[azukizero]

After a ridiculous number of freezing/crashing in BF1942, I contacted Aspyr for some support. I had already gone through repairing permissions, reinstalling, etc.... but their advice was to make sure the game wasn't installed in the Applications folder because this would cause some permissions conflicts.

When I verified permissions (when the game was installed in Applications) nothing came up. As in, Disk Utility didn't report anything unusual.

So I guess I have two questions:

Will Disk Utility (repairing permissions) always successfully report permission conficts or can this utility miss some things, if this was the case?

Where is the best place to install games to avoid and 'permission conflicts'?

Thanks for your help with this!


btw, my setup is: G5 Dual 1.8, 2 GB RAM, ATI 9600 no reason hardware-wise that games should crash.... right?

[Footy]

Aspyr!! I've had them tell me this before as well. I think they're crazy but I have all my games in a folder in my home folder.

As far as permissions go, just click repair and be done with it.

[The iMac Man]

I have a seperate partition for my games.

You could make a folder called "Games" at the root of your hard drive.. that should work fine.

Just don't have spaces in the folder path names, or any special characters... that's the best way to ensure there are no problems.

[The iMac Man]

Originally posted by Footy:
Aspyr!! I've had them tell me this before as well. I think they're crazy....

I think Aspyr knows what they are talking about!

The Applications folder is owned by the system, so it CAN cause problems with installers, and programs, like games, that need to access data within for reading and writting.

The home folder is a good idea though... the Applications folder within your home folder should not have any permission issues.

[Sosa]

I also keep all my games in the Applications folder, since it makes perfect sense to keep it there! The only problem I've had with games like Civ III and Baldur's Gate is that other users can have difficulty opening saved games or the game may not start at all. Apparently some Mac games don't work well with multiple user accounts.

[madmacgames]

Originally posted by The iMac Man:
The Applications folder is owned by the system, so it CAN cause problems with installers, and programs, like games, that need to access data within for reading and writting.

This should be a non-issue if you are logged in as a system administrator (which most people on a single user machine would be). As an admin you have full read/write access to the Applications folder. Only in a multi-user environment or for someone paranoid of running their account as an admin, would some people maybe not have read/write access to Applications.

I've not had a single problem running games in the Applications folder. I've got setup Applications/Games and it works great.

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by azukizero:
After a ridiculous number of freezing/crashing in BF1942, I contacted Aspyr for some support. I had already gone through repairing permissions, reinstalling, etc.... but their advice was to make sure the game wasn't installed in the Applications folder because this would cause some permissions conflicts.

I believe this is general advice that support gives out. Some games like to write to the same directory that the game was installed to, be it for saved games, downloaded mods, whatever. There are situations where you can have the game installed to your "Applications" folder but not have write permission to the folder, which would cause the game to fail. This usually happens if you've installed the game with an Administrator account but are playing it with another account. I believe BF1942 has to write some PunkBuster-related junk to the game folder to work, but I could be wrong (I haven't played it).

Will Disk Utility (repairing permissions) always successfully report permission conficts or can this utility miss some things, if this was the case?

Disk Utility would not find the type of permission problem that Aspyr support was talking about, since it's normal for the Applications folder to be read-only for non-administrative users.

Where is the best place to install games to avoid and 'permission conflicts'?

If you're paranoid about this, installing to your home directory will guarantee that you'll always have read-write access. If you're using an administrator account on your Mac (which would be the case if you only had one account), however, the Applications folder should be safe. Rule of thumb - if you can copy files to a folder in the Finder without having to enter your password, then the game should have no problems writing to that folder.

Other things to consider - pay attention to the folder names for all the folders containing your BF1942 install. If any of the folders higher-up contain funky characters (like "/", ":" "\" or a curly-quote, bullet or other non-alphanumeric character), the game may not like that. Also, some mods have been known to be unstable, particularly when combined with PunkBuster. The details escape me, but be on the lookout for that.

