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Un-Installation Issues


Bomb Bloke

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Don't know. I never played the game. All I knew about it a while back was that it was written by a Russian guy in Russian. I probably neglected the game because of the translation factor.

 

I logged on to their website and am in the process of downloading the latest beta version now. Ok, I installed it and clicked run right after the installation screen was complete. Viola! All I get is an error message saying that I forgot to copy the original X-COM data files to the place where the game can locate them. So I copied the files into the XCOM directory in UFO2000. Same error message.

 

Arrrrgh!!!!! I decided to uninstall UFO2000 and get it over with. Clicked the uninstall icon and watched helplessly as it calmly DELETED X-COM completely off my computer! All my saved games gone. I would really like to thank the programmers and developers at UFO2000 for screwing me over royally. Now I am off to re-install X-COM on my computer, and try to find the necessary "fixes" to run it properly!

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:P:(:(

 

Um...

 

Er...

 

It is true that most un-installers don't delete files they don't know about, even if they are in the program directory.

 

Bad luck, is all I can say. :(

 

I've only run the program once, didn't have much trouble with it. Mind you, I've got UFO packaged into a zip file, so when it wanted the game files all I did was extract a fresh copy.

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It's not your fault Bomb Bloke. I was probably to blame for most of it. I should of backed up my game files to a floppy first. You live, you learn. Too bad I had to learn the hard way, UFO Defense and TFTD both got deleted, not just UFO. :P

 

I was thinking about what you said earlier about my results:

Bomb Bloke Posted on Sep 23 2004, 07:51 PM

  Does UFO2000 play the same way? If not, I think the programmers might be very interested in your results.

If UFO2000 is using X-COM's files to run, and the developers reused the Smoke Grenade files, wouldn't it stand to reason that Smoke Grenades work in the same manner, except in a different scenario? At least that's what I'm led to believe. :(

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Don't know. I never played the game. All I knew about it a while back was that it was written by a Russian guy in Russian. I probably neglected the game because of the translation factor.

Where did you get this information from? It would be good to find the source of this disinformation and ask them to either update their information or remove it at all.

 

The game had Engish interface and documentation for ages, the fact that the development was originally started by a Russian guy does not prove anything.

 

I logged on to their website and am in the process of downloading the latest beta version now. Ok, I installed it and clicked run right after the installation screen was complete. Viola! All I get is an error message saying that I forgot to copy the original X-COM data files to the place where the game can locate them. So I copied the files into the XCOM directory in UFO2000. Same error message.

It also reports the exact filename with the full path where it expected to find it. Most likely you have copied the files with an extra subdirectory. For example, the game could try to load:

C:\Program Files\UFO2000\XCOM\geodata\scang.dat

But you probably have copied (or moved as it gets obvious later) this file to:

C:\Program Files\UFO2000\XCOM\Zombie's weird directory name for xcom\geodata\scang.dat

 

Arrrrgh!!!!! I decided to uninstall UFO2000 and get it over with. Clicked the uninstall icon and watched helplessly as it calmly DELETED X-COM completely off my computer! All my saved games gone. I would really like to thank the programmers and developers at UFO2000 for screwing me over royally. Now I am off to re-install X-COM on my computer, and try to find the necessary "fixes" to run it properly!

Is this your bugreport: https://ufo2000.lxnt.info/mantis/bug_view_p...?bug_id=0000089 ?

The game asked you to copy data files to UFO2000 directory, but you did move the files instead (you mention moving files in the text of your bugreport). The uninstaller does not touch any files outside UFO2000 installation directory (why should it?). And you are the only one who has encountered this problem so far. I'm sorry that you lost your saved games, but you just need to read installer messages more carefully (it has an option where you can specify the location of your xcom directory, it does all the "copying the necessery files" work for you and is completely safe to use). You need to read uninstallation messages even more carefully as it warns you about what files are to be deleted and asks for confirmation. That is true not only for UFO2000 but for any other application.

