Multiple User Accounts cannot play Civ III

[msosa01]

I have created accounts for my family in my computer and tried installing games into both the Applications folder and the shared folder, but I'm having problems with some of the games:

For example, with Civ 3 other users cannot start any new games (after starting cinematics and getting the start menu) and when attempting to load a game I receive an Data 10 Operating System Error: EMAG, DataIO Error, Error Reading file. It does not crash Civ III.

I've tried changing the preferences for all the Civ III files to allow others to read and write, but apparently this does nothing. I currently have version 1.29b2 installed. Any ideas? If I remember correctly, it did not work under a new install either, so I don't think it is the version causing this.

 

[AlanH]

Civ3 writes a couple of files into the Civ3 application directory when it runs. They are called bic_in.tmp and bic_out_tmp. I would guess that it is not able to do this because that folder is owned by you, wherever you put it.

If you use the Terminal to change the permissions on the Civ3 directory so that all teh users can write to it you may fix the problem. Assuming you have installed Civ3 in the normal location, /Applications, try the following sequence of commands. I haven't tested this, so no guarantees ...

cd /Applications
ls
--- look for the Civ3 directory in the listing

sudo chmod 777 "<Civ3 directory name>"
--- enter your password at the prompt.

Hope this helps

 

[dojoboy]

Originally posted by msosa01
I have created accounts for my family in my computer and tried installing games into both the Applications folder and the shared folder, but I'm having problems with some of the games:

Why would you want to do this? Is it necessary? Just curious.

 

[msosa01]

Well I have to install the games somewhere were the multiple accounts can see them, like in the shared folders or in applications. Is there a better place for programs so that everyone in a multiple user computer can access them?

As for changing the preferences, I have already done this through finder for the entire Civ III folder and its contents. (no need to get into unix). I selected change preferences in the contents of the folders too, in case you are wondering. This doesn't seem to work though.

 

[AlanH]

Originally posted by msosa01
Well I have to install the games somewhere were the multiple accounts can see them, like in the shared folders or in applications. Is there a better place for programs so that everyone in a multiple user computer can access them?

As for changing the preferences, I have already done this through finder for the entire Civ III folder and its contents. (no need to get into unix). I selected change preferences in the contents of the folders too, in case you are wondering. This doesn't seem to work though.

/Applications is the correct place for shared applications. I'll try logging in from another account and see what happens here. I'll report back.

 

[AlanH]

Hmmm. It doesn't work here either. In fact, when I log in as another user and try to open a game file from Civ3, it throws an IO error, not the same as the one you had, I OK the error message and it then goes back to the OS X login screen. So the system has spontaneously logged out the second user. This is in 10.2.8 at the moment, as I still don't have Panther as my prime-time OS.

Looks like a program bug to me, but I can't see where the program can be maintaining information about the preferred user. I think we need Brad Oliver's input.

 

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by AlanH
Looks like a program bug to me, but I can't see where the program can be maintaining information about the preferred user. I think we need Brad Oliver's input.

When we originally did the port in the days of 10.1.x, we made all files created by Civ3 world-readable/writable. Apparently, somewhere along the line this got busted.

 

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by Brad Oliver
When we originally did the port in the days of 10.1.x, we made all files created by Civ3 world-readable/writable. Apparently, somewhere along the line this got busted.

As a followup, this broke with the 1.21 patch. The addition of compressed saved files added an intermediate step that we didn't account for. You should be fine with versions earlier than that.

 

[AlanH]

Just looking around, is that to do with the save.tmp file in Saves/Auto? It seems to be empty most of the time, but it has owner-only write permissions. So if the software tries to write to it it will fail. It shouldn't have such dire consequences as those I saw though!

If that is the problem, you could maybe run a background script to chmod it to 777 regularly. Anyone want something to do that?

 

[msosa01]

Thanks for the response Oliver. I'm going to check tonight on the earlier version suggestion.

I have a related problem with Baldur's Gate II. While it runs fine in multiple users, there doesn't seem to be a way of allowing a saved game to be opened by a different user. I've tried changing the preferences also to no success. While it makes sense to not allow this, seems to me it should be optional.

 

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by AlanH
Just looking around, is that to do with the save.tmp file in Saves/Auto? It seems to be empty most of the time, but it has owner-only write permissions. So if the software tries to write to it it will fail. It shouldn't have such dire consequences as those I saw though!

Yes, that's it. Keep in mind that the compression applies to more files than just saved games. The .bic file is, IIRC, compressed now too, so it is decompressed as an intermediate step and undoubtedly the temp file is assigned the wrong permissions there as well.

Ah, if only we'd caught this back in October! Oh well. I'll ping MacSoft & Westlake about letting me do a fix for this. (This shouldn't be a problem, but they're up to their eyeballs in Halo right now.)