Finally, if that doesn't pan out, be sure to e-mail Aspyr support with a crash log from BF1942 so we can track this down.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by Brad Oliver:
I believe this is general advice that support gives out. Some games like to write to the same directory that the game was installed to, be it for saved games, downloaded mods, whatever. There are situations where you can have the game installed to your "Applications" folder but not have write permission to the folder, which would cause the game to fail. This usually happens if you've installed the game with an Administrator account but are playing it with another account. I believe BF1942 has to write some PunkBuster-related junk to the game folder to work, but I could be wrong (I haven't played it).

This is because you and other programmers still don't get Mac OS X's way of working. What you and other have to start doing is stop putting games into folders.

The game should be a bundle and the support apps belong in Application Support. Is this so difficult to do? Jebus H. Christ. We're almost in 2005, 3+ years after OS X's first release and people like you still have OS 9 in mind.

I remember you telling me that it was up to the publisher to decide how that games were installed...well **** them...tell 'em that's not the way it works anymore.

These read/write permission problems wouldn't exist if the basics of the app was contained in a bundle and if all the mods and saved games were in the Applications Support folder.

Most of Westlake's and Aspyr's ports are a complete turn off to me. Many developers that are new to Mac OS X seem to get it right the first time. Ryan Gordon and the Omni Group have produced many ports that follow the base files in the bundle and support files in the App Support folder guideline.

Aspyr has got to get its **** together...today!

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
The game should be a bundle and the support apps belong in Application Support. Is this so difficult to do?

No, in fact this is the way most of our games work including BF1942. It seems you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem if you believe that making apps into bundles magically solves this.

Most of Westlake's and Aspyr's ports are a complete turn off to me. Many developers that are new to Mac OS X seem to get it right the first time. Ryan Gordon and the Omni Group have produced many ports that follow the base files in the bundle and support files in the App Support folder guideline.

As I said above, pretty much all of our recent game ports behave as expected in a multi-user setup. I believe the exception with BF1942 has to do with PunkBuster, since it has to remain in the install directory and update itself and its data files as needed. It's a third-party library, which means we have no direct control over it.

I'm sure there are some Aspyr games that aren't as multi-user-savvy - not every developer we work with is good about this - but those should be the exception rather than the rule. If you want to point out those exceptions here, feel free. I'm perversely curious myself.

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
Ryan Gordon and the Omni Group have produced many ports that follow the base files in the bundle and support files in the App Support folder guideline.

I forgot to address this in my original reply, but I feel compelled to point out that Ryan has done some ports for Aspyr, namely those that use the UT engine. As well, the Omni Group is not immune from porting games that write directly to the folder they are installed in - Giants writes saved games to the same folder as the one you installed it in, for example.

My point is that there are exceptions to every rule, but I believe that the majority of Aspyr's games work in a way that makes them good OSX citizens, your complaints notwithstanding.

[mjankor]

I keep all my games (>20 of them, most by Aspyr) in a Games folder in my Applications folder.

I've never had any problems with them.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by Brad Oliver:
I forgot to address this in my original reply, but I feel compelled to point out that Ryan has done some ports for Aspyr, namely those that use the UT engine. As well, the Omni Group is not immune from porting games that write directly to the folder they are installed in - Giants writes saved games to the same folder as the one you installed it in, for example.

My point is that there are exceptions to every rule, but I believe that the majority of Aspyr's games work in a way that makes them good OSX citizens, your complaints notwithstanding.

I haven't bought many Aspyr games lately. Can you name me a few of your good OS X citizen games? The latest demo of Homeworld 2 leads me to believe otherwise.

[The iMac Man]

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
I haven't bought many Aspyr games lately. Can you name me a few of your good OS X citizen games? The latest demo of Homeworld 2 leads me to believe otherwise.

Dude, you need to lighten up!

Aspyr is doing wonderful things for Mac gaming, and Brad is a big part of it. I don't remember the last time I saw Ryan Gordon or anyone from Omni Group post in this forum....

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
I haven't bought many Aspyr games lately. Can you name me a few of your good OS X citizen games?

Since you singled me out in an earlier post, I'd like to suggest some recent titles I've worked on: KOTOR, Jedi Academy, Jedi Knight 2, MOH: Breakthrough, Call of Duty, and Alice.

