Tragic Save Bugs

[AGP]

I started the game 3 times over. The second time I had made the mistake of not having enough money to buy the saurus on the 2nd day. The last time was last night, when I played it for hours and overwrote the only save files that were visible (but not all the save files I had made). Now, the newer versions aren't there and I wasted hours of gameplay. When I went to the "continue quest" screen, I could see ALL the save files I made and the overriden versions weren't saved. By the way, I did play around with screen resolution, but in the third play I ended up in the same resolution (640x400) as the other 2 plays.

[AGP]

I think I know what's happening: when you run the game from "settings" ("Save and run"), the save games are different files from the ones when you just click "Save!" So I got my saves back. Yay. Still, another bug reported. : -)

[papste]

This isn't a bug, it is a Vista issue and involves the UAC (User Account Control). When you go into the game setting's you will notice that Vista pops a UAC message asking you whether to allow this program to run. By answering yes the program is elevated into administrator rights and the save games are saved in a different location "C:\Users\...\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\..."

The problem can be solved by running the game every time with administrative rights (right click and select "run as administrator"), or by copying your save files from the above location to the correct "C:\program files\..." location and not using to run the program from within the AGS game settings.

[AGP]

Cool, I'll try later. Thanks a lot.

[Charles]

Not for nothing, but "I have to run this game with Administrative Rights" sounds like a bug to me.

[Hollister]

As Papste said, you don't *have* to, but if you do, it changes the default save game folder. Just another example of Vista weirdness.

[Charles]

Just another example of Vista weirdness.

Respectfully, I disagree. As papste says, you don't have to in order to play the game, but you do have to to change the settings for the game. Six of one, half dozen of another.

I can understand that this may be an AGS issue, and thus not resolvable by the team here, but I still contest that it is an issue with QFG2VGA/AGS, and not "Vista weirdness."

[ulmont]

I still contest that it is an issue with QFG2VGA/AGS, and not "Vista weirdness."

It's Vista weirdness. Lots of games have it.

[Anonymous Game Creator 2]

There's a good reason a LOT of people won't touch Vista. Stuff like this is just one of them.

[bcrt2000]

I'll say that this is a fault of the game rather than the fault of Vista (unlike what I said in the Installation thread). The game should run in User mode by default, and saved games should go into the Saved Game Folder for Vista so that this User/Admin weirdness *cant* happen-- that only happens when the save games are trying to save in "Program Files".

Vista doesn't allow any user mode program to modify "Program Files" to avoid any disasterous results, and instead has a virtual storage for those applications trying to save stuff in "Program Files".

[dosuser]

Yes, to get around this issue with Vista it is recommended that saved games are stored in the My Saved Games / My Documents folder.

This is the default setting in AGS 3, but if AGDI wanted to make this change it is possible to put a Game.SetSaveGameDirectory call in game_start in 2.72 to redirect the save games to the My Documents folder, thus eliminiating this problem.

[Anonymous Game Creator 2]

Would adding that line affect savegames under all operating systems, or only on Vista?

[dosuser]

If that line were added, it would affect all operating systems. But then, putting save games in My Documents is not necessarily a bad thing on XP, some people will prefer it each way.

[Quest For Glory Fan]

I like to keep all my QFG saves in the game folder they come from which is how it is now. When you have every game from every Quest series on your drive putting all the saves in one folder can get hella confusing. This is textbook vista-weirdness by the way and it's the reason I put XP on my mac, I haven't had a single issue with any quest games so far but I couldn't even get half of them to run when I played on Vista. Granted XP is not perfect but it's definitely more gamer friendly than Vista is and a LOT more Retro gamer friendly for that matter.

[bcrt2000]

I like to keep all my QFG saves in the game folder they come from which is how it is now. When you have every game from every Quest series on your drive putting all the saves in one folder can get hella confusing. This is textbook vista-weirdness by the way and it's the reason I put XP on my mac, I haven't had a single issue with any quest games so far but I couldn't even get half of them to run when I played on Vista. Granted XP is not perfect but it's definitely more gamer friendly than Vista is and a LOT more Retro gamer friendly for that matter.

No, all of the saves don't go in one folder, its usually organized like...

Saved Games\Grand Theft Auto San Andreas
Saved Games\Test Drive Unlimited
Saved Games\Ubisoft\Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2
Saved Games\Mass Effect

etc...

Makes way more sense from a user perspective because you can backup your User Folder when you have to format, and have all of your Saved Games (and Documents, and Music) in one easy place.