I just noticed that Massive Assault is one of those naughty apps that claims to run fine under 2K and XP, while not actually making a very good job of carrying out those claims. You see, by default, it installs itself in Program Files, and under Program Files Users do not have any Write or greater access, which means... yep... they can't configure the settings, they can't go online (since they cannot make a profile or restore one), they can't save, and for all I know it might not even load.

Come on guys, this isn't Windows 9x anymore! Games shouldn't be doing this. Just look at Freelancer or Max Payne 2, THERE is an example of how it should work. Freelancer creates a folder under My Documents called My Games (incidently, this is almost certainly how it will work under Longhorn) and places all information pertaining to the way the user has configured the game, and their save games, in a Freelancer folder under My Games. Max Payne 2 meanwhile goes into My Documents and creates a Max Payne 2 Savegames folder and puts all saves in there.

Massive Assault on the other hand puts replays, saves, multiplayer profiles, game configuration INIs ALL under the game direction. It shouldn't, it's bad for compatibility and anyone (like myself) who wishes to run the game as a user has to spend a lot of time messing around with security permissions to get stuff like this it to work correctly.

In fact, for all I know my multiplayer problems may well be because I only have Write permissions on the folder.

A game which marks itself as working on 2K/XP should NOT "work" this way. The My Games folder seems the best route. I should be seeing My Documents\My Games\Massive Assault, under which should be all my graphic/audio/gameplay settings, my campaign/scenario progress, my multiplayer profile, my saves, my replays...

None of the above should be in the program directory unless the user specifically asks for it to go there (or moves it themselves).

Even if that seemed like too much work (and changing a few directory paths isn't go to be the toughest job ever), the manual and readme should tell people about the repercussions of running as a user, and how to configure the game directory in such a way as users can run the game properly.

I have seen game makers before say "run it as an admin", though I truly hope this isn't your response. Though I know people do, no one should be logged onto a Windows machine as an admin at almost any time, and certainly shouldn't to run games. But that's not the issue, the issue is that people CAN be Users on 2K/XP machines, and something so basic shouldn't break so much of the game, nor should knowledge of security permissions be required for this to work. This was a game developed in the 2K/XP era, and it shouldn't be designed as though it wasn't.

Don't take this as a rant, this is a problem shared by 95% of games (and apps) in existence, many of which were written after 2K/XP. I love the game, which is why I care enough to give you this feedback.

I have multiple users on my machine, and it'd be nice if it kept all of our user information separately, rather than all of it being lumped into the same folder. We don't all have the same settings, for a start...

Can I assume nothing will be done about this? It's highly irritating, all the more so because multiple user compatibility is no extra work, you simply change the code from looking at the install path (for online profiles and game configuration) to %USERPROFILE%\My Games\Massive Assault

Hardly a chore, yet, already, you've just solved every problem you can have under a multiple user enviroment. It's staggering that developers still don't do this.

You know, there's nothing more annoying than games which mess about with My Documents. If I install my game in D:Freelancer, I expect the bloody saves to go in D:Freelancer/Saves or wherever. I DO NOT want them in My Documents. My Documents is for my documents, not my saved games. There are many games which do this, and it's really getting annoying now.

You aren't being forced to buy the games.

Saving in the game directory is about the most stupid thing a game can do, and no programmer with any interest in 2K/XP compatibility would do it. Why? Because a User account (listed as Limited Access under the User Accounts manage) has *no* WRITE access to that folder and so cannot save, or change settings, etc. My Documents contains My Pictures and it contains My Music, and when LongHorn (the next Windows) comes out it will likely contain My Games (just like Freelancer creates) and games will fall into line.

Until then we are stuck with programs which don't really give any consideration to multi-user enviroments. A sad state of affairs.



What does that have to do with anything? If the game doesn't work under perfectly normal Windows conditions then:

a) the game isn't very well thought out.

b) the game is creating more support calls for the development team than required.

How did the user manage to install the game in D:Massive Assault in the first place if he don't have write access?

I totally agree with Quitch. WinXP is a multi-user environment, but the game only works for the super-users who have write-access to the program folders. Those of you who complain about using My Documents for savegames really need to get your head around the Multi User Environment issue. We're not in MS-DOS 6.0 anymore, folks.

