Mac issue — game seems to have disappeared

Curtis · 02-02-2010, 01:10 AM

I'm sure some of you will remember my problems trying to install the 10.4 version last November. Eventually the game was successfully installed and started up, after which I shut it down and didn't touch it again until a couple of weeks ago when I tried to install Matter's injury file mod. I was unable to find the default injury.txt, so I asked for help in the General Discussions section of the forum. This was the result:

"here ya go buddy,put it here.

my documents/out of the park developments/OOTP baseball 10/database

once in there,rename the default injury file(I rename mine injuries(X) nice and simple) then copy and paste the new one."

My problem is that I can't find the database. Within OOTP baseball 10 I have six things: license.txt, readme.txt, OOTP 10.app, uninstaller folder, log folder and data folder.

The unistaller folder has two items: uninstaller.app and uninstaller.pkg.

The log folder contains only install log.txt.

OOTP 10.app contains nine items: PkgInfo, OOTP10, info.nib, classes.nib, objects.xib (allof those are Unix Executable Files), two Info.plists, info.plist.strings and OOTP10.icns.

Now, you'd think the data folder would have the database, wouldn't you? Au contraire. It contains six items: background.jpg, loading.png, ootp.png, ootp10_peds_key, a fonts folder (which contains ten .ttf files) and a skins folder. The skins folder contains folders for four skins, each containing a skin.bin and a defaults.cfg file. I'm not seeing a database folder in there anywhere.

This is not a weird Mac thing. I looked in the OOTP 9 folder, and its data folder contains (among other things) the database folder, which contains (among other things) injuries.txt. I know for a fact that the 10.1 and 10.2 versions of OOTP also had a database folder and injuries.txt within the data folder, but for some reason 10.4 doesn't. I never looked at 10.0 or 10.3.

I just tried to start the game up, and it won't start, which is not surprising, considering that most of the game is now missing. The message I got was to the effect that the game had crashed the last time I started it (it hadn't), and that my computer would reset the graphics and retry. If it did, it had no effect.

Where in hell did my game go, and how do I get it back?

Curtis · 02-02-2010, 10:06 AM

Update —

Quote:

Originally Posted by spitfire

Curtis, my OOTPX stuff is spread over two locations. In C:/program files/Out of the Park Developments/OOTP Baseball 10 I have a data folder similar to what you describe (probably identical; I just didn't check every item). In C:/My Documents/Out of the Park Developments I have another OOTP folder called OOTP Baseball 10. That's the one that contains a database folder with injuries.txt and lots of other stuff. The game set these folders up automatically. Is your set-up similar?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

It's inside your documents folder... you will find an OOTP 10 folder there, which includes the data\database folder where the injury.txt is located...

This solved the problem of where the missing half of my game went, since everything was right where Markus and Spitfire said it should be. It doesn't solve the problem of why my game won't start.

When I double-click on the OOTP10 icon in Applications, nothing happens. When I use the right-click 'open' function, it gives me the message about crashing the last time it was used, and it will reset the graphics and try again. Then nothing.

Markus Heinsohn · 02-02-2010, 10:25 AM

Have you tried disabling FaceGen? Look for a file called "app" (Spotlight will help), open it in text editor, and set the facegen parameter to 0.

Curtis · 02-02-2010, 11:30 AM

Apparently Spotlight doesn't help. There are about a million files that trigger on a search for 'app', which really didn't surprise me. I tried looking in the FaceGen folder in Documents and did not find it there.

Curtis · 02-02-2010, 11:56 AM

I just tried starting up the game again, and this time I wrote down the popup message:

"OOTP found that the crashed_on_startup flag is set. Obviously the game crashed when you started it last time. OOTP will reset the graphics settings to default values. You can set them back later in the Game Preferences dialog. OK"

Well, it's really not okay. I can't set anything back because I can't get to the Game Preferences dialog because the game won't start. I've tried e-mailing a guy who understands computers much better than I do, to see if he can explain how to get Spotlight to find this 'app' thing. He may not respond, because I annoy him too much. (Hard to imagine, I know.)