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Some commercial games in recent history were a bit nasty in that respect. Like Diablo. I had a great cast of characters lovingly built up through almost a month's worth of left clicks (literally), and then I got a new computer and decided to test its multiplayer capabilities with the demo (as I only had one copy at the time). Worked as I'd expected it to, so I uninstalled the demo. But not only did it uninstall the demo, it uninstalled the commercial installation of the game as well - and I'd asked it to erase the characters, which I thought were only goign to be the demo characters... well, you can probably imagine my grief. I'm over it, but you must admit, it's not a particularly pleasent experience for anyone!

 

I've always been a fan of games that were so self contained that a simple manual deletion of the game directory (and manual removal of windows shortcut icons if you made any) was all you needed to do to uninstall a game. Ah, those were the days... :P

 

But as for UFO2000, wasn't there also a separate download that contained all the files from the game necessary for it to work?

 

- NKF

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Listen. I would like to apologize for anything I said which might have offended you guys at UFO2000. I actuallly admire you for tackling a huge project like UFO2000. Like I said to Bomb Bloke, I really have nobody to blame but myself.

 

I copied those files not moved them.

I mentioned move in the bug report by accident. If you notice, the word "copy" appeared three times in my report, "move" only once.

The directory where X-COM resides on my computer is this:

C:\Program Files\MicroProse\X-COM Collector's Edition\UFO Defense.

Seems simple enough to me... When I told UFO2000 where to look it still complained it couldn't find them.

 

The biggest gripe that I have with UFO2000 is not that it removed X-COM and the game files from my computer. (I am long since over that disappointment). The problem resides in the 7 KB INSTALL "file". First, because it is not saved as a "text document" it will not open with a word processing/viewing program when you double click it. I ended up manually opening it with Word to view the file before I attempted to install UFO2000. Second, the INSTALL file is not very descriptive. Nowhere does it say where UFO2000 will likely install itself. (The only mention I found was 'c:\games\ufo2000'. The only help the file gives to full version users of X-COM is this:

 

"3) If you own a full version of X-COM, you can copy all the files from

the directory where you have X-COM: UFO Defense installed into

'XCOM' subdirectory of ufo2000 (it is initially empty)."

 

The "readme_eng" text document says nothing about installation and just says to look in the INSTALL file for detailed information. But the only "detailed information" is 3 lines long. No documentation is given for what exactly will happen when you ckick the install icon. BTW, shouldn't there be a Help file somewhere. I cant find one. Anyway, now that I completely backed-up everything on my harddrive, I might try to reinstall UFO2000. :P

 

----------

 

Back to the smoke grenade thread. For the first time ever, I used a Smoke Grenade in tactical combat. Now that I know how they work somewhat, the smoke really did help to conceal my troops deployment off the Skyranger and movement around the battlescape. I used to have 5 Smoke Grenades in my General Stores. Now I have around 20, and I plan to use them often!

 

Can I ask everyone this: When do you decide to pull ot the Smoke Grenades and use them? I used one for covering deployment. But in what instances would you actually use one in combat? Covering a retreat (tactical withdrawl) is one. Concealing movement in an open area is another. Anything else? :(

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I copied those files not moved them.

I mentioned move in the bug report by accident. If you notice, the word "copy" appeared three times in my report, "move" only once.

This is very strange. This might be a bug and a really bad one. If you can make some experiments and manage to reproduce it (having made backups before), that would help to locate it and fix. We just need to be sure that you have not misclicked when trying to copy the files and did not move them accidently.

 

The directory where X-COM resides on my computer is this:

C:\Program Files\MicroProse\X-COM Collector's Edition\UFO Defense.

Seems simple enough to me... When I told UFO2000 where to look it still complained it couldn't find them.

Maybe your copy of X-COM was heavily modified by different mods. UFO2000 expects unmodified files and performs crc checks to be sure the files are ok. In this case it should report the name of file which failed crc check.

 

The biggest gripe that I have with UFO2000 is not that it removed X-COM and the game files from my computer. (I am long since over that disappointment). The problem resides in the 7 KB INSTALL "file". First, because it is not saved as a "text document" it will not open with a word processing/viewing program when you double click it. I ended up manually opening it with Word to view the file before I attempted to install UFO2000. Second, the INSTALL file is not very descriptive. Nowhere does it say where UFO2000 will likely install itself. (The only mention I found was 'c:\games\ufo2000'. The only help the file gives to full version users of X-COM is this:

 

"3) If you own a full version of X-COM, you can copy all the files from

the directory where you have X-COM: UFO Defense installed into

'XCOM' subdirectory of ufo2000 (it is initially empty)."

