Okay, so my never-ending battle to install, run and mod KotOR and TSL on my Vista laptop seems to be complete. Except for one thing. I had set up some test savegame files to play around and add items via KSE and to make sure they work.
They did, so I wiped the SAVE files on both game directories. Both are completely clean, no saved games. I like to start from scratch. So I start a new KotOR game, save it and I want to add an item. Ya know, cheat and stuff.
I open KSE and I find my old test saves are still listed and my new save is not. I've remapped the directory in KSE, but its still finding these deleted saves, and not my new stuff.
Anybody seen this before?
Don't know much about Vista's role in all of this, but I can describe what KSE is doing. Maybe that will give you enough information to answer your own question.
Here's what KSE does:
1. Checks your registry for KotOR's Path:
HKLM/Software/Bioware/SW/Kotor/Path
2. Checks your registry for TSL's Path:
HKLM/Software/Lucasarts/KotOR2/Path
If neither registry is found, a popup to "Browse for Kotor or TSL Installation Directory" occurs and you have choose a folder and say whether it's Kotor or TSL.
If KotOR Path is found, the SAVES directory should be right under it. If it isn't, KSE will popup with a message saying "KSE could not find saves directory for KotOR1."
If TSL Path is found, the SAVES directory should be right under it. If it isn't, KSE will popup with a message saying "KSE could not find saves directory for KotOR2."
If you have a kse.log file in the same directory as KSE, then it will get written to specifying where it found the saves directories.
KSE begins to read the KotOR SAVES directory if present. There should be subfolders for each save game. The names of these subfolders appear in the treeview. KSE then does the same enumeration for TSL SAVES.
Finally, at anytime, you can right click either the top node on the treeview named "Knights of the Old Republic" or "The Sith Lords" and specify a different installation path than the one read from your registry. This will rebuild the treeview from the beginning.
Well, this is still happening. This is the log from KSE
7-07-2008 18:04:37 KSE startup v3.3.3
07-07-2008 18:04:37 KSE found KotOR1 saves directory in C:\Program Files\LucasArts\SWKotOR
07-07-2008 18:04:37 KSE found KotOR2 saves directory in C:\Program Files\LucasArts\SWKotOR2
07-07-2008 18:04:38 KotOR1 appearance.2da override detected.
07-07-2008 18:04:40 KotOR1 portraits.2da override detected.
07-07-2008 18:04:40 KotOR1 soundset.2da override detected.
07-07-2008 18:04:41 KotOR2 spells.2da override detected.
07-07-2008 18:04:42 KotOR2 appearance.2da override detected.
07-07-2008 18:04:45 KotOR2 portraits.2da override detected.
07-07-2008 18:04:47 TSL global.jrl override detected
07-07-2008 18:04:50 #1#000002 - Game1 clicked
07-07-2008 18:04:50 Populating Level1 for #1#000002 - Game1
07-07-2008 18:04:50 Populating Feats: #1#000002 - Game1#Feats
07-07-2008 18:04:50 Populating Journal for #1#000002 - Game1
07-07-2008 18:04:57 #1#000002 - Game1 clicked
07-07-2008 18:05:00 #1#000002 - Game1 clicked
07-07-2008 18:05:03 #1#000002 - Game1 clicked
07-07-2008 18:05:04 #1 clicked
07-07-2008 18:05:05 #2 clicked
07-07-2008 18:05:09 # clicked
07-07-2008 18:05:09 # clicked
07-07-2008 18:05:09 # clicked
07-07-2008 18:05:09 # clicked
07-07-2008 18:05:09 # clicked
07-07-2008 18:05:32 #1 clicked
07-07-2008 18:05:33 #1 clicked
07-07-2008 18:05:34 ---------Termination---------
Everything is correct. The SAVE directory is correct, I went ahead and reset it again before I started. Both directories are completely empty, no files, no hidden files, nothing. But KSE is still finding three saves in KotOR and one in TSL. I'm just flummoxed. I've deleted KSE and reinstalled, I've moved KSE into different files, nothing seems to work. KSE finds the saves, the actual games don't.
To make things even weirder, one of the saves isn't mine. It's a test game for a character named "Owen Star", which I think was a mod-test savefile from someone else.
Any ideas?
Your saved game has been moved to your userfolder in Vista. If you click on tools folder options and on the view tab, select hidden file and forlders.
Then browse to the userforlder..like C:\Users\your pc name example HP\Documents and sow on.. You will find it.
To quick, to early :-)
Well, this bit of weirdness is solved. Somehow I had a half-dozen saves (three each for KotOR and TSL) that were somehow stuck in my Vista VirtualStore drive. Since VVS mimics the actual drive path (C:/Me/Program Files/LucasArts/KotOR versus C:/Me/AppData/Local/Program Files/LucasArts/KotOR) both KotOR Tool and KSE were able to find the saves, while the actual game couldn't. Which is pretty impressive if you think about it.
Don't know if anyone else will hit this, but just in case.
Hmm, I've learned something new about Vista here. :) I guess Vista doesn't let you go in and muddle around in the Program Files directory anymore. It seems the Environment Variable LOCALAPPDATA is the path to your virutal store directory, in your case "C:\Me\AppData\Local\". Glad you were able to figure it out.