Reading/writing to the game's directory on Vista/7 ?

[Monsieur OUXX]

hi everyone,

The more my scripting progresses, the more modules I have that read and write custom files present in the game's directory. I'm using Windows XP.

But I also know that there are restrictions with Windows Vista/7, and that there are features like $MYDOCS$ or $SAVEGAMEDIR$ to circumvent that.

Did anyone have issues writing extra files to the game's directory? Does anyone have best practices to recommend?

[Crimson Wizard]

Did anyone have issues writing extra files to the game's directory? Does anyone have best practices to recommend?

They will fail if game is installed on system disk (usually C) unless game is run with administrator rights.

[Monsieur OUXX]

They will fail if game is installed on system disk (usually C)

OK, but I suppose using $SAVEGAME$ allows me to write to "Documents\Saved games" or whatever -- so it should work?

unless game is run with administrator rights.

Is that common practice, or is it totally unreasonable?

[Crimson Wizard]

Hmm, I was mistaken, Win7 only prevents you to save files in certain folders (like C:/Program Files). Don't remember what Vista does.

OK, but I suppose using $SAVEGAME$ allows me to write to "Documents\Saved games" or whatever -- so it should work?

I think it should.

unless game is run with administrator rights.

Is that common practice, or is it totally unreasonable?

I don't know what common practice is in general. It became a common practice for me to install all older games on disk D, and that usually solves any issues related to write access. Not every user is administrator on his computer, even if it's home computer, in theory.

[DoorKnobHandle]

My last game The Art of Dying writes and reads a lot to its game directory, it's been downloaded ~2k times and I haven't gotten a single bug report about it so I'm pretty sure there are no issues on the vast majority of user systems.

[Monsieur OUXX]

cool.
Thanks very much for your answers, you guys.