User selectable savegame directory

[Itchrelief]

I tried a search, didn't find any topics on this exact subject, so please excuse me if I am reposting an old topic.

As someone who is trying to switch from using his administrator-privilege account full-time to only using it to install software and patches, I am finding that many games do not play well with a limited user account, the biggest problem being that write privileges are not granted for such accounts to directories that are outside of that user's documents folder, thus savegames are not able to be written as most games are installed by default (usually to some directory under c:\program files). I am experiencing this problem with Mount & Blade.

Now, there is a kludgy workaround that I use in this situation, namely that I install the game to my documents folder, and thus I have full write privileges to the entire program. However, this is not a neat workaround as it clutters my documents folder and somewhat negates the security benefits of using a limited privileges account full-time, at least as regards the integrity of the game files (but not system files).

I thus propose that in some spare time you may have in the future, you add either 1) a user selectable savegame directory or 2) an option to save/load a game from any directory. These two options are very similar and may actually mean the same thing in terms of implementation. This would solve my problem with writing savegames to the default M&B directory using a limited user account, and may allow a side benefit of allowing users to have more than the default number of savegame slots by using multiple savegame directories and switching between them as necessary.

Thank you for your time and good luck.

 

[Sir Prince]

So, why do you have a limited account? I feel Windows needs one in between limited and administrator.

 

[Itchrelief]

Way too much junk around these days. Virii, trojans, worms, rootkits, etc.

 

[Archonsod]

There is an in-between account - poweruser.

You can also assign seperate privileges to certain user names (such as the ability to read\write to other directories). AFAIK the only thing the admin account allows you to do that can't be assigned to another account is to alter the core system files (mainly the registry, dll's and the windows directory).

 

[RobRendell]

I'd like to second the suggestion. I don't want to give my 6-year-old son a poweruser or administrator account, thanks

Ideally, the configurable save folder could include some way to say "the user's home directory", like $HOME under unix. That way, each person who logs on to the computer has their own separate save game space.

Sigh - that's three for three ideas that I've had, searched the suggestion forum, and found has been suggested before. Is it considered rude to grave-dig old threads in order to second the suggestion? Or is the assumption that the Armagan will have seen them, so there's no need to re-iterate suggestions that have been made already?

 

[Archonsod]

Ideally, the configurable save folder could include some way to say "the user's home directory", like $HOME under unix. That way, each person who logs on to the computer has their own separate save game space.

Assuming you had the ability to specify a save path this can be done quite easily. Every windows user gets a seperate My Documents and Desktop folder, so setting the path to one of these would default to the user account's version.
Perhaps Armagan could allow a savepath to be defined in the ini file? I don't know how hard it would be.