Help with installing BUFFY

[AlanH]

I'm a little surprised that Steam crashes the game when it restarts to load a mod, but I don't have the Steam version, so I've no experience with it.

Are you sure Steps 3 & 4 are not applicable? The HoF Vista/7 notes indicate that Step 3, at least, may be required for Win7. Is there any harm in trying them?

(As a Mac user without Steam, I'm the last person to try to offer advice! I'm just hoping someone who knows something will stop by.)

 

[ChrisShaffer]

I went ahead and did step 3, no joy. I already know my account isn't the first one created on the computer, so step 4 definitely isn't relevant.

When Steam has to close the program and restart, it tries to restart too quickly, and the restart crashes because Steam thinks there's still an instance of BtS running. This was true even on my older computer, where I had this same setup working fine.

 

[AlanH]

Was your previous PC also running Win7? I'm trying to see what might be different between your old and new rigs.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

Yep, it was. I'm actually running Windows 7 on VMWare on a Mac running Mountain Lion. My Mac went in for repair, and when it came out, the hard drive was blank, so I had to reinstall everything.

 

[AlanH]

It seems the game doesn't recognise that BUFFY is loaded, even though you think it is.

You could try enabling logging in the .ini file, and then looking in the logs/PythonErr.log file for clues.

 

[Doshin]

Have you configured Steam so that you are running it with administrative privileges?

Every time that you try to open Civ, Windows should ask:

"Do you want to allow the following program to make changes to this computer?
Program name: Steam Client Bootstrapper
Verified publisher: Valve"

IIRC, this caused me some issues, because the troubleshooting guide only mentions changing the permissions for Civ itself.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

BUFFY must be installed to: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization IV Beyond the Sword\beyond the sword\Mods

Here is the path to the mod, copy-pasted from Windows Explorer: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization IV Beyond the Sword\Beyond the Sword\Mods\BUFFY-3.19.003

Could it be an issue of case-sensitivity? Windows is normally case insensitive, but with the setup you are running, perhaps case-sensitivity plays a role? Perhaps renaming the directories to match the requested values exactly may help?

Note that sometimes Operating Systems don't like you renaming a directory or file to have the same name but a different case, so you might have to make it a two step process, such as:
SteamApps
->
steamapps2
->
steamapps


Maybe you could try loading the Mod from within BtS? Perhaps BtS will be able to find the right path to the Mod better than your launching shortcut did?

 

[AlanH]

There's nothing special about running Windows in a virtual machine on a Mac. It will be as case insensitive as it always is.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

I tried enabling logging, and the log files were touched, but PythonErr.log is an empty file. Other logs, such as PythonDbg.log do have entries, some timestamped with the current date/time. I see entries like this:

16:15:04 INFO : BugCore - creating uninitialized mod BUFFY

Unfortunately, running Steam as administrator didn't help. I get the "do you want to let program make changes to computer" at the point of running Steam now, instead of at the point of running BtS, but the same error occurs.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

I did perhaps fine one new item of information. When I try to load a GOTM save, it says the mod is not loaded and asks me to restart the game to load the mod. This time, when I did that, I got a new popup error that says:

Mod Error

Mods\ods\BUFFY-3.19.003\ is an invalid mod directory, ignoring

Any idea why there is a \ods\ in there?

 

[Ozbenno]

Any idea why there is a \ods\ in there?

Have you tried removing the \ods from the directory path and seeing if that worked?

EDIT: Is this the actual directory structure?

 

[ChrisShaffer]

I can't remove it from the directory path, because to the best of my knowledge, the only place that appears is in an error message popup window. I opened BtS with BUFFY pre-loaded, tried to open a GOTM save, Civ said "need to load mod, will restart," I said "ok," and when it began re-opening BtS it showed me this error with the extra /ods/ in the path.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

I think the next step is to uninstall BUFFY, BtS, and Steam and start over... will report back.

 

[AlanH]

Weird! That /ods/ appears to be generated by the BtS software, so a reinstall looks to be in order.

It certainly isn't in the GOTM file unless that has been corrupted. All BtS GOTM and SGOTM files contains the string: "Mods\BUFFY-3.19.003\" near the start of the file.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

Argh, uninstalling *everything* and reinstalling did not fix the problem.