Edit: He got back to me very quickly, and he said looking for something with 'app' in it will return every application in the machine, along with other results. He said you'll have to tell me where this file is located, as there is no good way to search for it.

SteveP · 02-02-2010, 12:35 PM

"app" is one of the hidden files associated with OOTP. There are several of them spread around in different places. Not good, and not very Mac-like, but not uncommon for games. It is one of the config files -- the files that get changed when you do various preferences, but also some hidden config items that you can use to customize how the game engine does things.

It is in this location: [your Home Folder, whatever it is called]/.Out of the Park Developments/OOTP Baseball 10/config. The dot in from of the first folder is what causes all of it to be hidden.

Unfortunately, Spotlight can't find a hidden file. For some reason, none of the standard Find commands will find these hidden files either -- at least I can't do it, though it should be possible. So you have to reset the Finder preferences to make all hidden files visible. A program like Pref Setter can help do that.

That's a start toward an answer for you. Do you need more help on that?

Curtis · 02-03-2010, 02:42 AM

SteveP, thanks to your advic, my Mac guy told me to go Finder>Go>Go To Folder> then paste this in: ~/.Out of the Park Developments/OOTP Baseball 10

That took me to the Config folder, wherein the first item was the app file. (So, thank you for getting me that far.) I opened the app file using Text Wrangler. There was no 'facegen parameter', but there was a 'facegen mode', which I set to 0. I saved the changes, closed the file and tried starting the game up, but received the exact error message quoted in post 5 above.

I tried again, resetting the crashed_on_startup flag to 0 and trying to start the game. The icon blinked quickly, but nothing else happened. Tried a second time to start it up and got the same error message quoted in post 5.

So, to answer your question, yes, I need more help.

SteveP · 02-03-2010, 12:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Curtis

my Mac guy told me to go Finder>Go>Go To Folder> then paste this in: ~/.Out of the Park Developments/OOTP Baseball 10

That's good. I've got to remember about that.

I have no idea why Markus thought the solution was related to FaceGen, but he's The Man, so ...

I'll just tell you what I would do, and have done (especially during beta) when I run into big problems with the game: trash the game and re-install a fresh downloaded copy. Since you can't start up, you can't de-license properly, so you'd probably have to get PISD to release your license (or use your second license). Also you'd have to save your Saved Games and any other custom files. If the problem is in one of the config files, this may not solve your problem (unless you trash them as well, which only means you'd lose your preference settings).

Other than that, I have no advice because I think you'd just be guessing about what to do to get the game running again.

Curtis · 02-03-2010, 12:28 PM

Thanks for trying, Steve.

As you may recall from your difficulties helping me get 10.4 installed some months ago, I tried twice to get PISDPaul's attention at that time, and he never responded. I sent him an e-mail, and I tried posting on the PISD website. This causes me to believe I won't get any better response this time, but I'll give it a shot. Maybe this time I'll try PMing him.

Anyway, I'm afraid Version 10 is going to be my last for this game. I don't begrudge OOTP Developments the money for v.10, since I've gotten hundreds of hours of pleasure out of versions 7 and 9 (as well as a free copy of 8, which like 10 I never used), but because the Mac version has gotten progressively less user-friendly with each version, I'm not inclined to lay out my money again, unless someday I get a PC machine to game with. A game I can't install, can't play once it's installed, and can't contact the liscensor of is really not worth further investing in.

Curtis · 02-03-2010, 01:39 PM

Okay, I thought I was in good shape, since I apparently had one license left and didn't have to rely on PISDPaul. I downloaded, let everything go to default locations, then dragged the application part from Applications to Games. Tried to start it up, and got the exact same error message as before.

Any ideas now?

