Cant save settings

[phoinix]

Hello!

First of all congrats on this fantastic mod.

I' m playing Civ on a laptop and so I have to lower graphics to avoid choppy performance. However Civ cant handle foreign fonts and so I have changed the directory of my saves with altroot. Without BUG Mod loaded, it saves the settings normally but when I load BUG, it resets to default settings. It's like it cant find the ini with my settings. What should I do?

 

[EmperorFool]

Are you saying that Civ itself cannot find your changed graphics settings? That seems odd as BUG shouldn't intervene at that stage. Or are you saying that BUG cannot save the changes you make to the BUG Options screen (ALT + CTRL + O)? This is an old problem caused by BUG not finding its own INI file.

Civ has its own INI file, "CivilizationIV.ini", stored in "...\My Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword". It is loaded before BUG while Civ4 is initializing.

Next BUG loads its own INI, "BUG Mod.ini", stored in that same directory inside a "BUG Mod" folder. BUG uses the Windows registry to find "My Documents", and I assume Civ does something similar. AltRoot might cause problems with this step.

Can you please provide a little more information, and I'll try to help you out.

 

[phoinix]

It seems civ itself cannot find its graphics settings (along with all the settings in general) when I load the mod. It's like it reloads another civ.ini. I can get some screenshots up if that helps.

My Civ's ini is stored under C:\civ saves\ ("My Documents" being in greek prevents saving settings in the first place, so I used altroot to change it). I unzipped BUG under C:\civ\Beyond the Sword\Mods, where it has its own Bug Mod folder. Inside that folder, I organized the contents as they are on the other mods: folder "Assets", folder "Public Maps" and the BUG Mod.ini along with the backup and it works fine. Should I place it under C:\civ saves\MODS\ ?

 

[EmperorFool]

It sounds like you set up BUG correctly as far as directories go. It shouldn't matter whether you move it or not -- either location should work.

When you start Civ and BUG, does BUG work? Can you open the options screen (ALT + CTRL + O)? If so, can you post a screenshot of the Config tab (second to last)?

You might try moving BUG Mod to the "Civ Saves\Mods" folder, actually. This may help Civ understand where to look.

Edit: Okay, I thought you were using a windows program that switched where your My Documents folder is located. I am now thinking you are using the ALTROOT option to Civ4. Is this correct?

Edit 2: There is also an INI command line option to point to a different location for CivilizationIV.ini. But it's odd that it works without BUG. Perhaps it is looking in the BUG Mod folder for a new CivIV.ini or wants the options stored in the BUG Mod.ini file itself.

The screenshot might help me.

 

[phoinix]

Yes BUG works when I load it. Here'e the screenshot of config:

I'm using the altroot option to Civ4. I've added the line \altroot="C:\civ saves" to the destination field of the shortcut of Civ4.

I dont know how loading a mod works in Civ but maybe it unloads the civ4.ini and then reloads it with the mod ini?? I 'll move the mod folder to civ saves\MODS and see what I can get.

 

[The Doc]

Isn't the "Bug Mod.ini" supposed to be in "Beyond the Sword\BUG Mod" along with the help files and the files for the CDA?
Do you have another "BUG Mod" folder inside the "Mods\BUG Mod" folder? If yes, try moving this one to the "Beyond the Sword" folder and look if it's working now.

 

[phoinix]

The files are organized like that:

The folder BUG Mod that appears in the BUG Mod folder, has the help files a BUG Mod.ini and another folder, CustomDomAdv.

@Doc:
I tried to move the BUG Mod subfolder to civ\Beyond the Sword but had no effect.

In fact I tried the installer of the mod several times but couldnt get it to work, so I though to just unzip the contents to civ\Beyond the Sword\Mods, where I created a new folder "BUG Mod" and inside plased the Assets, PublicMaps a copy of the BUG Mod.ini (and bak) and the initial BUG Mod folder contained in the zip, just in case.

 

[EmperorFool]

Wow. that's all Greek to me.

So BUG works fine though I bet you cannot save the settings when you close the BUG Options screen (they don't get saved to disk). The reason is as The Doc pointed out: BUG needs to look one level deeper into BUG Mod to find the INI that actually holds BUG's configuration.

Perhaps it was a poor choice to name the BUG mod settings INI after the mod name since Civ forces the mod INI to use the same name. However, it's Civ's INI that is having trouble.

I have two ideas:

First one is to use the /ini option in the shortcut to point to CivIV.ini (make a copy of it in "C:\Civ Saves" so it isn't under My Documents).

Second is to copy the contents of CivIV.ini to BUG Mod.ini that is in the outer BUG Mod folder (Mods\BUG Mod\BUG Mod.ini). Make sure you don't copy the first [CONFIG] line as there is already a similar line in the destination INI file. Paste the contents minus that first non-blank line to the end of the BUG Mod.ini file. Note that the BUG Mod.ini file I'm talking about also has [CONFIG] as its first non-blank line. Make a backup of this file first, though.

 

[phoinix]

I'm not sure I got your first idea. Using the /altroot, Civ4 itself already made a copy of its ini under c:\civ saves\.

I followed your second idea but in the BUG options screen a message "ini not found" appears, although one of the paths it mentions is the right path to the ini. The ini has a line End of File = 1 at the bottom. Should I paste the civ4.ini contents before that line?

I also tried moving the MyGames folder to be sure it doesnt get used. Still no change. Everything worked ok except from the settings.

 

[EmperorFool]

Oh, I thought /ALTROOT was just for the saves -- not the INI too. You might want to try adding the /INI option as well to make sure it's using that INI even when using BUG.

How are you loading BUG? If you're using the in-game menu, try adding the /MOD option to the shortcut: /MOD="BUG Mod". I'm hoping Civ4 will handle the quotes.

As for the INI, paste the contents of CivlizationIV.ini at the end of the other "BUG Mod.ini" file -- the one without the "End of File=1". Did you say you tried this and BUG stopped working?

Mods\
    BUG Mod\
        [B]BUG Mod.ini    <-- CivilizationIV.ini into this file[/B]
        BUG Mod\ *
            BUG Mod.ini    <-- ends with "End of File=1", don't modify this one

If you did try this already, undo it and instead move the inner BUG Mod folder (* above) into the "My Games\Beyond the Sword" folder. This is where it should be installed normally.

My Games\
    Beyond the Sword\
        BUG Mod\
            BUG Mod.ini
            AdvUnitNaming.ini
            CustDomAdv\
            <help files>
        CustomAssets\    <-- can finally try installing BUG here (rename Assets to this)

The other option is to install BUG into "My Games\Beyond the Sword\CustomAssets". Given that Civ4 can't handle the Greek directory names, I'm afraid this will stop it from using BUG.

 

[phoinix]

Tried everything to no avail. Also found out that this problem appears with all mods!

The world would be a better place if civ4 forgot all about a folder named MyGames...Even if i delete it civ will recreate it. It seems civ saves\ doesnt replace My Games completely. Anyway thanks for your help.

 

[EmperorFool]

One last thing to try which I'm surprised I didn't suggest up front is to copy CivilizationIV.ini into the "Mods\BUG Mod" folder directly.