preferences question

[solidgeoff]

I've looked around the forums and I can't find anyone with this specific problem. I'm trying to get rid of the battle event movies, like when your general dies or gate gets knocked down, and I went into the preferences file and changed

event_cutscenes = 1

to

event_cutscenes = 0

yet, I still have the cutscenes. I tried fatigue and some other stuff and that didn't work either. I'm running kingdoms on vista. I obviously saved the file and when I open it, it will say event_cutscenes = 0. Neither the regular M2TW will have the effects nor will kingdoms. Any Ideas?

[Demokritos]

Tried reinstall the lot (rebooting in between)?
This might be a tricky thing, though, given that so many people seem to have gotten problems when they have uninstalled the game and then tried to reinstall it.

[solidgeoff]

yeah I've considered just reinstalling it. I forgot to add some information. One important thing is that I originally tried to edit the preferences file before i took off write protection. So I cut/paste it to the desktop, changed it then cut/pasted it back. So that probably screwed something up.

The weirdest part is that I can't figure out how the game is saving preferences. I took the file out on the desktop completely and it'll still save my preferences but I don't see the file it's doing this with.

One important ? though before I reinstall is where are the kingdoms saved games located?

[solidgeoff]

Oh yeah, with the moving the preferences thing, I uh forgot that you had to disable write-protection to edit the file. Even if that wasn't the problem, it let me open the file and then change things just not save it. It gave an error of "cannot create *filename*." SO I thought I was going to be tricky by moving it out of the folder and then back in to get around it. Oops.

So yeah I figure just reinstalling it will be the easiest road to take.

Demokritos you've been really helpful and I appreciate that a lot. Just one more thing though, I still can't find the save files. I feel like I'm going insane. I looked in the mods folder a hundred times. Looked all over the SEGA folder, everywhere. I've done several computer-wide and specific-folder searches and can't find any of my kingdoms games. I can't even find my stainless steel save files (which I installed after this whole problem to see if that would somehow 'patch' the preferences...no luck). So any ideas on that? I can load and save files in-game, I just can't find the files.

[Demokritos]

I don't understand why you needed to pull the preference file out of the SEGA/Medieval II Total War folder in order to do the editing. You should be able to do what you want by just open up the CFG-file "medieval2.preference" inside it, edit said values, save, exit and play. If your game is freshly installed, however, then there may be no values in that preference file. Then you need to start up a first run of the game, close and go back to the preference file to find those values there, ready to be edited.

Kingdoms games are saved in their respective campaign folders inside the SEGA/Medieval II Total War/mods folder.

[Demokritos]

The difficulty to find your Kingdoms saved games sounds strange. Inside the "Medieval II Total War" folder where you have the Kingdoms installed (as evident by the program "kingdoms" being present there, just like the program "mediaval2"), there should be a folder called "mods". Inside this folder, if you have installed all four available campaigns in the Kingdoms, there should be four other folders, named "americas", "british_isles", "crusades" and "teutonic". Inside each of them there should be a folder called "saves" and in these folders you should find your Kingdoms saved games (with names according to how you named them in game; for instance, if you have saved a Teutonic campaign after four turns and named that "Teutons4T", then inside the Medieval II Total War/mods/teutonic/saves folder, there should be a file called "Teutons4T.sav"). Still can't find any such thing?

Your saved games for the Stainless Steel mod should be found along the following route: SEGA/Medieval II Total War/Stainless_Steel_Mod/saves.
BTW, SS has its own preference file called "Stainless_Steel_Mod" (a CFG-file, not a folder with that name) inside the main "Medieval II Total War" folder. If you want to change your preferences for SS, you need to go there, and not to the "medieval2.preference" file.

[solidgeoff]

Strange indeed. I seriously am very puzzled by this problem. I attached a pic of the Americas folder in the mods folder. I definitely do have a saved game in that campaign (as well as all the others, which I've checked in too. And yet, I can't find the saved games. What puzzles me even more is that I can save/load the files all i want and not even doing a search will find them.

Again, thanks a bunch for your help, I'm about ready to just accept the losses of my saved games. Although I might try backing up the entire file, uninstalling/installing the game and overwriting to see if that works. Otherwise I'll keep looking and see what I can do.

[Demokritos]

Not even a "saves" folder! How odd! Well, the reason for this eludes me. Yeah, might as well reinstall the lot and then things should be back to normal. Good luck!

[Dick]

I think the saves folder in Vista is in a different place than XP. Don't ask me why. :hmmm:

[Quink.NL]

I think the saves folder in Vista is in a different place than XP. Don't ask me why. :hmmm:

Indeed. On some Vista installations it's in your user profile. Just do a search on *.sav files.

I got rid of Vista, so I can't give you the exact location. When I had Vista installed, my saves were in the Program Files\etc.... folder, I have no idea why it saves them in the user profile on other installations.

[Demokritos]

Ahhh, that must be it. Maybe the different OS has something to do with the preference problem, too, then. I don't have Vista, so I don't know and can't find out.

[solidgeoff]

Well after quite a long time, I've finally had success. I went on my friend's computer (also has vista) and did a search on his. On my own comp I searched in non-indexed, hidden locations and didn't find anything. I searched the same on his comp, found the files. Turns out they're in C:\users\username\appdata (a hidden folder)\locl\virtualstore\programfiles\sega\medieval II total war.

So fantastic, found them on mine. What I've deduced is that vista saves them to a temporary, virtual folder that is within your Medieval folder (and a bunch others). So thats why just searching your medieval folder wont find it.

One more thing that's good, I found the real preferences file in the same folder.

I can see why people don't like vista

Thanks for everyone's help and you too demokritus for being so patient with me.

[Demokritos]

It was nothing. Glad things worked out for you