EDIT: This is getting more complicated by the minute. Apparently the problem was associated with the split of the game stuff between Applications and Documents. I had put all of my computer games documents into a separate folder within Documents, and OOTP was unable to figure this out (the other three games had no such problem). I took it back out and tried starting again. It attempted to start, then froze on 'copying folder big_endian'. I was tempted to come back here and post my progress at that point, but decided to try starting again. This time it started successfully, but informed me that it was a demo, and I'd need to input my license number, which I don't have, so I'm back to trying to contact PISDPaul.

I'm sure that with just a little more effort they could make this procedure even more difficult.

SteveP · 02-03-2010, 02:35 PM

Here's some more info:

1. In my setup, I have all of the visible OOTP files in one folder, inside my Games folder. That leaves some invisible files where the game expects them to be. There are two batches of these. One is in the visible Out of the Park Developments folder in Documents. Since I moved all of the visible files, this folder appears to be empty but in fact contains a hidden file called ".license". I believe that if this file gets moved or erased for any reason, the game may revert to being a "Demo". The other batch is the invisible Out of the Park Developments folder in the Home Folder. We've already investigated this. In any event, my copy of OOTP10 has worked flawlessly (well ... almost flawlessly

) for several months with this arrangement.

2. The way to get your licenses released is go thru the PISD webstore according to these directions:

P.I.S.D. Forums • View topic - Welcome to Webstore Support and Some Common Answers

It's usually pretty automatic.

Edit: I should have added that my arrangement of the OOTP files was done during installation. I told the installer to install in my Games folder. That way, the OOTP application knew where the data folder was. Otherwise, I think I would have to use the box in Game Preferences to get that squared away.

SteveP · 02-04-2010, 12:33 AM

FYI:

I came across a nifty little utility program (Freeware, I believe) called HideUnhide (one word). When you launch it, it causes all files (or almost all) to become visible. When you launch it again, it hides everything that is supposed to hide. Very convenient. Better than what i was doing before, and great for these windows-ported software that spread things around in unexpected ways.

Curtis · 02-05-2010, 08:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SteveP

Here's some more info:

1. In my setup, I have all of the visible OOTP files in one folder, inside my Games folder. That leaves some invisible files where the game expects them to be. There are two batches of these. One is in the visible Out of the Park Developments folder in Documents. Since I moved all of the visible files, this folder appears to be empty but in fact contains a hidden file called ".license". I believe that if this file gets moved or erased for any reason, the game may revert to being a "Demo". The other batch is the invisible Out of the Park Developments folder in the Home Folder. We've already investigated this. In any event, my copy of OOTP10 has worked flawlessly (well ... almost flawlessly

) for several months with this arrangement.

Edit: I should have added that my arrangement of the OOTP files was done during installation. I told the installer to install in my Games folder. That way, the OOTP application knew where the data folder was. Otherwise, I think I would have to use the box in Game Preferences to get that squared away.

Steve, thanks for sticking with this. pisdpaul did release another license for me, along with a short lecture on being more careful with them in the future. The game is working and is no longer in demo mode. I lost one dynasty, but retained my oldest (and favorite), so I'm now working on getting that ready to run by the time pitchers and catchers report.

If you recall from last fall, I can't seem to install OotP 10.4 to a custom location, as I could with earlier versions. When I tried, it installed to some location I couldn't find; effectively the entire game became a 'hidden file'.

I don't know if this is even worth bothering you with, since the workaround is so simple, but I can't delete games using the 'Load Game' feature on the opening page. Every time I try it tells me that whatever I'm trying to delete is apparently write-protected and I don't have sufficient permissions. Note that I am Admin, and should have all the permissions that I need. The workaround is to just open the database from outside the game and drag the appropriate files to the trash.

The Rename function also doesn't work properly. It creates a new folder with the new name, but retains the old folder with the old name, only the old folder doesn't show up in the Load Game feature. I found this out when I was trying to recycle an old name. It won't give me the option of overwriting the old game folder, so I tried renaming the old folder and giving the old name to a new folder. That didn't work either, because the old folder with the old name still existed, just wasn't showing up in the window. Again, the solution was to go into Saved Games while the game was turned off and drag the old folder(s) to the trash.