 

The "readme_eng" text document says nothing about installation and just says to look in the INSTALL file for detailed information. But the only "detailed information" is 3 lines long. No documentation is given for what exactly will happen when you ckick the install icon. BTW, shouldn't there be a Help file somewhere. I cant find one. Anyway, now that I completely backed-up everything on my harddrive, I might try to reinstall UFO2000.  :P

'INSTALL' file appeared long before the installer became available, it is mainly targeted at Linux users currently. You are right, Windows section in it should be replaced to 'run the installer and follow all the instructions'. It is a bit silly to require the user to read any readme files that are not available before the game is installed :(

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Yep. The UFO2000 uninstaller deleted X-COM UFO Defense, and took Terror From The Deep along for the ride. Granted, reinstalling X-COM isn't that big of a deal, nor is losing my saved games. Heck, it's just a game. I can start over fresh easily, and get pretty far into the game by the second month or so. After playing X-COM for so long, a change in scenery is good every once and a while! :P
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So hang on, lemme get this straight, the un-installer deleted a copy of X-Com that wasn't in the ufo2000 game directories?  :P:(

:(

 

Well, never say never, but I strongly doubt that this could have happened. The uninstaller just does not have any code for deleting any files outside ufo2000 game directory.

 

If anyone makes some experiments and manages to reproduce the same problem, it will be very good and it will surely help us to fix it. But it is hard to find and fix something that does not exist. I do believe that Zombie has lost his X-COM and TFTD installed games, but what caused this is still not very clear, manually copying or moving files, you have always a chance of accidently deleting something important. In addition, nobody else did report such problem, and believe me, the game was tried and played by a lot of people, you can just check the statistics for the last week: https://ufo2000.lxnt.info/results.php

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Well, a possible thought comes to mind. Zombie, how did you 'tell' UFO2000 where your game directories were? What method did you use? You note that you never got the thing going.

 

I suspect that you may have 'configured' the un-install files somehow... :P

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How did I tell UFO2000 where my game files were? The UFO2000 installer asked where they were, and I picked the correct directory from a list. How do I know? X-COM has always resided in the following directory on my computer:

C:\Program Files\MicroProse\X-COM Collector's Edition\UFO Defense

And the reason I never got the program to work was because UFO2000 couldn't find the X-COM game files, even after telling it which directory X-COM was in, and then manually copying/pasting the files into the correct folder in UFO2000. I got discouraged at this point and just decided to uninstall. :P

 

And to answer your suspicion:

I do not know enough about the uninstaller to "modify" it's contents; either accidentally, or on purpose. Accidental modification of the uninstaller would require me to open it (which I did not do), change the contents (which I cannot do), and save the changes (which I would never do unless I knew the consequences). Purposefully modifying the contents would entail me knowing what language the uninstaller was programmed in (which I do not). See, my main programming experience resides in "beginner" languages: mostly Basic and Pascal, with an emphasis on the latter. I dabbled a little in Fortran, Cobol, C++, and assembly language, but nothing significant. The languages being used these days for programming are way beyond my comprehension.

 

I was trying to install UFO2000 in my X-COM UFO Defense directory, not the default C:\Program Files\UFO2000\ where it wanted to go. I know I picked the correct directory where I wanted it to go (C:\Program Files\MicroProse\X-COM Collector's Edition\UFO Defense), because this is always the same - i.e. I didn't try to install it in a X-COM game file or anything. Maybe this is an illegal folder for UFO2000 to reside, but there was no documentation that said I should not have put it there. Now that I finally have X-COM running after a 2 week hiatus, and completely backed up the entire contents of my hard drive, I will try to reinstall UFO2000 again, hopefully with better results! :(

