There are a lot of sub-threads mixed on the bug reporting thread. Let's stay here.
I have reported a crash due to the theme file in WOC modules/interface. Keldath has fixed this for Dune Wars. I don't understand quite enough about how WOC does modules, but he deleted the modules/interface directory and moved a bunch of the files into Dune Wars/Resource. Anyway, using my XP read-only test harness, I verify that the init xml crash is gone.
We have pretty much decided that DW has two problems while other mods which are WOC-free but use BUG have only one problem. DW's WOC problem now appears fixed, so I need to learn more about the BUG problem.
The solution I understood was to create a directory "My Documents/My Games/Beyond The Sword/Dune Wars/UserSettings". Note there is no space between "User" and "Settings" near the end there.
In the existing DW installation, there are about a dozen ini files such as Dune Wars/Better Espionage.ini, Dune Wars/BUG Main Interface.ini, etc. Also we have Dune Wars/Dune Wars.ini and Dune Wars/Revolutions.ini. I am pretty sure Dune Wars.ini is important for the game operation. RevDCM gets upset if it can't find Revolutions.ini and it puts up a big dialog box when the game starts.
I need to understand when I build my installation, which of these ini files should I delete? Which are critical to leave there? Are there some which the installer will need to copy into the MD/MG/BTS/DW/US directory? If we leave any ini files there, then what happens when the Vista user without write permission, makes a change to a setting via the gui?
I can find 4-5 vista users who have recently complained about the problem, to test the solution. But they are already mad at me because the mod failed and they had to post into the DW sub-forum to find the solution. So I can ask them to try *one* thing. It would be really nice to get all the loose ends ironed out at once before going back with a partial solution.
Specifically what should I do with these various ini files?
EDIT: by experimentation, I have found "something", it is not what I expected. I left only Dune Wars.ini and Revolutions.ini in the top level mod directory, and created MD/MG/BTS/DW/US. When I brought up the game, all the ini files were written into MD/MG/BTS/DW, not in the UserSettings subdirectory. So UserSettings seems un-needed. Is this right? Or is there some installation-dependent reason I may want UserSettings to exist anyway?