Vista: Games refuse to start with unicode username

[Dave Gilbert]

Hi all!  I've got a big problem here.  I compiled Puzzle Bots using build 3.1.2.82.  I am trying to get it up on distribution portals.  One of the bigger portals (Oberon) found an error that I can replicate, but oddly nobody else has discovered despite it sounding like a big issue.

Basically, the game won't run on Vista if the player's username uses non-ASCII (unicode) characters.  You try to run the game and you get the message "Unable to write to the current directory.  Do not run this game off a network or CD-ROM drive.  Also check drive free space (you need 1mb free)."

I tested this myself by creating another user account on my Vista machine using some random Korean characters.  And yes, I get the same problem.  However, I am curious why none of my foreign customers have encountered this.  Am I missing something?  Is there something I should be doing to the build in order to avoid this issue?  The portal refuses to take the game unless this is resolved, so it's kind of worrying me.

Edit: I read an earlier thread where someone has a similar problem with saved games, and offered the suggestion to set the compatibility mode to Win 98.  This didn't work for me.

[AGD2]

Had a few Russian players report this in our games as well.

I believe this bug was fixed in AGS 3.2 beta 1. You could install the latest 3.2 RC to a new directory, copy a backup of your game's source code into a sub-directory, and compile it to test whether the issue persists or not.

[Khris]

By default, Windows stores the contents of "My Documents" inside a subfolder of a folder called like the username (C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents).

AGS tries to put its savegames into "...\My Documents\My Saved Games\Game name", thus the full path contains the username.

A temporary solution for users right now would be to move the My Documents folder outside their user folder.

[Dave Gilbert]

Well, this has nothing to do with the savegames (although I suspect that's another issue we'd have) but rather the game doesn't run in the first place.  Is the game trying to create a savegame folder when it starts up?  If so, that would explain it.

Edit: We're probably going to have to upgrade to the current version of AGS.  It would require painstakingly testing it again to make sure it works 100%, which we really don't want to do, but if we must we must. 

[SSH]

But AGS automatically creates the auto save game (agssave.999) as soon as you try and run, which will be why it is failing.

I think AGS has an option to change how save games are created. Perhaps this could be tried, although your installer may need to change permissions to allow save games to be created in the save game folder or somesuch.

[Dave Gilbert]

I think AGS has an option to change how save games are created. Perhaps this could be tried, although your installer may need to change permissions to allow save games to be created in the save game folder or somesuch.

Is that even possible to do in Vista?  My understanding was that savefiles have to be in the My Documents folder because of its draconian security measures.

[Crimson Wizard]

<< previous post deleted >>

oops, did not notice you already tried win98 mode

Btw, I run Puzzle Bots on Russian Vista, and I had to set Win98 mode to be able to save/load game. But I did not have any problems since.

NOTE: My username does have unicode characters...

[Dave Gilbert]

CW: were you running as a guest, or administrator?

[Pumaman]

Is that even possible to do in Vista?  My understanding was that savefiles have to be in the My Documents folder because of its draconian security measures.

By default they do, but you can configure the installer to grant write permissions to the game folder, which would allow the save games to be saved there instead.