Snapshot on Windows path issue WARNING

[Dominus]

Currently Marzo is fixing the behaviour of Exult on current Windows versions.
This brings some changes and is not working 100% for now.

The changes are that on W2k, XP will use the folder "C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Exult".
On Vista and W7 it will use "C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Exult".
On Windows 95 it will still use the Exult installation folder. Windows 98, 98SE and ME might use a similar folder to W2k and XP - I just don't know

There Exult will store and use exult.cfg, savegames, gamedat files, stderr.txt and stdout.txt (and for Exult Studio studio_err.txt and studio_out.txt).

For existing users of Exult this will mean that Exult will just copy the existing exult.cfg to the new loaction and will use the new exult.cfg. It will not copy savegames and gamedat files. You will need to copy your files to the new location manually.
Also all Mods and Patches need to be copied manually.

To get to the new location select the "Run" in the startmenu (or the search or run in Vista/W7) and enter "shell:Local AppData\Exult" (without the quotes).

Issues:
No known issues remaining, atm.

The reason for these changes are that on Windows Vista and newer Windows the old way of storing exult.cfg, savegames etc. was no longer working correctly. So that needed changing and the best way was to make Exult behave the same on all Windows OS.

[Dominus]

Last night Marzo and Kirben landed another couple of fixes and it is looking good so far.
Please let us know if you run into problems.

[Zanyth-]

Any chance of it behaving similar to uTorrent in regards to the configuration?

Such as, by default it does what you have changed it to do (C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Exult, and so on); but if you move all the files generated in that folder to the same folder as the Exult.exe, it will use those instead (like it used to do)

Simplified, sorry: Exult first checks its own folder for configuration files etc, if they don't exist, it goes to the new method of configuration in AppData

That way it would make it a simple job for people to make their installation portable and toss it on a USB or something else, rather than having to resort to recompiling the entire thing just to set the -DPORTABLE_EXULT_WIN32 flag

[Dominus]

Current functionality will most likely not change the way you proposed to avoid any problems users will have when running Exult from the Program Files folder.
But I'm going to propose a command line switch to make it behave portable. I do see that having it also function portable would be nice without having to compile it yourself.

[Dominus]

Little update:
Tested this in VMs of Windows 98, 98SE, ME and W2k.

98, 98 SE use the Exult installation folder (default C:\Program Files\Exult).
ME uses C:\Windows\Application Data\Exult.
W2k uses C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Exult and can be accessed by the command "shell:local appdata\Exult".

It's a bit annoying that Windows ME is so out of the line, maybe that can be tweaked.

Exult Studio is working fine on all Windows, except for Windows 95, the gtk++ libraries we are using only support Windows 98 upwards. Also a bit annoying since we are not using the latest, exactly for maintaining support for Windows 9x...

[Dominus]

And as Colourless found out, on NT4.0 Exult also uses the the program files/exult folder...

[Malignant Manor]

NT 4 only has shell32.dll version 4. The way Exult is programed, Version 4.71 of shell32.dll is needed.

[marzo]

Actually, that would be shell32.dll version 5 -- versions below it do not support CSIDL_LOCAL_APPDATA. And even then, WinMe has a weird location for it, as Dominus reported.

[Malignant Manor]

Sorry, I was still thinking about the switch to CSIDL_APPDATA that Kirben had me test.

[Langy]

So, where do mods go now? I can't get Exult to recognize that I've got the Keyring mod installed at all. I've tried putting it in the following places:

C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Exult
C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Exult\blackgate
C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Exult\blackgate\Mods
C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Exult\blackgate\gamedat

And of course in its originally-correct location, BlackGateDirectory\Mods

Each time I try to run Exult with the --bg --mod keyring command line, it just flashes on for a second before crashing and the stderr.txt file says that the keyring mod wasn't found.

[Dominus]

C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Exult\blackgate\Mods should be the correct location, as long as that doesn't clash with a different path in exult.cfg for mods. Do the mods show when you normally start exult? If yes, you might have found a bug

Edit: ATTENTION!!! This changed again back to how it was before.
Mods and patches need to go back to the games folder. For example if you have Blackgate installed to C:\Ultima7\Blackgate, the Keyring mod needs to be put in C:\Ultima7\Blackgate\mods

[Langy]

Hrm, strange. Working now. Not sure why it didn't when I tried the Local\Exult\blackgate\Mods path the first time - maybe I made a typo or something.

Anyways, it's working, no problems (except the audio being way too quiet, especially speech, but that's a seperate issue entirely).

[Dominus]

You don't even have to insert the tags with the path. As long as you put the mods in the right folder (C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Exult\blackgate\Mods and respectively for serpent isle of course), exult should pick it up on its own.

[Dominus]

Updated the documentation with this.

[jkchakkal]

do not know if this is good place to post this but I think the Mods Marzo (downloaded here http://www.seventowers.org/downloads.php?section=0) are not installing the correct folder yet.

I think it would be good to warn him. For beginners can download and will never work.

[Dominus]

Thanks, I'll take care of this. If you follow the instructions in our documentation it will work, though

[Dominus]

Attention, this changed again a bit. Mods and patches need to be installed into the games folder again, for example if you have Blackgate installed to C:\Ultima7\Blackgate, the Keyring mod needs to be put in C:\Ultima7\Blackgate\mods.

Games started with the mods will save the savegames to the new location, though (in the example, this would mean C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Exult\blackgate\mods\keyring on Windows 7).

The documentation does have it written correct now as well.
http://exult.info/docs.php#path_config and following.