a bit of legwork. For direct downloads, you will need a respectable Web browser (Netscape, Internet Explorer, etc.). On Netscape simply click and hold on the link, and then select "Save this Link As...". Use the "Source" option rather than "Text", and you will get the binary data. You will then need to decode and uncompress the files you receive (uudecode and unzip for PC, StuffIt Expander for Mac).

    1. PC

    2. Mac

  5. Good Luck! A Mighty Battle Is Brewing...

Appendix: Extracting Gamefiles from Gibberish

During the Warlords tournament you will almost certainly receive the occasional file which your mail software doesn't recognize and doesn't automatically decode. This is normal, don't panic! Just follow the instructions below.

Step 1: Save the text to your Mac or PC
Use whatever mail / ftp software you have to get the text of the message with the unrecognized attachment onto your computer. (i.e., Save the message from your mail software onto your computer, or download it from your mail server to your computer some other way.)

Step 2: Try the automatic decoders
Try XFERPRO (PC) and StuffIt Expander (Mac). These are available from the utility list up above.

Step 3: If necessary, inspect the file
Open the file up with any text editor (e.g., Write for Windows, TeachText for Mac, etc.), and then scan past the email headers to the place where the attachment is. Or, if you received an attachment but couldn't decode it, look at the beginning of the file.

If you see control characters and lines of greatly differing lengths, you've probably got a .ZIP or .SIT file, and if you rename it as such you can often UnZip (or UnStuff) it. If you see "begin 644 ...", that means you have a uuencoded file, and you need to UUDecode. If you see "(This document has been encoded with BinHex 4.0)", you need to UnBinHex. If you see "MIME" or "base64", you need to de-MIME. If decoding doesn't work, you may need to strip out any extraneous header info (such as E-Mail message text) first.

Step 4: If necessary, use a specialized decoder
Various possible decoders are in the utility list up above. Download whatever you might need, and good luck! (Note to PC users - XFERPRO has various modes, and if the automatic mode fails, use a specific mode for whatever sort of file you think you have.)

Step 5: Open the gamefile! (From inside Warlords)
(Relevant to Mac users.) The MacOS may not recognize that a file belongs to Warlords, so you may not be able to double-click on a gamefile in order to open it up with Warlords. But Warlords peeks inside the file and will know if it's a gamefile. So run Warlords first, and then open the game file from inside the application.

If you find you still have a problem, email one of the following with a complete description of your problem, what software you use for reading mail, and what programs you've tried for decoding the mystery file. Paste in the text of the mystery file if you can.

See also SSG's instructions for cross-platform Play-by-Email

Back to the Tournament Rules