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I was trying to install UFO2000 in my X-COM UFO Defense directory, not the default C:\Program Files\UFO2000\ where it wanted to go. I know I picked the correct directory where I wanted it to go (C:\Program Files\MicroProse\X-COM Collector's Edition\UFO Defense), because this is always the same - i.e. I didn't try to install it in a X-COM game file or anything. Maybe this is an illegal folder for UFO2000 to reside, but there was no documentation that said I should not have put it there. Now that I finally have X-COM running after a 2 week hiatus, and completely backed up the entire contents of my hard drive, I will try to reinstall UFO2000 again, hopefully with better results!  :P

Well, now we at least know what happened. As you explicitly told UFO2000 to install into 'C:\Program Files\MicroProse\X-COM Collector's Edition', the game considered it to be its own directory. And this directory was cleaned when you uninstalled the game because the game thought that it only contained UFO2000 related files.

 

You were lucky not to manage to install the game into 'C:\' or to any other important place. We probably need to fix the installer so that it will refuse to install into existing directory.

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I've always been a fan of games that were so self contained that a simple manual deletion of the game directory (and manual removal of windows shortcut icons if you made any) was all you needed to do to uninstall a game. Ah, those were the days... :P

 

But as for UFO2000, wasn't there also a separate download that contained all the files from the game necessary for it to work?

UFO2000 does not particularly need any installers.

 

The installer was added made to make it easier for people to install the game. Also besides being able to install the game, it can also also make easy upgrade to a new version preserving all the configs and team settings.

 

Considering how often new beta versions are released, that simplifies everything a lot.

 

PS. Can any of local admins split this topic and move UFO2000 installation related posts to a separate thread?

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PS. Can any of local admins split this topic and move UFO2000 installation related posts to a separate thread?

I would suggest even to create a new section for UFO2000. This remake is the only one that not only works but it is very fun to play. Probably more people would heard and play it if it was more visible on the site.

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This issue turned up in the UFO section. I'll paste relevant quotes here. I have excluded some stuff that didn't seem relevant (ie All this quoting is tedious. And you can shut up about the lack of formating and smilies, too. :blink: ).

 

Don't know. I never played the game. All I knew about it a while back was that it was written by a Russian guy in Russian. I probably neglected the game because of the translation factor.

 

I logged on to their website and am in the process of downloading the latest beta version now. Ok' date=' I installed it and clicked run right after the installation screen was complete. Viola! All I get is an error message saying that I forgot to copy the original X-COM data files to the place where the game can locate them. So I copied the files into the XCOM directory in UFO2000. Same error message.

 

Arrrrgh!!!!! I decided to uninstall UFO2000 and get it over with. Clicked the uninstall icon and watched helplessly as it calmly DELETED X-COM completely off my computer! All my saved games gone. I would really like to thank the programmers and developers at UFO2000 for screwing me over royally. Now I am off to re-install X-COM on my computer, and try to find the necessary "fixes" to run it properly![/quote']

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Don't know. I never played the game. All I knew about it a while back was that it was written by a Russian guy in Russian. I probably neglected the game because of the translation factor.

 

Where did you get this information from? It would be good to find the source of this disinformation and ask them to either update their information or remove it at all.

 

The game had Engish interface and documentation for ages' date=' the fact that the development was originally started by a Russian guy does not prove anything.

 

I logged on to their website and am in the process of downloading the latest beta version now. Ok, I installed it and clicked run right after the installation screen was complete. Viola! All I get is an error message saying that I forgot to copy the original X-COM data files to the place where the game can locate them. So I copied the files into the XCOM directory in UFO2000. Same error message.

 

It also reports the exact filename with the full path where it expected to find it. Most likely you have copied the files with an extra subdirectory. For example, the game could try to load:

C:\Program Files\UFO2000\XCOM\geodata\scang.dat

But you probably have copied (or moved as it gets obvious later) this file to:

C:\Program Files\UFO2000\XCOM\Zombie's weird directory name for xcom\geodata\scang.dat

 

Arrrrgh!!!!! I decided to uninstall UFO2000 and get it over with. Clicked the uninstall icon and watched helplessly as it calmly DELETED X-COM completely off my computer! All my saved games gone. I would really like to thank the programmers and developers at UFO2000 for screwing me over royally. Now I am off to re-install X-COM on my computer, and try to find the necessary "fixes" to run it properly!

