Multiplayer creates "new users" on your computer!

[The Fjonis]

I don't know if this is old news, but I only noticed today while browsing my computer. In "Documents and settings", there were suddenly a whole bunch of new users! (see image) When I clicked on them, I noticed that each of them contained the folders My Documents --> My Games --> Sid Meyer's Civilization IV --> Saves --> multi --> and then a savegame. All these savegame files are of the type "VOTE_BC-3950.Civ4SavedGame".

It seems like in every multiplayer game I have played in which there has been a vote (like when someone is leaving the game), not only is a new SAVE created, but also a whole bunch of new folders in "Documents and Settings"! I can even see the usernames / real names of the people I've played with.

So, is this the way it is meant to be? Surely it gets verry messy? Is there a way to change the directory in which savegames are placed to avoid this?

Weird!

Moderators: if this is a know issue / if it should be posted elsewhere on the forums, feel free to take appropriate action.

 

[WillemIV]

I got the same deal!!
Really weird please fix in new patch! good find.

And it also creates a new user folder named: Dokumente und Einstellungen in your C: directory.
Must be because I joined a german game??

 

[Lemming]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=139866

nobody cared when i was posting this...

 

[zurichuk]

just looked, I now have a Dokumente und Einstellungen directory as well as my usual Documents and Settings one as I must have joined a German users game, doesn't really bother me though, probably ensures consistency in MP. Delete dealt with it.

 

[SPQR300]

Same here. Quite annoying, it's just another careless thing, like giving the multiplayer to Gamespy... I think there should be a petition to move the multiplayer away from Gamespy... I guess this bug is their mistake too... CIV4 developers did an excellent job, they wouldn't make such amateur mistakes... BTW: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=140503

 

[Jecrell]

Holy cow, I have the same thing! It's the people from my MP games. =O

 

[Mercade]

Good find. This should be moved to the bug section. Most annoying indeed. I most likely won't multiplay on GameSpy before this is fixed.

 

[Kolyana]

Makes me curious: It's possible to change the location of these files held in My Documents, so if one player did that and perhaps changed the path to a drive that was non-standard (say, I: ), how would this be reflected when the game was saved in a multip;ayer environment? Would the game try and write a saved game to a path that cannot exist?

 

[The Fjonis]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=139866

nobody cared when i was posting this...

Oh, I didn't see that one before posting. (Moderators: maybe mergin these two threads and moving them to the bugs section would be a good idea?)

I find the whole bug quite weird. How come they allowed this to slip through the testing?? This can potentially reveal your identity during MP games! (my Windows profile is the same as my own full name, for example...) Also, as has been pointed out, it soon gets quite messy with "Documents and Settings"-folders all over the place...

I hope this issue will be addressed in a future patch!

 

[Seer]

Interesting and very potentially exploitable? Both in terms of the game & the PC's security itself! Please tell me they dont have user accounts too?

 

[Lemming]

Interesting and very potentially exploitable? Both in terms of the game & the PC's security itself! Please tell me they dont have user accounts too?

no they dont, but that was my first thought, too actually they just create the folders so it *looks like* there are such users on the system.

 

[Kolyana]

Makes me wonder what would happen if you had more than 1 user on a given system and a naming conflict between another local user and a multiplayer opponent: if they both had the same name, what happens?

 

[Teutonic_Knight]

Weird, I shall check this out as well, thanks for the tip/advice/concern!

Are the files pretty small in size? (less than 5k?)

 

[reddragon72]

goto www.kali.net and pay the one time fee and forget about all this crappy gamespy junk. You know they scan your PC.... read there terms, they scan your PC and registry for viruses, and spam(or so they say). It's just not a good thing and I have a log of everything it scans, and it is scary.

 

[meowsqueak]

Use Hamachi and the 'LAN' ingame option. You'll still need to find players however.

 

[smellymummy]

Makes me wonder what would happen if you had more than 1 user on a given system and a naming conflict between another local user and a multiplayer opponent: if they both had the same name, what happens?

replace the entire directory tree with an empty folder and some bogus files? easy to test, play as 'administrator'