There are 2 titles I worked on for Aspyr that I know aren't good multi-user citizens: Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds and the Clone Campaigns expansion. These 2 intermingle read-only data files from the original game with user-downloadable add-ons, hacks and patches. I couldn't find a clean way to separate user-changable data from the game's own, so it all lives together. If the mood strikes me, I may try to fix this in a patch when I get some spare time, but to date I haven't had any feedback from Aspyr support about this being a problem.

[juanvaldes]

I keep all my games in a /Apps/Games/ except BF42. I keep it on another HD but it was a space issue nothing else.

[The iMac Man]

Originally posted by Brad Oliver:
Since you singled me out in an earlier post, I'd like to suggest some recent titles I've worked on: KOTOR, Jedi Academy, Jedi Knight 2, MOH: Breakthrough, Call of Duty, and Alice.

You rock Brad!

[azukizero]

Thanks for all of the great feedback.

After removing the game from the Applications folder and reinstalling in a games folder in the root of the HD, the game has been very stable.

Aspyr also suggested installing the game into the User folder (I'm the Admin) but this caused even more crashing/freezing that when it was installed in Applications.

Honestly, I don't care where the games are installed as long as the location is consistent. BUT I'm not able to run the Desert Combat mod for this game. The installer for DC mentions the default installation for the mod is the Applications folder unless otherwise specified.

Has anyone else experienced difficulty with this mod?

When I try to join a DC game, the level starts to load, the screen goes black, then the whole games crashes to the desktop with a Submit report error.

Desert Combat rocks but its not even playable. Otherwise, BF1942 is awesome.

Thanks again for the feedback

[The iMac Man]

From what I hear, DC_Final is very unstable on the Mac.

Join MacFPSGames.com, and check out the posts there. That place is top notch when it comes to BF1942 mods!

[hadocon]

Originally posted by The iMac Man:
I have a seperate partition for my games.

Why? Partitions are dumbass. What is the benefit?

[The iMac Man]

Originally posted by hadocon:
Why? Partitions are dumbass. What is the benefit?

Uh, you are "dumbass" then for that pointless response and use of curse words.

I assume you just don't know any better, and really want to know the answer to this question, but don't want to look like an idiot for asking such a simple computer question.

Either way, I will not answer a question for someone that speaks like you just did.... grow up.

[hadocon]

Originally posted by The iMac Man:
Uh, you are "dumbass" then for that pointless response and use of curse words.

I assume you just don't know any better, and really want to know the answer to this question, but don't want to look like an idiot for asking such a simple computer question.

Either way, I will not answer a question for someone that speaks like you just did.... grow up.

Since when is dumbass a "curse" word. Gimme a break.

Can anyone here give me a ligitimate reason for creating a separate games partition, or one for anything else for that matter?

I am sure that there are others on this forum that will agree with me that partitioning may have been useful 10 years ago - but today is has little to no effect (certainly not enough effect to outweigh the hassle of partitioning) on performance or stability.

You comment about seperate partition for games really makes you sound like a huge nerd. Even a bigger nerd than me (and I have been hanging out in a computer forum for 3 years, so I am a pretty bug nerd by most ppls standard)

I bet iMac Man is an ex Windows user... recently switched. Windows users will try lots of voodo (like partitioning) to ensure a stable system. This is simply not required on OS X.

... Anyways, I am sure you enjoyed creating a partition for your games and that is cool. whatever floats your boat. I am sorry for sounding harsh to you, but I get like that when I come across ppl who partition their drives, IT MAKES NO SENCE AND IS A USELESS WASTE OF TIME.

Please. Someone prove me wrong. Show everyone here that I am the dumbass. Give me stats, links, reputable sources.. anything!

[The iMac Man]

Okay, you are a moron, but I will respond to you anyway.

I have been using Macs all my life. I am a former Helper from the Apple Discussion Forums... from back when they actually had Helpers. I know my stuff.

I have a partition on an external drive for my games, which is faster the my internal, which my system runs off. This means that the games can read and write to a drive seperately from the system, thus improving performance.

Partitions are good because if one partition goes bad, it doesn't take out the whole drive. This means that I pretty much never have to worry about anything going wrong and taking out all my games.

