Problems saving games - cannot read directories

[Benavenell]

Hi, Im new (obviously) and after playing TT through my childhood, have decided to get back 'on it' again! But ive had a few problems. Most have been sorted except the one major problem, I cannot save my games!

When I click save game, the directory appears with all the saved games from the patch, but if I click save, it says 'game save failed'. If I change directory, nothing appears in the new directory window, and I cannot go back to view the other saved games, everything just disapppears!

Ive been seaching for similar problems; Ive tried re-installing, and un-checking read only in folders (futile as it just reverts back to read only when I close), I have administrator priveliges (I own the pc), I have the win patch (obviously) and im running the game from the patch (also obviously), but nothing seems to work.

Can anyone shed any light on this for me please.

[Benavenell]

Mods can delete this, im gonna try openTTD. Thanks

[DaleStan]

I'm sorry it took us over an hour to spot your help request. I'll spend all my time on the forums from now on instead of doing useful things like actually fixing bugs. Or adding features.

In what directory are you trying to save? Does the path contain any non low-ASCII characters? Is ttdpatch.cfg in that directory? Can you edit it? Can you save on a different drive (eg a flash drive)?

[Benavenell]

tbh, i didnt expect a reply within the first 6 hours. I live in Thailand now and im used to my friends and family being asleep when I have time to talk to them!

I didnt mean my reply to be sarcastic, I just found openTT and tried it and it worked fine.

So, the problem with TTD Patched...

In what directory are you trying to save?
Any would be a bonus...I cannot save in any directory. at the top of the window it say there is 100% free space on every drive (obviously untrue). But I click save and a message box appears reading 'save game failed'.

Does the path contain any non low-ASCII characters?
I'll be honest, I haven't a clue what they are, im guessing hyphens, colons that kinda thing? Well I save it with the default name given, so I guess not. I do not change the name of the save.

Can you edit it?
I can not save it? Im not sure what you mean. I can edit the .cfg file in the patch program, though when I save that, I open it again and its reverted back to the 'first startup' status (i.e no cfg file loaded).

Can you save on a different drive (eg a flash drive)?
Every directory is empty. On the DVD drive it says 'read error' at the top of the window. Once I click out of the default directory, everything on every drive disappears, even when I go back to the default directory, the default saves disappear.

Do you want a screenshot, or can you understand what I mean?

Thanks for replying.

[DaleStan]

My crystal ball says that someone (which may be Windows Vista) set the read-only bit on your TTD directory. If clearing it doesn't fix your problem:

1) What OS?
2) What versions of TTD and TTDPatch?

In what directory are you trying to save?
Any would be a bonus...I cannot save in any directory.

So you tried every single directory on your computer? I seriously doubt it. In what directories have you tried to save?

at the top of the window it say there is 100% free space on every drive

Neither TTD nor TTDPatch report a percent free. And they do report "Unable to read drive" when that is correct.

Does the path contain any non low-ASCII characters?
I'll be honest, I haven't a clue what they are, im guessing hyphens, colons that kinda thing? Well I save it with the default name given

Path, not name. "C:\MPS\TTWin95"? "C:\Моя Игры\Прочие\Транспорт Магнат Люкс"? (By the way, the former is low-ASCII. The latter is not. Low ASCII is letters, numbers, space, tab, and the following 32 symbols: `-=[]\;',./~!@#$%^&*()_+{}|:"<>? )

I can edit the .cfg file in the patch program,

TTDPatch does not provide for editing ttdpatch.cfg, except via the command line, which I doubt you're doing. What program are you using to edit? TTDPatch also does not tell you whether or not it loaded ttdpatch.cfg.

Every directory is empty.

Again. All several hundred thousand? And are they all known to contain valid saves? TTD won't show you files that do not at least vaguely resemble TTD saves. Is the DVD drive still "Unable to read drive" when you put a disc in?

[Benavenell]

My crystal ball says that someone (which may be Windows Vista) set the read-only bit on your TTD directory. If clearing it doesn't fix your problem:

"Ive tried re-installing, and un-checking read only in folders (futile as it just reverts back to read only when I close), I have administrator priveliges"

1) What OS?
XP SP2
2) What versions of TTD and TTDPatch?
Latest patch version from your website - as of yesterday. (TTD Patch 2.5 beta 9)
TTD version 3.02.011

So you tried every single directory on your computer? I seriously doubt it. In what directories have you tried to save?
My hard drive is partitioned into 3, plus a dvd drive, a 3.5" floppy, and a magic ISO Virtual. If I click on any drive option, the window turns blank, I cannot see any directory.

