[Solved] Having trouble installing AI War 1.013?

[Revenantus]

When attempting to install AI War: Fleet Command using the version 1.013 installer, you may encounter an error stating that Disk1.cab is corrupt.

UPDATE: To resolve this issue, please download an updated version of the installer from GameTrove.

[T-Bone Biggins]

I also have this problem, quite annoying but the fix is easy enough. Maybe make a working installer?

[Revenantus]

Hi T-Bone Biggins,

X wasn't aware of the problem before he left this weekend, I'm sure that releasing a working installer will be his first priority upon returning.

For now, as I'm certain he'll be terribly sorry about the inconvenience caused, I hope you can accept an apology from me on his behalf.

[Admiral]

I had two problems installing 1.013 from the installer.

1) The .NET 3.5 SP1 installer didn't work: It never downloaded anything (the 52mb) but the initial installer stub.

2) The aforementioned problem.

So, I installed an old 1.006 + the 1.013 update to resolve #2, and I downloaded the full installer for .NET from MS and ran that before.

Cheers!

[x4000]

Hey guys, thanks for reporting this, and as Rev said, I am terribly sorry for the inconvenience here.  So, here's what's been going on, evidently -- I now suspect this may have been what happened with 1.005. 

Apparently, FileFront sometimes corrupts the files you upload to it (!?!).  This morning I tried the 1.013 installer that I had on my local drive, and it worked fine.  Then I downloaded the game from FileFront and tried that version -- completely busted, like you said.  So I downloaded and tried the version that is used for seeding GameTrove and CNET, and it worked great.  All of the other sites were seeded from FileFront, so of course they were all corrupted by its original corruption.

I've now made the GameTrove link the #1 download location on our mirrors list for now, and am uploading a new version (that hopefully won't get corrupted) to FileFront.  I'll have to talk to them and see what the deal is, I presume it's some sort of issue with their html-based uploader, I guess we'll see.

Also, Admiral:  for your .NET 3.5 installer not working, that issue happens with a minority of users on the web-based .NET 3.5 installer.  It's a bug that Microsoft is aware of, but they have not put out a fix to my knowledge in the year or so that they have known about it.    The solution, as you mention, is to download the full deal and install that instead.

[keith.lamothe]

I've tried CNET, AtomicGamer, and GameTrove but they all generate the same error message at about 8-16 seconds left:

"
The file 'ZedGraph.dll' cannot be installed because the file cannot be found in cabinet file 'PCW_CAB_Family'. This could indicate a network error, an error reading from the CD-ROM, or a problem with this package.
"

I think I have an old version around here somewhere that I can use the manual zip update on, so I think I'm ok, but wanted to let you know.

Finally got done with the other game/group that was keeping me busy, looking forward to getting back into this one

[Huw]

x4000, have you given any thought to using the bittorrent protocol to disseminate 100% verified install packages?  I, and I'm sure most others who play AI War, would be happy to seed for as long as our PCs were online.  Perhaps publishing md5 hashes would help too.

[x4000]

Hi keith,

Thanks for posting, this is kind of perplexing.  The corrupted copy was never in the locations you mention (except AtomicGamer).  Dozens of people have gotten the new version from those locations with no issue.  It sounds like you have a corrupted version, but I don't know why that would be if you got it from all of those sources.  I've downloaded the one from GameTrove (which is actually served direct from our site underneath), and it's fine for me.

Do you have any trouble installing other software?  For instance, my Dad's copy of XP has been having trouble for a while and is unable to install any software successfully (or uninstall it), but that's not localized to AI War.  I'm running out of ideas with that one, because I can't duplicate it and I have yet to have any other similar reports from others with the locations you describe... 

[x4000]

x4000, have you given any thought to using the bittorrent protocol to disseminate 100% verified install packages?  I, and I'm sure most others who play AI War, would be happy to seed for as long as our PCs were online.  Perhaps publishing md5 hashes would help too.

That's an interesting concept, but I would not know how to go about setting it up.  I also would not want that to be the primary delivery mechanism simply because a lot of people are not comfortable with bittorrent.  I've used it before myself, when I've had to, but it's never been something I really liked using so it annoyed me when some company decided the only way to get their product was via bittorrent.

Aside from that, I really don't have any spare bandwidth off my home computer to be seeding torrents, so it would have to be something set up from the Arcen server (if that's even possible).

[Revenantus]

I appreciate a BitTorrent option when it comes to downloading fairly large files (500MB+), primarily because the protocol allows me to stop and resume the download at any time.

AI War only requires an 80MB download, and all the download locations I've tried have offered adequate amounts of bandwidth, so there probably wouldn't be a huge amount of benefit to be had from using BitTorrent.

[Huw]

Oh yeah, it's totally possible if you wanted to do it.  I haven't done it myself but AFAIK you'd just put the file, verified, onto the server and then point whatever torrent tracker you'd use to it.  Then the server seeds the file until people start getting complete copies and then they'd seed it themselves.  But if you don't like bittorrent, fair enough.

Publishing hashes at least, though, would mean that people would at least know that their download hasn't been corrupted.

Revenantus - The reason I mentioned bittorrent was because of the installer issue in this thread.  If x4000 himself seeded a file he knew to be 100% correct, then everyone would be able to grab the file, effectively from him, safe in the knowledge that some third party (FileFront, was it?) hasn't corrupted it.  That or hashing would work just fine.

[Admiral]

Just for the record... I hate the concept of bittorrent. It's a privacy nightmare (leaks information to senders of what you want to get).

I also don't like the thought of vendors who are too cheap to buy the necessary bandwidth to distribute their products... (Not accusing anyone here of that.) But there are exceptions (e.g., free). Bandwidth is awfully cheap these days; I have 100 mbps at my office for $800/month and 4 gbps at my data center for much, much less per mbps.

[x4000]

Yep, I'm in agreement with all of those sentiments, too.

[eRe4s3r]

The reason torrents are superior is this

I click on a bunch of torrent links - my NAS opens them and queues them and i go out, 4 hours later i come back and see all my downloads finished... so ehm.. torrents are teh superior. (even better, RSS support ,p)

Privacy is an illusion. This very forum you post in uses 2 tracking cookies, one of which is Google Analytics (which is by far the most widespread) which means Google can list all the sites you visited, how long when and what for, including what topics you browsed for how long.

Thats the kind of privacy you have on the interweb. Torrents are at least closed eco-systems, you have to download stuff to see ip/client - but you don't actually see more than that and you can't build a usage log or a download log, because IP's regularly change and a leecher will maybe connect to 1% of the peers.

So the privacy complaint about torrents is moot.

But! AI war is too small for torrents and i wouldn't really want to have any torrent for it... The current system only appears bad because 1.13 had a issue.. and mirrors are notoriously difficult to update in such cases.

[x4000]

I would just like to note that the Google Analytics and Statcounter cookies don't track anything personally identifiable.  I use them to find where people are coming from, and to see the general number of people coming to the site on a given day (well north of 1,000 every day now, that's pretty cool -- only a few months ago it was more like 80).