Moved my game to E drive and now Long War doesn't work

[Miserablevlad]

As my C Drive was so short of space, I moved all my games to my E Drive. XCom and Enemy Within work fine, but my Long War mod no longer appears in the game options.

 

I've tried a full install of the original game and the expansion, then reloaded Long War, and it still doesn't show up.

 

I've tried the options in the readme and nothing happens. Any ideas?

 

[dubiousintent]

Which platform is this: Windows, Linux, or Mac? Steam or "other"?

 

When you first attempted to "move" to the E drive, did you uninstall first or simply copy to "E:"? If the registry did not get cleaned up properly by uninstalling, it may be confusing LW.

 

When you say "reloaded" LW, I hope you mean "re-installed". Which version of LW?

 

Did you follow ALL the procedures laid out in the wiki article "Basic Guide to installing mods", especially "Enabling INI loading", "Disabling 'phone home'", and trying "Steam offline"?

 

Are there any error messages or anything in the LW install log?

 

-Dubious-

[Miserablevlad]

OK thanks for the reply. I'm using Windows Vista. First off I just copied everything over. The game worked fine, but Long War didn't. so I uninstalled, and reinstalled everything via Steam. I then reinstalled (yes sorry for my incorrect choice of words, I'm pretty computer illiterate) the latest patch Long War 3 Beta 14-d2-88-3-ob15d2, which I had no trouble with previously.

 

I did not use that article, rather the troubleshooting in the readme that came with the mod. Reading through that article, I think it's all a bit out of my league. I guess the Long War is over for me, but thanks for your help anyway.

[dubiousintent]

Don't give up so easily. We've gotten many a novice playing LW. But we have to get a better idea of what you have done, and how you interpreted various instructions to get an idea of what might have gone wrong.

 

LW was originally developed for Windows, so that makes some things easier. The LW installer will handle the "hex code" changes that are required for you, and some of the steps in the "Basic Guide". But you will need to refer between the installer docs and the "Basic Guide" to see if there are any steps the installer assumes you have already done, such as moving your Steam folder out of the "C:\Program Files" tree (which you have done). It can only go so far.

 

As you say you are not computer savvy, that means from your previous actions it is likely that the registry is still telling LW to install to the "C:" drive as you probably haven't uninstalled LW correctly. If so, there is likely to be a log file report from the LW installer. This will be in the folder where you "unpacked" the LW archive (ZIP) file and installed it from. First step will be to look from the end of that log backwards until you find where it reports the install failed. If you can't figure it out, post the log file here within "spoiler" tags:

 

 

[ spoiler ]

text

[ /spoiler ]

but without the space before or after the "[]"

 

 

 

When you re-installed XCOM from Steam, did you run EW to the main menu twice before attempting to install LW? This needs to be done before 'phone home' gets disabled so the game is correctly patched first. You also may need to run in "Steam offline" mode. (For some people this is required, but not for others. We don't know why.)

 

The LW installer docs include a command line option you can give the installer to tell it the path to where you have installed XCom. This refers to the "EU" folder, also called the <XCOM root> folder:

(i.e. "E:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common\XCom-Enemy-Unknown").

The LW installer will locate the EW folder from there. (Don't try to point it to the EW folder "XEW", as that will confuse it.)

 

Try these and let's see what happens.

 

-Dubious-

Edited June 18, 2015 by dubiousintent

[Miserablevlad]

"When you re-installed XCOM from Steam, did you run EW to the main menu twice before attempting to install LW?"

 

I don't know what you mean by that.

 

"..there is likely to be a log file report from the LW installer. This will be in the folder where you "unpacked" the LW archive (ZIP) file and installed it from."

 

I simply double-clicked on the zip file which is in my Downloads folder. I don't have a Games folder in my E:drive, as there are only games in there. Maybe that is an issue, but I don't know where the log folder is, I have looked in

 

E:\Steam\SteamApps\common\XCom-Enemy-Unknown\XEW

 

which is where I installed it to as far as I can tell.

 

When I installed the mod (to the above) I got a warning that the folder already exists and would I like to install to that folder anyway, to which I replied yes. The install then went ahead, and the Readme popped up, but when I loaded Xcom, there was no sign of Long War.

[dubiousintent]

"When you re-installed XCOM from Steam, did you run EW to the main menu twice before attempting to install LW?"

 

I don't know what you mean by that.

This is one of the many little "gotcha's" covered in the "Basic Guide". When you install (or revert to "vanilla") either EU or EW, you first have to launch the game and let it run at least up to the main menu in the game where you start a new game or continue an existing mission. Then you have to quit the game, wait about 30 seconds and launch it again and run back to the same menu. From that point on the game has been fully patched to the current release. The first time you run up to the main menu, the game is being patched by Steam. The second time, it is being patched from the Firaxis server that is accessed via the 'phone home' mechanism. Both patching steps must be completed before installing any mods.