 

Is this your bugreport: https://ufo2000.lxnt.info/mantis/bug_view_p...?bug_id=0000089 ?

The game asked you to copy data files to UFO2000 directory, but you did move the files instead (you mention moving files in the text of your bugreport). The uninstaller does not touch any files outside UFO2000 installation directory (why should it?). And you are the only one who has encountered this problem so far. I'm sorry that you lost your saved games, but you just need to read installer messages more carefully (it has an option where you can specify the location of your xcom directory, it does all the "copying the necessery files" work for you and is completely safe to use). You need to read uninstallation messages even more carefully as it warns you about what files are to be deleted and asks for confirmation. That is true not only for UFO2000 but for any other application.

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Listen. I would like to apologize for anything I said which might have offended you guys at UFO2000. I actuallly admire you for tackling a huge project like UFO2000. Like I said to Bomb Bloke, I really have nobody to blame but myself.

 

I copied those files not moved them.

I mentioned move in the bug report by accident. If you notice, the word "copy" appeared three times in my report, "move" only once.

The directory where X-COM resides on my computer is this:

C:\Program Files\MicroProse\X-COM Collector's Edition\UFO Defense.

Seems simple enough to me... When I told UFO2000 where to look it still complained it couldn't find them.

 

The biggest gripe that I have with UFO2000 is not that it removed X-COM and the game files from my computer. (I am long since over that disappointment). The problem resides in the 7 KB INSTALL "file". First, because it is not saved as a "text document" it will not open with a word processing/viewing program when you double click it. I ended up manually opening it with Word to view the file before I attempted to install UFO2000. Second, the INSTALL file is not very descriptive. Nowhere does it say where UFO2000 will likely install itself. (The only mention I found was 'c:\games\ufo2000'. The only help the file gives to full version users of X-COM is this:

 

"3) If you own a full version of X-COM, you can copy all the files from

the directory where you have X-COM: UFO Defense installed into

'XCOM' subdirectory of ufo2000 (it is initially empty)."

 

The "readme_eng" text document says nothing about installation and just says to look in the INSTALL file for detailed information. But the only "detailed information" is 3 lines long. No documentation is given for what exactly will happen when you ckick the install icon. BTW, shouldn't there be a Help file somewhere. I cant find one. Anyway, now that I completely backed-up everything on my harddrive, I might try to reinstall UFO2000.

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

I copied those files not moved them.

I mentioned move in the bug report by accident. If you notice, the word "copy" appeared three times in my report, "move" only once.

 

This is very strange. This might be a bug and a really bad one. If you can make some experiments and manage to reproduce it (having made backups before), that would help to locate it and fix. We just need to be sure that you have not misclicked when trying to copy the files and did not move them accidently.

 

The directory where X-COM resides on my computer is this:

C:\Program Files\MicroProse\X-COM Collector's Edition\UFO Defense.

Seems simple enough to me... When I told UFO2000 where to look it still complained it couldn't find them.

 

Maybe your copy of X-COM was heavily modified by different mods. UFO2000 expects unmodified files and performs crc checks to be sure the files are ok. In this case it should report the name of file which failed crc check.

 

The biggest gripe that I have with UFO2000 is not that it removed X-COM and the game files from my computer. (I am long since over that disappointment). The problem resides in the 7 KB INSTALL "file". First, because it is not saved as a "text document" it will not open with a word processing/viewing program when you double click it. I ended up manually opening it with Word to view the file before I attempted to install UFO2000. Second, the INSTALL file is not very descriptive. Nowhere does it say where UFO2000 will likely install itself. (The only mention I found was 'c:\games\ufo2000'. The only help the file gives to full version users of X-COM is this:

 

"3) If you own a full version of X-COM, you can copy all the files from

 

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I have created a new forum section for UFO2000, which you can find here (if you haven't spotted it already :P ).

 

Also, I've copied the majority of the UFO2000 conversation into a new thread which can be found here, so if anyone has anything more to say on that issue, they can continue it over there.

 

Don't even think about asking me to remove the UFO2000 stuff from this thread. :(

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