Save Game format change - help!

[eldar]

1.29b2 with resolution hack.

Something strange has happened to Civ on my SO's G4 Powerbook. In particular, something strange has happened to the save games on it.

Up until a week ago, all the save games were just fine. Then she did a 'fast user switch' to my User Id because she couldn't get the editor working whilst logged in as her user.

Suddenly a load of her own existing save files stopped working - an 'incompatible save format' error was displayed.

I can load these games when I log in normally as myself, though - in fact I can load any games from the Saves folder. She just can't load anything from before a week ago, when logged in as herself.

The size of the save files has also increased dramatically - from around 200k, to over 2Mb!

The file details have also changed, as have the icons for the more recent saves.

I've attached a screenshot of the saves dir to show you what I mean:

She's tried deleting her preferences file, starting with Cmd-Click, etc. Still can't load the older saves. And still doesn't explain the sudden increase in file size.

Whatever was done between 19:13 and 23:04 on 24th August is responsible - must be! I'm at a loss (and not sufficiently experienced with Macs) to work out what. The 1.29b2+res hack patch were installed long before she started playing Civ, and I certainly haven't made any changes since I installed the patches.

Help! (Please)

Neil.

 

[ainwood]

Sounds like they've gone from being compressed to uncompressed. Can she load any from her a/c?

See if under preferences somewhere there is an option to compress saves - maybe it got turned off somewhere (not sure how Civ-for-mac works, but in PeeCee land, they're always compressed ('cept for autosaves).

 

[tao]

As Ainwood says: the small files are the compressed "manual save" kind, the big files are of uncompressed type.

Using e.g. File Buddy, you should see
type "GAMs" , Creator "Civ3" (uncompressed) and
type "GAMd" , Creator "Civ3" (compressed).

If both were written with 1.29, both should be opened by 1.29.

IIRC the compressed format arrived only with 1.29 on the Mac. Is it possible that you have an unpatched older Civ3 version somewhere on your machine, which of course can't open the new format?

And of course the editor only works with 1.21 files and NOT 1.29!

PS: There is no option to toggle (un)compressed save in Civ3 mac.

 

[eldar]

Hmm... yet when we both run Civ, the main menu screen says 1.29b2. I haven't saved one of my games since this happened, so I could try that and see what happens.

From what you're describing, though, it sounds as if when she runs it, she's running it without 1.29. The game and all patches were installed by me, under my account, which may be something to do with it.

Edit:
I've just run Civ on the G4 as myself, loaded one of her uncompressed saves, then saved it. It came out compressed. Loading & saving one of my own compressed saves, of course, came out compressed. Running under her a/c, I can't load compressed saves, yet the main menu definitely proclaims itself to be '1.29b2'.

Neil.

 

[AlanH]

I think there's a problem with the file permissions on Civ3 that was aired in the forum a while back. To create compressed save files the software creates a temp file in the Saves directory. It's supposed to set this up so that any user can read or write it, but I seem to recall that version 1.29b2 has broken this. So if that file has been created at some point under one user account it probably can't be deleted by the software while logged in as the other account. You'll have to delete the temp file manually - the simplest way is probably to switch back to the other account, delete it and then switch back.

HTH

 

[eldar]

Ahh, I wondered what that temp file hanging around was. She did say that it had mysteriously fixed itself yesterday, so that file probably disappeared somehow. Maybe I ought to insist on us keeping separate save directories

Neil.