 

"..there is likely to be a log file report from the LW installer. This will be in the folder where you "unpacked" the LW archive (ZIP) file and installed it from."

 

I simply double-clicked on the zip file which is in my Downloads folder.

When you double-click on a Zip file in Windows, you are shown the contents of the archive. From there you need to extract the contents to some location/folder. If you do not navigate to some specific folder for the purpose, the contents of the archive are extracted to the current "default" folder, which will be your "download folder", or to a "temp" folder which will then be erased when the process is done (depending upon whether you are using an unZIP process integrated into the OS (which IIRC is the case with Vista) or an added program). This is not a good practice as you start to mix the contents of multiple archives together and can't keep straight what belongs with each or lose the resulting log file. At the very least you should select the option to extract the contents to a folder of the name of the archive. Then you navigate (switch folders) to the folder where you extracted LW, and run the installer from there. The LW log file will be placed in that same folder.

 

I don't have a Games folder in my E:drive, as there are only games in there. Maybe that is an issue, but I don't know where the log folder is, I have looked in

 

E:\Steam\SteamApps\common\XCom-Enemy-Unknown\XEW

 

which is where I installed it to as far as I can tell.

The "games" folder is not required; it's just a convention for "where you installed your games". In your case the "E:\Steam" folder is the equivalent of the "E:\Games" folder. If I am interpreting what you said correctly, that is the EW folder path but the LW installer log will not be in that folder. It will be where the installer was extracted from the ZIP file, per the above response. I'm of the opinion that it was extracted to a "temp" folder (which is named using a random collection of characters hidden under the "AppData\Temp" folder in your User account area. I do not recommend you go looking for it there without a lot more computer experience) and is effectively lost. In which case you need to "revert to vanilla", extract the LW installer to it's own folder, and install LW again.

 

When I installed the mod (to the above) I got a warning that the folder already exists and would I like to install to that folder anyway, to which I replied yes. The install then went ahead, and the Readme popped up, but when I loaded Xcom, there was no sign of Long War.

This would be because you did not revert back to vanilla after your previous attempt to install LW. Any time you install a mod and have problems you need to "uninstall" the mod if it provides a means to do so (check the LW docs), or have to revert the basic XCOM game (in this case EW) back to vanilla as described in the linked article in the "Basic Guide" before installing the mod again. This is necessary because all mods that are not simple changes to an INI or INT file are making changes to the hex code in the game, and once they have done that the next attempt to install the same mod will not find the original hex code it is looking for. This is certainly the case with LW. (This is why we say the game is not designed to support mods. It does not expect changes to the hex code.)

 

I know this is very tedious, but as people are fond of saying (with a great deal of truth): "That's XCOM, Baby." You just have to learn to deal with it, or move on to another game. The point is: we know what you need to do. Question is: is the effort worth it to you? (LW is actually one of the easiest mods to install.)

 

-Dubious-

Edited June 19, 2015 by dubiousintent

[Miserablevlad]

Ok, I uninstalled the mod again, I ran the game twice to the options menu. Now, as far as double clicking on the mod, it gives me no option to unzip it or whatever, it just goes straight into running the program,.i tried Open ,and right-clicking, but there was no exract files option. I moved it from the download folder to it's own folder on the E drive to start with, but I still don't see any log. No doubt I am still doing things wrong but I don't know I'm doing things wrong, that's the frustration.

 

Thanks for helping me, I learnt some things I didn't know before, so it's not been a waste of time, but as you say, I think it's time to move on.

[dubiousintent]

No, don't give up now! You should be really close. Have a little more patience. We have to take this in small steps when trying the whole process at once fails. Each step tells us a little more about the problem.

 

If the filename has an ".exe" extension (the last four characters of the filename), then it is an "executable" and double-clicking (Left or Primary mouse button) is launching/running it. If the ".exe" file is a "self-extracting" archive then it will unpack itself into the "current" folder. Then you will run the installer program as documented in the included "ReadMe" file (which may be a ".bat" file, which may need to be told where the XCOM folder is located. The docs will explain.)

 

The presence of the documentation will be your clue that the archive has been unpacked. Otherwise, if it is an "installer" (I know they have one for the Mac but am not sure about the latest versions for other platforms) then it should be creating a log file in the folder where the file resides. If you have placed it in it's own folder on drive "E:", then the log should be there (along with the documentation). That you can't find one strongly suggests you have not yet managed to install the mod.

 

OTOH, if the file extension is ".zip" or ".7z", then you need to have installed an archive program such as 7Zip, which is free to use and very commonly used on the Nexus download site, if the OS does not include support for that archive format. (I believe Vista only supports the ".zip" extension.) Once installled 7Zip will be associated with those two file extensions and automatically run when you double-click on a file with any of the file extensions 7Zip supports.

 

-Dubious-

Edited June 22, 2015 by dubiousintent