One person may have admin rights, but that doesn't mean everyone does. If you have any interest in running a secure machine, then you don't use your PC under anything but a user account, using an admin account only when you have to (and using Run As where possible).

As it is, I know the admin password, but I don't run under an admin account, and neither does the rest of my family who use the machine.

Are the developers going to release further patches for the standard massive Assault?

I have two, constant problems
1. Game unexpectedly quits for no reason.
2. After winning, victory screen fails to show up.
3. Music but no sound effects in Software Sound mode.

System Specs. Upon request.

Please this on topic.

What does that have to do with no wanting MY DOCUMENTS messed with? He didn't say he didn't like playing games or that he thought games were offensive, he said they should have the option to NOT save games in the MY DOCUMENTS folder.

Read next time...you do know how to read, don't you? Apparently not very well.

AM I the only one that doesn't have this problem??? My version has installed to the directory I chose (C:\MA) and the saved games, replays, and other game data are stored in subdirectories under MA.

Please help me understand why there are people that can not get the game to install where they want it and the saves where they want them or does this only apply to network/user accounts on one machine?


Sorry Answered my own question (the multiuser/one machine).. I had time to read through the original posts.

they don't tell you on the box that they do this so unless they have a very understanding games store they're stuck with it

Actually, I hate games that dump stuff into the "My Docs" Directory as well. It makes it a pain to back up the folder by just copying the directory (you have to go in and manually select files instead; not a huge issue but irritating).

Plus I know a few people who have multiple drives in their machines. A slower drive for the OS, and a faster drive for games. By saving their game data on the slower drive it can have an impact, especially if their settings are saved there, and if the game dumps temp data there. A small issue for sure, but still...

Personally, I think the games should have an option for Single user and Multi user installs. Most business applications do this, so why can't gamers? Simple enough to do: All that is required is a simple entry in an INI file or the reg key to say where the game data is held.

Oh, and as for the quote about "Saving in the game directory is about the most stupid thing a game can do, and no programmer with any interest in 2K/XP compatibility would do it.", I can think of a lot of worse things Actually, I think it is much worse that it won't run on Linux, but it is a burden I can bear.

My Docs just came up because if My Games doesn't exist under Longhorn, I'll eat my shoes. I don't care where the saves, settings etc. go, so long as it's somewhere unique to each user AND in a location where they have MODIFY access. Until then, this is a poorly coded game in regards to any multi-user operating system.

for me it's perfectly okay if game saves are stored in folder where i installed it.
i know very few games which try to store save in Mydocs and those games are usually microsoft-released....crap.
on my PC i always log in as administrator
it's quite foolish to think that logging in as user can save you from virus or whatever

Having the saves stored in MyDocs would suck, especially if it became standard procedure for all games. The way my drives are partitioned I end up with a super fast 6 GB C: partition which I use only for OS, drivers and maybe one or two other programs. If it started to get filled up and bogged down with all kinds of save games my computers overall performance would be affected. Now granted, maybe for massive assault it isn't so bad since the saves are pretty small but they do add up, especially if all your games are saving to the same place. I own some games with save files ranging from 20 up to over 100 MB PER FILE. In general I think saving games or any type of user files to my C: drive is a bad idea and I hope I don't have to see the day it becomes standard fare.

So change the target of your MyDocs folder to a different location.

It doesn't HAVE To be the C: drive, y'know, you can put it wherever the heck you want. My "My Docs" folder, for instance, is on a network drive that I have mapped, here at work. And at home it's on a seperate drive all its own.

You can change that as you see fit.

And the my docs folder would fix my problem with having to reload the profile every machine I use. ():|

Me.

Addendum: To do that, btw, simply create the folder that you want it to be in on whatever drive you want it on, then right-click on the My Documents folder and change the target location.

I don't think words can describe how irrelevant this is.



Actually it's quite informed. There are a million things a user account cannot do, and that's a million less things anything fired up under your account can do to you. Unix has followed this method since the dawn of time and it's a well recognised, perfectly standard security procedure. You should never login under the admin account, only every through Run As (unless you have to for whatever reason).