Guild of Writers

Hello everyone,

I'm fairly new to this forum as you can see by the number of posts so far

Before installing the DI client on my computer : i runned those versions of URU on the same computer :

URU ABM (for the balcony jump )
URU CC
URU CC w/ Drizzle
Until URU (for the wall )
MOULa

I've decided to install a new URU installation

Deep Island URU...and now I can't play anymore with URU ABM (telling me that it can't load it), URU CC (starting DI client) and Until URU (starting DI client). I think the problem is that somewhere in my machine there is a code that tell it to do : whenever you see uruexplorer loading up start the DI client. Which I don't mind if i want to go on the shard but not if i want to load another version of URU.

By chance, my URU CC with Drizzle is safe which I'm most happy with since I finish all the "normal" game last week. MOULa runs on its own executable so no problem with it also.

I wonder if someone could told me how to trick my machine to enable each version to be playable. And with all the posts I read here and there on this forum which I don't understand since this is a hackers' forum but anyway ...I'm 100% ok with hacking so don't be afraid to propose me a solution that involves some cheat .

Hi, and welcome!

I personally run several installs of Uru myself.

What I do is have a clean install ready to copy/paste, and then pasting it into a new location.

then I download the patches I want, and apply them to that directory only, leaving the others alone. =)

I'm not sure how your installs broke from installing DI, but keeping separate directories should sort it out, in theory.

I could also be way off and entirely misunderstanding the issue, but it definitely sounds like each of the installs have had the DI patch applied to it. (as the DI patch shouldn't touch anything other than the directory its installed to. )

Actually...

Annabelle wrote:By chance, my URU CC with Drizzle is safe which I'm most happy with since I finish all the "normal" game last week. MOULa runs on its own executable so no problem with it also.

From this, I assume you're using all these in the same folder? If so, yes, that will cause problems. You'll need to create another directory for DI's installation. =)

I think that covers all potential issues, I /hope/. If not, let me know, and if 'fero hasn't seen it yet and sorted it, i'll poke him, and see what he says. =P

Thx Kaelis for your kind help I appreciate

Since 2 days, I must have gone thru 10 installations of URU. I just keep making mistakes here and there.

To answer your question : if I have let say 6 URU on my pc there are in 6 different folders, this is a sure thing.

For URU ABM, I just did a new install and miraculeously all my data was saved...well I know that the saved infos are not keep in the URU ABM folder or whatever URU install's folder...so with that said it is not a miracle.

For URU CC and my Until URU, they just keep popping me the same DI client start up screen.

There was a friend of mine on MOULa that helped me with some installs and I remember he told me to modify my folder name on each installation and delete the Start Up folder too to fool the URU setup program if not it will delete your previous install to make the new one.

I have gone thru such installations and patching this week-end, I might have done something wrong. Well...back to the drawing board I fear will keep my 3 good working installs and redo the 3 problematic ones

Wow, that's really weird, because to my knowledge, ABM should indeed hold its save data in its folder... O_o

I think we'll need to wait for diafero to solve these issues because this is really bizarre. Sorry I couldn't be more help! Maybe someone else might be more helpful. :<

Sorry again, and good luck!

ABM definitely stores the avatar information on the program folder - Myst V does not, but that is unrelated here. Something is really weird here... Which operating system are you using?

So, you certainly have a different Uru folder for each of the installations? Because, the "DI patcher" is just a bunch of files, and where you copy them to, it will launch DI. So, if you copied it into only one Uru folder, that one will run DI, and all the others will remain unaffected - I did that countless times.

I think the problem is that somewhere in my machine there is a code that tell it to do : whenever you see uruexplorer loading up start the DI client. Which I don't mind if i want to go on the shard but not if i want to load another version of URU.

I expect you start Uru by running the UruSetup.exe (or Uru.exe for DI, which is the same). That one will always load the UruExplorer.exe stored in the same folder - it does not even know about other installations. It is also the UruSetup.exe that decides if the game will be single-player or multi-player: The version contained in POTS (999424 bytes) will make it single-player, the one from UU that is also used by DI (1449984 bytes) will make it multi-player. That makes it possible to run UU stand-alone, or TPOTS on a Shard.

diafero wrote:I expect you start Uru by running the UruSetup.exe (or Uru.exe for DI, which is the same). That one will always load the UruExplorer.exe stored in the same folder - it does not even know about other installations. It is also the UruSetup.exe that decides if the game will be single-player or multi-player: The version contained in POTS (999424 bytes) will make it single-player, the one from UU that is also used by DI (1449984 bytes) will make it multi-player. That makes it possible to run UU stand-alone, or TPOTS on a Shard.

"it does not even know about other installations" - Actually I don't think it's 100% true. For example: I can not run MOULa and URU:CC at the same time, becouse once I start one of them, the other is detecting it and not allowing to startup with communication like "URU is alredy running".

that's a simple check for processes called "UruExplorer" pretty much. It really does not know about the other installs. Diafero is right.

Hi Annabelle,

Annabelle wrote:For URU ABM, I just did a new install and miraculeously all my data was saved...well I know that the saved infos are not keep in the URU ABM folder or whatever URU install's folder...so with that said it is not a miracle.

thats sounds for me, that your OS is WinWista or Win7. And I think, your URU-Installations are all stored in the program files folder or, when you run a 64bit OS, in the program files (x86) folder.

URU is an old game, not designed for WinVista or Win7. URU wants to save changed or new files (like your saved games or downloaded files from the server or Drizzle-konverted files or....) in the folder, where URU is stored. But under WinVista and Win7 you normally have no security rights to save the files there so Win7 and WinVista puts those files into your User folder. And that for every installation. And when you deinstall an installation, the files in your User folder will not deleted, too. They are still there.
I think, that is the trouble you have.

"it does not even know about other installations" - Actually I don't think it's 100% true. For example: I can not run MOULa and URU:CC at the same time, becouse once I start one of them, the other is detecting it and not allowing to startup with communication like "URU is alredy running".

What kaelis said - it just searches the program list for "UruExplorer.exe", and the file happens to have the same name for both versions of Uru. The registry paths are completely unnecessary, and Uru is local only. I copied my installations countless times to other systems, or re-created my wine environment, or restored from backup by just copying files. HexIsle depends on some registry key for the "copy protection", but Uru does not.

What Wolle says sounds reasonable - maybe the file system virtualisation can not properly distinguish between the different Uru installations, because it uses only the executable file name and maybe a checksum, but the files are all the same?

Don't confuse installations with running programs.
What diafero means is there is no way for Uruexplorer.exe to know about other installations, meaning other Uru folders.
If you try to RUN both at the same time, now you have a problem. A lot of applications, especially old ones, can not manage multiple instances running.

Egon wrote:"it does not even know about other installations" - Actually I don't think it's 100% true. For example: I can not run MOULa and URU:CC at the same time, becouse once I start one of them, the other is detecting it and not allowing to startup with communication like "URU is alredy running".