Win 8.1 BUFFY - how to run?

Hello.

After searching these forums for "Win 8.1 BUFFY" with no matches showing up, I decided to make a new thread for this.

1. Installed BUFFY-3.19.003
2. Ran Civ IV BTS 3.19 (right-clicking and choosing "run program as admin"), went advanced/load a mod and loaded BUFFY...
3. Got the "HOF Mod Error" warning (see attachment)
4 Tried to make a separate shortcut, loading BUFFY automatically, and setting "run as admin"
5 Still got the same "HOF Mod Error" warning.

If there is more to this than just running Civ IV as an administrator (the account I run when starting Civ IV with BUFFY DOES have admin rights, by the way - so this error message is not correct!)

Any and all tips as to where to begin looking for a fix is most welcome....

PS!
I did get this working on my old laptop (Vista-machine) a couple of years ago, but I'm not remembering how I did it.... I guess it is different on Win 8.1 anyways...


Yours Sincerely
Kjotleik of Norway

Did you run the Vista / Win 7 fixes? Usually you have to disable write protection and give all rights to all files and you'll be fine, you find the fixes on the HoF mod-page in one of the tabs.

Seraiel said:

Did you run the Vista / Win 7 fixes? Usually you have to disable write protection and give all rights to all files and you'll be fine, you find the fixes on the HoF mod-page in one of the tabs.

Click to expand...

Thanks, Seraiel. I knew I was forgetting something.

Now I have set my whole Civ IV folder as read/write (unchecked read-only), and given my user "full control" in the security settings...

...however, I still get the same error (se original post) when loading up the game. And when I start one (custom game) I get the notification that the game is not valid as a HOF game...

The only thing I can think of per right now is that the read-only setting seems to get reverted back on every time I go into "properties" for said folder...

I even tried to go into every single folder under the Civ IV folder, unchecking read-only and setting "full control" for every folder... still no joy....

The HOF-page doesn't mention any other fix (except running the game as admin, which I currently have set in the exe-file's properties already...).

Anything else I might try? All tips will be appreciated...

PS!
And if I'm allowed to vent some frustration...this BUFFY mod is almost as frustrating as setting up STEAM (which I did just in order to play Civ V, last year's christmas present from my nephew) to run in a proper offline mode with no updates or any of that hassle upon loading the game...

PS2!
...and removing the cheatcode (chipotle) from the .ini-file didn't help either... (place appropriate curse-word here)!


EDIT: Well, I've tried to remove the "read-only" tag from my whole E-disk now, and given "everybody" "full control" over the whole disk. Nothing.... Anytime I start the BUFFY mod, it says "the HOF Mod will be unable to save settings."

I could of course play the BUFFY-mod, as it is installed under my BTS/Mods-folder, but why would I want that? I cannot even get a game accepted at the Hall of Fame... Either I'm more stupid now than a couple of years ago cry, or the BUFFY mod is faulty. I am playing with admin-rights, I have allowed read/write (not only to Civ but the whole disk(!)) and I have given "full control" over every single file on the disk to all users... I even spammed the CvAltRoot.py file to every single Assets and Python folder I could find (after having put in the CORRECT path to my .ini-file - of course), but nothing seems to work.

Now, since the Mod still doesn't want to allow games to be submitted, I'm about to reverse the whole process... but that will wait until Sunday (when I'm in a better mood)... for now I'll just go play some Minecraft instead... (or maybe some good old UFO: Enemy Unknown - if I'm in the killing mood... )



Yours Sincerely
Kjotleik of Norway

Have you tried giving full rights to everybody listed in the network security settings and for all folders? Usually, the problem lies there.

Otherwise, you could try out a fresh Civ install. Sometimes, when i. e. having taken over the game from another disk, the settings in the network security tab are somewhat screwed and cannot be fixed unless through a clean install.

Only thing else I could think of until Denniz arrives here, could be that you read the BUFFY maintenance thread in these forums. Maybe someone else had your problem or a fix is in that thread.

Hang in there. I hope we don't lose a player to this type of stuff.
BUFFY is actually quite reliable...I suppose...If you install it everything the 'right' way. I've installed it many times on many different versions of windows and it always works.
Here's what I do:

Logged in as administrator:
1) Install Civ IV (vanilla)
2) Install Patch 1.74
3) Install BtS
4) Install patch 3.13
5) Install path 3.19
6) install BUFFY-3.19.003
7) create a shortcut to BTS on the desktop (set it to run as admin)

Then you just need to tell it to run BUFFY in the .ini file.

Sounds kinda complicated now that I typed it all out.
Hope that helps. I hope I didn't forget anything.

Kjotleik said:

Thanks, Seraiel

I even tried to go into every single folder under the Civ IV folder, unchecking read-only and setting "full control" for every folder... still no joy....

I could of course play the BUFFY-mod, as it is installed under my BTS/Mods-folder, but why would I want that?

Click to expand...

ha...going through every folder like you did is just creating more frustration for you. You do something on the parent folder and it is applied to all sub-folders. Installing BUFFY is generally not that complicated, unless you create more work for yourself than necessary. (usually if someone reports a problem with BUFFY after doing the fixes, they already have other issues in place)

I don't understand the second comment above at all...as opposed to what?

Anyway, I think this is an assets issue. You need to run Asset Checker which you can download from the HOF site (see tab next to Vista/Win7 fixes). Run that and report back.

Hello...

Thank you all for helping me with this problem.

I heeded WastinTime's (and Seraiel's) advice, and installed the whole thing one more time. Since I have the Civ IV Complete version, vanilla is already 1.74 and BTS already 3.13 - so I could skip those patches.

Installed 3.19 and BUFFY. Had to go into the new Civ IV folder and allow "full control" in addition to removing the "read-only" attribute. Then setting Civ IV to run as admin, and I actually managed to start up a game without getting that annoying message...

I still don't know what was/is wrong with my old install. It is not removed (the files are here still), but I use the new install in another folder, and it works ok for now.

Oh, well. It's time for me to start a quick little game to see if I manage to get one accepted at the HoF, I guess. Just to practice, I mean. Not going to bother too much about doing "well" in the first game. I have only one goal, to get it accepted as within the rules for submission...

I'll begin to look into starting up a game next week. Today it's a bit late, and tomorrow I'm gone for half the day...


PS!
lymond, what I meant was that I'd rather play the Better BUG AI mod than the BUFFY mod as long as I'm not allowed to submit the game to HoF. And about an assets-issue. It may have been that, but now I've re-installed, so it has gone away (for now, at least).


Yours Sincerely
Kjotleik of Norway

I also had some major frustrations getting the HoF mod to work on my computer. Took me about two weeks to get it all sorted, so I feel your pain. Fortunately the staff here were super helpful, I was blown away by how much support I received for such an old game.

Here's hoping you have a game accepted and can start claiming some #1 spots

Hello.

--- --- original post --- ---
Today I had to run the AssetChecker (because I got an error saying the game I just started was not HOF-compatible, due to assets not being the same).

Apparantly I was missing all the Shaders files (actually there was no FX-folder under Shaders at all), so I downloaded them, and now that problem is dealt with. How I managed to start up a game just after installing Civ IV a little while ago, without getting this warning in the first place, is a mystery...

However, there was another file that had problems as well. AssetChecker insists that my GlobalDefines.xml is not compatible with HoF.

I don't really understand this, as I never did edit that file for the "HoF-install" of Civ IV on my computer. Usually I change this file somewhat, to my preferred settings. However, on this install of Civ IV I have not touched this file.

Is there something I need to change in this file to make it HoF-acceptable?
--- --- end original post --- ---


S O L V E D :

Oh, the stupidity of Kjotleik has no limits, whatsoever...
As I started to think hard about it, I figured I should check the file again. It MUST have been something I had forgotten... and it was!

I had apparantly forgotten about changing RENDER_GLOBEVIEW_CLOUDS from one to zero... and that was enough to render my game invalid for HoF!

I really feel that such a minute and in no way gamechanging change should be allowed. Now I have to look at those clouds whenever I zoom out (and that's just going to annoy me, whenever I try to get an overview of my empire...)

Why???

Oh, well Christmas time, and the day after tomorrow I will have time to start a new game to try to get one game accepted into the HoF before New Year's Eve!

Happy holidays, everybody!


Yours Sincerely
Kjotleik of Norway

Kjotleik said:

I had apparantly forgotten about changing RENDER_GLOBEVIEW_CLOUDS from one to zero... and that was enough to render my game invalid for HoF!

I really feel that such a minute and in no way gamechanging change should be allowed. Now I have to look at those clouds whenever I zoom out (and that's just going to annoy me, whenever I try to get an overview of my empire...)

Why???

Click to expand...

Glad you shoved the issue.

Couple of reasons for the restriction:

• Civ4 does an assets checksum that is pretty much global. We only compare that checksum to the normal value for HOF warning. Note: AssetChecker comes with file by file checksums to help diagnose differences. Line by line comparisons with exceptions is/was not practical.
• You can only open a save file with a checksum that matches the checksum of your assets. A feature for multiplayer to ensure everyone is playing the same version/assets that we shamelessly take advantage of for HOF and GOTM.