Virtual Memory

[Orange46]

***IMPORTANT*** DO NOT INSTALL THE GAME TO THE “PROGRAM FILES” FOLDER IN VISTA! Vista does not allow you to write data to this folder (instead it uses a virtual folder when you try to write data there). Besides being confusing, this causes problems with our game.

The above quote came from the Q&A section of Strat-O-Matic Baseball. I have had virtual nightmares with RT3, which started after Windows crashed and I had to reinstall everything. I'm thinking of moving my RT3 files out of Program files, based on the above. Any thoughts or comments. As a note, I can never find my screen shots, as they are stored in a virtual file somewhere in the universe. My new scenario files frequently get lost in the same way, although with much pain I have been able to locate them using an advanced search of unindexed locations. But, I have no idea where those locations are and cannot browse them or otherwise look at them to see what is there. Screen saves are found by hit and usually miss (I don't find them). Ugh.

Windows has Senior Moments, I think.

[Blackhawk]

I have had no problems running TM or RT3 on vista (after the vista fix). I do HATE... absolutely HATE the filing system of Vista though. On XP your saved games would go right into the /programfiles/rt3 folder and it was easy to find. With Vista that's not the case. I found that out the hard way when I was trying to find an RT2 saved game to transfer to a different computer to finish playing that scenario. I don't think I've tried installing any game outside the program files folder though so maybe that fixes the issue. I can't really remember.

Of course with Vista's awful file search system it was a pain to even find the saved game. Countless times I'll attempt to search for a file I know exists and the search returns saying no files with that name were found. XP's search may have taken longer to complete, but at least it found the files I was looking for. I've actually contemplated trying to find a 3rd party search program as Vista's has been incredibly useless to me.

Anyway, as my computer with vista crashed I can't give you specifics as to where the saved games and screenshots are located, but I do believe they were under something like:
users/appdata/local/programfiles/rt3.
(a quick internet search says it might be something like C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\ so I may have forgot to include the virtual store, before programfiles... I'm sure after I get my new hard drive and reinstall vista (unless i go with XP) I'll find out again the exact location)

I suppose if you are transferring computers you could just copy the entire users/appdata/local/programfiles folder for all your saved games for every game and everything like that, but that's the only potential "advantage" I can see with the way vista moves my saves games there. To me it appears just to be extra confusing and occasionally produce duplicative files. And in some cases it doesn't even work right. I had a game that said it would put the saved game files in a folder in my documents and it put them somewhere else completely. Another program I had, it didn't put the saved files in the program files folder, or in the users/application data/local/programs, instead it decided to put them in a my document's folder. However, a few stray saved files ended up in the users/appdata/local/programs folder somehow. To me it appears that Vista (and if Win7 follows the same filing system) is much less user friendly when it comes to file management. But hey... at least it's graphically flashy looking.

[Hawk]

Win 7 is nothing more than a trimmed down Vista.

[Blackhawk]

Another thing that might help you find files would be to turn off any hidden files and folders so you can see all the files. I'd doubt any of the screenshots you would be looking for would be in a hidden file, but it's still one change you could make and see if that helps you find any files you were looking for.

[Hawk]

You could also enable showing extensions for know extension types then do a search for *.tga. I guess that option is still in Vista and Win 7.

Edit 1: I wonder if partitioning the hard drive and installing programs on D drive would circumvent that pathetic filing system in Vista and Win 7?

[Blackhawk]

I think the full directory for the location would be:
C:\Users\[Your User Name]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Common Files\RT3

And I think the App Data folder is hidden, so you'll have to go into your folder settings and make sure you have show hidden folders and files checked.

Anyway now that I got my new hard drive and reinstalled Vista (I have no idea why I went with vista instead of XP) I decided to make RT3 and TM their own folders on the drive instead of in the Program Files folder. So its C:\TM and C:\RT3 and indeed the files seem to be saved within the folder itself instead of in the weird Vista/Win7 virtual store's impossible to find location. (So no need to partition the drive, although you'll still want to just to install XP or Linux and avoid win7/vista )

I suppose for those who already have it installed in the program files location, you could probably just move the C:\program files\RT3 folder into a folder like C:\RT3. Although any past saved games and screenshots you'll have to copy from the Virtual Store folder location, but new saved games, maps, and screenshots should appear in the C:\RT3 folder. And the shortcut to the game might need to be fixed, but a small headache once is better than a frequent headache repeatedly trying to find saved games in the virtual store folder.

[Hawk]

If I'm not mistaken you have to edit the registry also if you move the game from the installed folder to a new folder. I think I have the right registry key somewhere on my hard drive. I'll see if I can find it.

[Blackhawk]

With most programs and some games there might be registry things to edit and so just cutting and pasting the folder elsewhere wouldn't work. But with RT3 I'd imagine it would work without having to edit any registry files, since that's how we install multiple copies of RT3. Just copy the folder and paste it again somewhere else, then add the 1.06 or TM files. All the while, never editing any registry files.

[Hawk]

Now that you mention it, I think the only thing you need registry settings for is if you want to use the Map Builder.

[Sugus]

I also "must" play RT3 under Vista, but knowing about the horrible story concerning 'Program files and access rights' I first created a directory 'Games' in the root of C: and installed RT3 (and other games) there. This way, every thing behaves like under XP ...