10.4 has a lot of idiosyncrasies, of which I am insufficiently appreciative.

SteveP · 02-05-2010, 12:05 PM

Well, here are some thoughts:

Quote:

]If you recall from last fall, I can't seem to install OotP 10.4 to a custom location, as I could with earlier versions. When I tried, it installed to some location I couldn't find; effectively the entire game became a 'hidden file'.

The game clearly wasn't hidden because it isn't possible for the installer to do that. However, I can't speculate on what might have happened because I don't have enough info. I suspect your best option is to stick with what seems to be working for you.

Quote:

Note that I am Admin, and should have all the permissions that I need.

Maybe. Maybe not. I would have said the same thing at one time, but I've learned better in recent days (the result of moving to a new computer and to Snow Leopard, but not doing that migration in a very smart way). At a minimum, you should use Get Info on suspect folders to see what it says about permissions for that folder. If the permissions list doesn't include Admin (read-and-write) and/or your name (read-and-write), then you don't have the permissions you think you do. If you find that there are problems or inconsistencies with permissions on your system, you might want to get a little advice on how best to fix them (just running Fix Permissions in Disk Utility may not be enough). Just FYI.

Quote:

The Rename function also doesn't work properly.

As a general observation, I think the Load Game window is not a particularly good way to do anything other than load a game. Perhaps the functionality of this window works in Windows, but it seems rather handicapped on the Mac. I basically do all OOTP folder manipulations in Finder.

I guess I could add for good measure that I've never gotten the Almanac function to work on either of my Macs.

Curtis · 02-05-2010, 12:59 PM

Thank you Steve, you can close this thread. Another satisfied(?) customer. (Well, more satisfied than I was.)

boris · 02-08-2010, 04:13 PM

Even if you guys were able to solve your problems, it is obvious that you have more patience, knowledge, and time than I do. I want to play a game. Period. Even if they gave me advice that would work, I don't want to do it. I like this game, but will never give them another dime unless I get some satisfaction. I know this has nothing to do with y'all, but I just read this thread, hoping for help or support in English, and felt the need vent.
I am not a computer tech, do not want to be a computer tech, and resent the implication that I need to be one in order to play a game I paid for.

thanks for listening, so to speak.

Curtis · 02-08-2010, 06:35 PM

Well, boris, it's like this: Most of the computer games that I've actually paid for have required some amount of 'massaging' to make them work properly. A few were never made good, and a couple might have been, but the effort proved more than I was willing to invest. The ones that are the worst are the PC games that've been converted to Mac usage, and the best were the ones that were designed for Macs right from the start. I'm seriously considering getting two computers the next time I have to upgrade — a Mac for surfing the Internet, and a PC for playing games.

02-02-2010, 01:10 AM	#1
Curtis Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Watertown, New York Posts: 4,567	Mac issue — game seems to have disappeared I'm sure some of you will remember my problems trying to install the 10.4 version last November. Eventually the game was successfully installed and started up, after which I shut it down and didn't touch it again until a couple of weeks ago when I tried to install Matter's injury file mod. I was unable to find the default injury.txt, so I asked for help in the General Discussions section of the forum. This was the result: "here ya go buddy,put it here. my documents/out of the park developments/OOTP baseball 10/database once in there,rename the default injury file(I rename mine injuries(X) nice and simple) then copy and paste the new one." My problem is that I can't find the database. Within OOTP baseball 10 I have six things: license.txt, readme.txt, OOTP 10.app, uninstaller folder, log folder and data folder. The unistaller folder has two items: uninstaller.app and uninstaller.pkg. The log folder contains only install log.txt. OOTP 10.app contains nine items: PkgInfo, OOTP10, info.nib, classes.nib, objects.xib (allof those are Unix Executable Files), two Info.plists, info.plist.strings and OOTP10.icns. Now, you'd think the data folder would have the database, wouldn't you? Au contraire. It contains six items: background.jpg, loading.png, ootp.png, ootp10_peds_key, a fonts folder (which contains ten .ttf files) and a skins folder. The skins folder contains folders for four skins, each containing a skin.bin and a defaults.cfg file. I'm not seeing a database folder in there anywhere. This is not a weird Mac thing. I looked in the OOTP 9 folder, and its data folder contains (among other things) the database folder, which contains (among other things) injuries.txt. I know for a fact that the 10.1 and 10.2 versions of OOTP also had a database folder and injuries.txt within the data folder, but for some reason 10.4 doesn't. I never looked at 10.0 or 10.3. I just tried to start the game up, and it won't start, which is not surprising, considering that most of the game is now missing. The message I got was to the effect that the game had crashed the last time I started it (it hadn't), and that my computer would reset the graphics and retry. If it did, it had no effect. Where in hell did my game go, and how do I get it back?

