This file contains descriptions of the file formats of the strategic play-by-email game VGA Planets(tm) 3 by Tim Wisseman, and of some 3rd party utility programs for that game. The file is meant as a help to programmers of new utility programs. I don't know where the programmers of existing utilities got their information from as I didn't find a file comparable to this one yet. I started from nothing with my hex editor and a debugger. If you don't want to do this too, here are my results. I just can't stand if there are files on my hard disk and I don't know how they are built up.
Technically interested Planets players may also find one or another useful information.
As stated above, this list was created with the famous "Trial and Error" method and doesn't claim to be complete and always correct. Entries marked with [V] were verified with Wisseman's PD programs (for example, VPCPLAY) and the host documentation or other "official" sources. I have not yet used all these files in my programs, sometimes I've only taken a few samples and compared them. Those are marked with [T]. If you can report success using such files, please do. This file also contains the official file format definitions for PCC, my client program, which are also marked with [V].
Really unknown information is marked with ?, other works correctly in my daily use.
Since early 2001, I have been member of the PHost group; and since early 2002, I have a copy of the VPA source. Most information in this file is older; I did not walk through the sources and check everything. I think that's not needed anyway, looking at a program from the outside gets one a much better view, without obscure comments getting in the way ;-) However, for most new features (PHost 4.0), documentation in this file is written together with the implementation and can be considered authoritative.
I do not guarantee for anything. If you mess up your game with this information, it's your fault. If you get an unfair advantage using this information, you're a .... (sorry, I don't know English curses ;-) and should be kicked out of the Echo Cluster. Anyway, do you want to play your turn with a Hex editor?
This file now uses the Latin-1 character set. Most of it should be standard US-ASCII, but we need special characters to spell Akseli's name correctly :)