Partitions are good.

[macaddict0001]

there is also one more major benefit to partitions multiple operating systems. Different os's require different disk formats therefore requiring either a different physical disk or a partition.

[discotronic]

Originally posted by hadocon:
Please. Someone prove me wrong. Show everyone here that I am the dumbass. Give me stats, links, reputable sources.. anything!

Partitioning is like separation of church and state. Any reasonable person should be able to see the benefits but unfortunately not everyone is a reasonable person.

[Randman]

Originally posted by The iMac Man:
I have been using Macs all my life. I am a former Helper from the Apple Discussion Forums... from back when they actually had Helpers. I know my stuff.
Partitions are good because if one partition goes bad, it doesn't take out the whole drive. This means that I pretty much never have to worry about anything going wrong and taking out all my games.

Partitions are good.

You really don't know what you are talking about, and you give really bad advice.

[Sarc]

Originally posted by The iMac Man:
Partitions are good because if one partition goes bad, it doesn't take out the whole drive. This means that I pretty much never have to worry about anything going wrong and taking out all my games.

Partitions are good.

now that's just not right.

the only thing I liked about partitions is that they allow you to do a fresh install of OS X without having to restore all your files, wich is nice.

[hadocon]

Originally posted by Sarc:
now that's just not right.

Thanx Randman and Sarc - Some people like to beleive that if they partition their drive and something on the dirve fails that it will be confined to the partition where the error occured. This is simply not true.

[hadocon]

Originally posted by discotronic:
Partitioning is like separation of church and state. Any reasonable person should be able to see the benefits but unfortunately not everyone is a reasonable person.

WTF? Gimme a break. That is a lame and information devoid comment. Hardly what is expected from a "reasonable" person. Although I beleive that Church and State should remain separate, this analogy is a poor one if you want to extoll the virtues of drive partitioning. Again, give me a good reason to partition. What are these benefits you speak of?

[a2daj]

Originally posted by hadocon:
Thanx Randman and Sarc - Some people like to beleive that if they partition their drive and something on the dirve fails that it will be confined to the partition where the error occured. This is simply not true.

It depends on what exactly went wrong.

I like to keep my data separate from my OS installs so I can reinstall my OS without affecting my data or game installs. Yes, I do backup my data but why bother restoring gigs of data when I reinstall the OS? And, as someone else mentioned, I can install multiple OSes on the same machine for my testing.

[discotronic]

Originally posted by hadocon:
WTF? Gimme a break. That is a lame and information devoid comment. Hardly what is expected from a "reasonable" person. Although I beleive that Church and State should remain separate, this analogy is a poor one if you want to extoll the virtues of drive partitioning. Again, give me a good reason to partition. What are these benefits you speak of?

Take a deep breath there big guy before you give yourself an ulcer. You attacked iMac Man for no reason at all. Now you want someone to give you some reasons to partition your hard drive. Try Google, I hear that is a good place to do a little research.

My whole comment was meant to be silly. It's as silly as your ranting and defensive stance on this matter. Partitioning is more about personal preference than anything else. Just because someone does it doesn't mean they are a dumbass.

[The iMac Man]

I'm sorry but all you guys arguing against partitions sound like a bunch of jealous little kids that are just trying to reassure themselves because it's too late now for them to partition their own drives.

If you think partitions have NO benefits at all, I'm sorry, but you know nothing about computers.

I am done with this stupid, pointless, uninformed, arguement.

[Randman]

First, learn how to spell argument. Secondly, learn some grammar. Then, learn about OSX before you go off giving the wrong advice.

[hadocon]

Originally posted by discotronic:
Take a deep breath there big guy before you give yourself an ulcer. You attacked iMac Man for no reason at all. Now you want someone to give you some reasons to partition your hard drive. Try Google, I hear that is a good place to do a little research.

My whole comment was meant to be silly. It's as silly as your ranting and defensive stance on this matter. Partitioning is more about personal preference than anything else. Just because someone does it doesn't mean they are a dumbass.