Neither TTD nor TTDPatch report a percent free. And they do report "Unable to read drive" when that is correct.
No, but it does show an exact number of bytes. C:\ shows 253,000,000 (ish) free, whereas in reality my C drive has 3.23Gb free.

Path, not name. "C:\MPS\TTWin95"? "C:\Моя Игры\Прочие\Транспорт Магнат Люкс"? (By the way, the former is low-ASCII. The latter is not. Low ASCII is letters, numbers, space, tab, and the following 32 symbols: `-=[]\;',./~!@#$%^&*()_+{}|:"<>? )
I cannot select a path, as I cannot even select a directory. I select a drive, and there are no directories within any drive.

TTDPatch does not provide for editing ttdpatch.cfg, except via the command line, which I doubt you're doing. What program are you using to edit? TTDPatch also does not tell you whether or not it loaded ttdpatch.cfg.
The program is called TTDX configurator V1.1 for TTD Patch V1.8. Initially I tried TTD patched before I saw this, then when it didnt work i opened it and enabled the 'Use Win 2000/XP campatibility' option, to no avail.

Again. All several hundred thousand? And are they all known to contain valid saves? TTD won't show you files that do not at least vaguely resemble TTD saves. Is the DVD drive still "Unable to read drive" when you put a disc in?
The window is empty, every drive I select, the window is empty. There is nothing there. I wish there was a way I could recreate it for you because it is obviously a rare bug probably specifically to my system.

As I said before, I am currently playing OpenTTD and that works fine, saves included. But I will continue with this if it is helping you solve issues. If you have too many problems as it is, dont worry at all, really.
Its good to see that you and so many others are still comitted to this game after so long.

Thanks

Ben

[Benavenell]

ok, when I click on save game, and I click on the awe, fm, or gm folders, I can save the game, but as soon as I click on another drive the window turns empty and I cannot go back to select those folders again. It says at the top of the window 'C\f'.

So it is actually possible to save in those 'known' directories. As you say, I cannot see any files, probably due to a combination of having 'read-only' checked (fixed permanently) and not having any TTD saves in any other directory.

But really, thanks for your help, but if its causing you extra effort, dont worry about it!

Ben.

[DaleStan]

Neither TTD nor TTDPatch report a percent free. And they do report "Unable to read drive" when that is correct.
No, but it does show an exact number of bytes. C:\ shows 253,000,000 (ish) free, whereas in reality my C drive has 3.23Gb free.

253,000,000 bytes is approximately 253 MB. Don't ask me where that number came from, unless you're off by a zero.

I still think there's a permissions problem somewhere (even XP administrators don't have full rights to their machine. Try viewing C:\System Volume Information, for example.) but, on XP Home, I don't have access to the permissions dialogs.

[Benavenell]

I still think there's a permissions problem somewhere (even XP administrators don't have full rights to their machine. Try viewing C:\System Volume Information, for example.) but, on XP Home, I don't have access to the permissions dialogs.

I agree, but i cannot un-check 'read only' from any folder on my system. (well I can but if I open properties again, it is checked again). Ive looked into this before, but didnt find any really useful information on the subject...

And yes, it says 253Mb, but i now have 4.55Gb free.

[PikkaBird]

approximately 253 MB. Don't ask me where that number came from, unless you're off by a zero.

FWIW, my TTDP shows a similar number, so this is obviously just TTD misreading the size of large hard drives.

[Lakie]

I does indeed show the wrong size however I believe that may be down to the fact it was wrote when drivers were vastly smaller than they are today and the author did not expect things like 250GB, 500GB or 1GB drive sizes.

~ Lakie

[michael blunck]

Just out of interest: how could OTTD save games if he "cannot un-check 'read only' from any folder" on his system?

regards
Michael

[Benavenell]

Because the 'read-only' check does not seem to affect anything, generally. For example, my 'My Documents' folder is also checked but I can, however, delete and move files.
There is an article on the Microsoft website which explains this much better than my poor attempt.

[Lakie]

OpenTTD saves to your My Documents in recent versions so it will be most likely unaffected yes,
You could of course try browsing TTDpatch to your documents but that depends on the path and should only really be done if you cannot get it to write at all to its own folder.

~ Lakie