Missing savedgames folder

[Scarlioni]

I purchased Dom3 for a friend. He installed the game on his Vista machine and it works fine. Trying to to a pbem game with him and he cannot locate his savedgames folder. It is not under the dominions3 directory. He does have games saved that he can access under the play existing games option while in Dominions 3.

I made sure that he could see hidden files and folders.

I had him create a game with a rather unique name and search his HDD for that game name (Since on my XP system every game I save has a folder with the game name in it.)

There is also no mods folder in his dominions3 folder.

Any suggestions?

[JimMorrison]

This REALLY needs to be in the FAQ.....

[Scarlioni]

A common issue is it? What's the solution?

[lch]

One solution is to start the game in debug mode and look for the folder name it gives there for "savepath".

[Scarlioni]

How does one enter debug mode?

Idiot proof instrucitons on where to find the savepath?

[Edi]

If someone who uses Vista and knows how this works tells us, I can add it to the FAQ. I'm not touching Vista with a ten foot pole unless I have to and no way in hell am I going to install it on my home machine until MS cuts XP support away entirely.

It's somewhere in your user directory on Vista, though, unless I miss my guess.

[Ballbarian]

I am going to say it again (with experience as a Vista user):
I HATE Vista.

Have your friend look under:
C:\Users\YourFriendsVistaUserName\AppData\Local\Vi rtualStore\Program Files\dominions3\savedgames

The above is roughly the path where Vista put mine when I tested an install under Vista in this post. I have not confirmed my theory, but I suspect that good ol' Vista sees "savedgames" in an installation path and decides to help out by plopping some of the files in one of it's obscure user directories. Gee. Thanks Vista. That will make my life so much easier and certainly more secure. (If it turns out not to be Vista, but some bizarre feature of the Dom3 install program, then I apologize for my sarcasm, but I really believe that it is all Vista.)

Another wonderful feature of Vista is likely the reason that he can't find the folder via the hard drive search. You have to be sure and click the barely noticeable "Advanced Search" arrow and change the location selector from "indexed" to the hard drive and also check the box labeled: "Include non-indexed, hidden, and system files".

Why the hell did they make everything so much harder? Sorry, started to rant again.

Hope that helps!

[Incabulos]

Thats odd, because I have vista 64 bit and my saved games is in the same place it would be if I had it on an XP machine:

local disk/Games/dominions3/savegames/

[Scarlioni]

Balbarian's reponse was spot on.

Edi, I would like to request that the information in Balbarian's post be added to your FAQs.

[Ballbarian]

Have you by chance disabled the UAC (user account control)?

(I just ask because it is common for folks to disable it, but I don't know that it affects installation paths. Just curious.)

Now I am curious. Will investigate further.