I never called iMac Man a dumbass... I said partitioning is dumbass.

lets end this. It is not fun anymore. Agreed?

OK.

[The iMac Man]

Originally posted by Randman:
First, learn how to spell argument. Secondly, learn some grammar.

There ya go, when proven wrong, just attack the person's ONE typo.

[hadocon]

Originally posted by The iMac Man:
There ya go, when proven wrong, just attack the person's ONE typo.

I agree that attacking spelling is sad, but you have proven nothing.

[The iMac Man]

Originally posted by hadocon:
you have proven nothing.

I have proven that your head is as hard as a rock.

Why don't you try USING partitions for awhile, and then form an opinion on them.

I also forgot to mention that partitions improve search speeds, and things of that sort.

[hadocon]

Originally posted by The iMac Man:
I also forgot to mention that partitions improve search speeds, and things of that sort.

I have used partitions. I stopped uising them when I realized that there was no need for them in OS X, unless you are dual-booting. I agree that it will improve search speed if you confine search to a single partition - this is no different than constraining search to a directory, rather than the whole drive. It does not make search faster.

[echosphere]

Hmmm, all this arguments over Partitions made me wonder (it also bring back lively OS9 heated debates, sigh..).

Would it be a good or bad idea to install CPU intensive games (ones with large maps, etc...) on another drive?

For instance I have a PowerMac G5, and thinking of installing a 2nd HD to install my games to.

GOOD Points: Your drive isnt' trying to read AND write as much, cause the system is on one physical drive, while you reading the data from a second drive. Shouldn't this speed the game alot when in large maps?

BAD Points: Does this screw up permissions, also, such files like PunkBuster, do they know where to download, or will they try to auto update/install into my Applications directory?

Any info would be cool....

Thinking of getting a Maxtor 300GB HD and the NVidia 6800 GL, yeah baby, yeah!

[Twilly Spree]

I bought and installed Baldur's Gate 2 - Throne of Bhaal expansion and while the game runs well enough it can't save! Every time it tries it switches to the Finder where I get a message saying something like 'save failed - would you like to quit, Yes or No'. I can continue playing but can't save at all.

I had to install all five CDs again because I had thrown away the old BG2 I had on the drive. I moved the installed folder from root to my home folder.

That's all. I moved it back to root and it still wouldn't save. Any ideas?

[Footy]

Originally posted by Twilly Spree:
I bought and installed Baldur's Gate 2 - Throne of Bhaal expansion and while the game runs well enough it can't save! Every time it tries it switches to the Finder where I get a message saying something like 'save failed - would you like to quit, Yes or No'. I can continue playing but can't save at all.

I had to install all five CDs again because I had thrown away the old BG2 I had on the drive. I moved the installed folder from root to my home folder.

That's all. I moved it back to root and it still wouldn't save. Any ideas?

Did you try trashing the preferences file for the game? Easy enough to do and may help.

[The iMac Man]

Are you playing when logged in as a different User than that which installed the game?

[Twilly Spree]

I'm the only user on that Mac and am the admin. I couldn't figure out what went wrong so I trashed the install and re-installed everything. Now it can save and seems to be ok but

BUT

this time the game always asks me to change CDs like I didn't do a full install!!?

Yet I installed Throne of Bhaal without a complaint and it cannot be installed unless there is a full install of BG2.

I installed it in OS X cuz I can't boot this machine in OS 9 but used the directions at the Macplay site where they tell you to install each CD of BG2 at a time. The folder is 3.08 GB so it's definitely a full install.

Man did they make a ****ed up installer for this game (in OS X)

[Twilly Spree]

I trashed this install as well and decided to try the OS 9 installer through Classic (since my Mac can't boot up in OS 9).

Ran the OS 9 installer for BG2 and chose Maximum install. Everything a OK. It installed fine and I then installed Throne of Bhaal on top of it and everything still a OK. Installed the latest ToB update (V2.1.2) and everything a OK.

Works like a charm!

I still haven't moved the BG2 folder away from the / but it works now and works well. Just thought I'd let you people know in case someone else wants to install BG2 and ToB in OS X but can't boot up in OS 9.

Just use Classic.