Are there any registry settings I could try clearing?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

It could very well be a shortcut problem. My shortcut "Target" is:
"C:\{the path to my Civ 4 installation}\Beyond the Sword\Civ4BeyondSword.exe" mod= BUFFY-3.19.003

Note the space after the equals sign. Without that, the first letter of your mod gets eaten.

I.e. If my shortcut target is:
"C:\{the path to my Civ 4 installation}\Beyond the Sword\Civ4BeyondSword.exe" mod=BUFFY-3.19.003

then the following Mod will attempt to be loaded:
UFFY-3.19.003

which obviously doesn't exist.


Plus, you seem to be targeting "Mods\BUFFY-3.19.003" instead of "BUFFY-3.19.003"


If you can't fix your shortcut so that it will work, then, as I suggested, try opening BtS without loading a Mod and then from within BtS, load the Mod from the initial game menus (maybe OPTIONS -> LOAD A MOD??? totally going from memory here).

 

[ChrisShaffer]

The path I'm showing in my examples above is set in the CivilizationIV.ini file, not in the path to the executable. In the ini file, the instructions are:

; Specify a Mod folder (Mods\Mesopotamia), '0' for none

Thanks for the suggestion to load the mod from a shortcut. I tried both of these from the command line:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization IV Beyond the Sword\Beyond the Sword\Civ4BeyondSword.exe" mod= C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization IV Beyond the Sword\Beyond the Sword\Mods\BUFFY-3.19.003

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization IV Beyond the Sword\Beyond the Sword\Civ4BeyondSword.exe" mod= "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization IV Beyond the Sword\Beyond the Sword\Mods\BUFFY-3.19.003"

The first one resulted in this error:

Mod Error

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization IV Beyond the Sword\Beyond the Sword\Civ4BeyondSword.exe" mod= "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization IV Beyond the Sword\Beyond the Sword\Mods\BUFFY-3.19.003 \ is an invalid mod directory, ignoring

(note the space between .003 and \ -- I wonder what causes that?)

Both caused Civ to launch with no mod loaded. I also tried both commands with the installed mods, like Afterworld, with the same effect - Afterworld was not loaded. Using the ini file works - Afterworld is loaded.

p.s. I reported my problem with Civ crashing when trying to close and relaunch to load a mod here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=507580

Here's a screenshot showing the BUFFY is loaded (see top right corner), but when I try to load a save file, it says it isn't loaded and needs to be loaded:

Spoiler :

p.p.s. I searched the Windows registry and couldn't find anything related to BUFFY.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Did you try the shortcut without putting the path to the Mod? I can launch the following command from either the "cmd" shell or from a "Windows shortcut" (aka right-click on the Civ4BeyondSword executable, choose"Create shortcut," right-click on the Shortcut and choose Properties to edit the shortcut, then at the end of the "Target" section add: mod= BUFFY-3.19.003).

Specifically, from the "cmd" command line or from a Windows shortcut, I would try using the following command:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization IV Beyond the Sword\Beyond the Sword\Civ4BeyondSword.exe" mod= BUFFY-3.19.003


I have no idea what it means for the Mod to be loaded but not work... can you create your own BUFFY Mod game and then have a teammate load it?

Maybe the saved game file that you downloaded somehow got corrupted and you should try a different saved game?

 

[GKey]

I agree with Dhoom, this looks like shortcut related problem. I remember having same issue and found solution in mods section of the forums. Karadoc answered to someones question and gave him syntaxis of shortcut, which worked for me once I changed {kmod to buffy}. May be you could try contact Karadok.
OTOH I did not see mod loaded and still not working. What do you see in about this build in menu?

 

[ChrisShaffer]

The problem happens whether I load BUFFY from the Civlization4.ini file or the command line. In both cases, I'm able to load BUFFY and other mods fine. When I load BUFFY, via either the command line or the Civlization4.ini file, it is active. I can access the BUFFY options screen. BUFFY features are in the interface. "BUFFY-3.19.003" appears in the top right of the menu screens as you can see in the screenshot I provided above.

I created a new game with BUFFY loaded and saved it: http://gesserit.net/misc/buffy.CivBeyondSwordSave

On the settings page, it gives these HOF errors:

Spoiler :

Can someone try loading this save file and see what they get?