02-02-2010, 10:25 AM	#3
Markus Heinsohn Developer OOTP Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Germany Posts: 24,738	Have you tried disabling FaceGen? Look for a file called "app" (Spotlight will help), open it in text editor, and set the facegen parameter to 0. __________________ Buy Out of the Park Baseball 25 now! Download OOTP Go 25 for iOS Download OOTP Go 25 for Android

02-02-2010, 11:30 AM	#4
Curtis Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Watertown, New York Posts: 4,567	Apparently Spotlight doesn't help. There are about a million files that trigger on a search for 'app', which really didn't surprise me. I tried looking in the FaceGen folder in Documents and did not find it there. Last edited by Curtis; 02-02-2010 at 11:31 AM. Reason: clarifying confused sentence structure.

02-02-2010, 11:56 AM	#5
Curtis Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Watertown, New York Posts: 4,567	I just tried starting up the game again, and this time I wrote down the popup message: "OOTP found that the crashed_on_startup flag is set. Obviously the game crashed when you started it last time. OOTP will reset the graphics settings to default values. You can set them back later in the Game Preferences dialog. OK" Well, it's really not okay. I can't set anything back because I can't get to the Game Preferences dialog because the game won't start. I've tried e-mailing a guy who understands computers much better than I do, to see if he can explain how to get Spotlight to find this 'app' thing. He may not respond, because I annoy him too much. (Hard to imagine, I know.) Edit: He got back to me very quickly, and he said looking for something with 'app' in it will return every application in the machine, along with other results. He said you'll have to tell me where this file is located, as there is no good way to search for it. Last edited by Curtis; 02-02-2010 at 12:26 PM.

02-03-2010, 01:39 PM	#10
Curtis Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Watertown, New York Posts: 4,567	Okay, I thought I was in good shape, since I apparently had one license left and didn't have to rely on PISDPaul. I downloaded, let everything go to default locations, then dragged the application part from Applications to Games. Tried to start it up, and got the exact same error message as before. Any ideas now? EDIT: This is getting more complicated by the minute. Apparently the problem was associated with the split of the game stuff between Applications and Documents. I had put all of my computer games documents into a separate folder within Documents, and OOTP was unable to figure this out (the other three games had no such problem). I took it back out and tried starting again. It attempted to start, then froze on 'copying folder big_endian'. I was tempted to come back here and post my progress at that point, but decided to try starting again. This time it started successfully, but informed me that it was a demo, and I'd need to input my license number, which I don't have, so I'm back to trying to contact PISDPaul. I'm sure that with just a little more effort they could make this procedure even more difficult. Last edited by Curtis; 02-03-2010 at 02:03 PM.

02-02-2010, 12:35 PM	#6
SteveP Moderator Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 3,109	"app" is one of the hidden files associated with OOTP. There are several of them spread around in different places. Not good, and not very Mac-like, but not uncommon for games. It is one of the config files -- the files that get changed when you do various preferences, but also some hidden config items that you can use to customize how the game engine does things. It is in this location: [your Home Folder, whatever it is called]/.Out of the Park Developments/OOTP Baseball 10/config. The dot in from of the first folder is what causes all of it to be hidden. