A slow week at school so I thought I'd install the latest version & run some bmp through it. Can't choose an alternative volume - C3 is installed on a different hard drive than the OS. So can't set up the editor.
It should be possible to choose a different drive when running the editor for the first time, or when changing the install directory via Settings. When starting the editor for the first time, or browsing for the install folder via Settings, you ought to see a window that looks something like this:
The "Look in" dropdown will let you select which drive you are looking at. On my main desktop, I choose the D drive here (I'm posting this from my old laptop, so it's my CD drive in the screenshot). You can also paste the name in the "Folder name" area; I just tested doing that with a network share directory (of the \\SomeOtherComputer\sharedDrive\Civ3 format), and it picked it up correctly and was able to load scenarios.
It's possible that this may be behaving differently on OS X. I can test with an external hard drive and/or network share on OS X tonight or tomorrow and see if it's behaving differently there.
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Edit: I see it is different on OSX, and there's no way to change the drive on a Mac. In that case, the best option may be to choose a random folder, then go into Settings and paste the location of the real Civ3 folder (and scenario folder), and then restart the editor. I'll try that with my network-shared Civ3 install after dinner.
Longer-term I may be able to create a custom open dialog for Mac (right now it's using the default one that comes with Java). I'm surprised the default doesn't allow changing the drive, actually.
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Edit 2: Still working on testing it in OS X. With a network share, I got a path like:
/Volumes/Quintillus_Network\;QuintillusDesktop/Civilization\ III/
And it didn't seem to work so well; I'm not too surprised given the semicolon and mishmash of forward and backward slashes. I can access the files on my Windows desktop just fine in Finder... I just can't seem to link to them from the editor as I can with my trusty XP laptop.
I think the secondary hard drive probably should still work, though. The problem so far has been that my external hard drive didn't have Civ on it, and I couldn't copy it from my Windows desktop to the hard drive using my PowerBook, because the drive is in NTFS format, and OS X 10.4 cannot write to NTFS. It looks like I should probably connect it to the desktop by sneakernet, as copying it via my XP laptop and 802.11g is estimated at 3 hours... I'm sure USB 3.0 can do better than that. Might also format it to FAT32 while I'm at it since I just backed it up and that way everything can read/write to it.
Using the PowerBook has been interesting. It's unintuitive to me for the most part, being very used to Windows, with some familiarity with Linux and Solaris. But after connecting a mouse with two buttons, a keyboard, and my desktop monitor, its usability isn't bad. The OS shows its age more than XP (which is actually 3.5 years older) due to lesser software compatibility, but what is available runs well, and it's
way more stable than what I got used to with late-'90s iMacs with OS 9. It hasn't converted me to the Fruity Side, but its doing its main job of testing the editor adequately (when I do actually test with it, at least).
I'll work with the external hard drive more tomorrow and report back on the results.
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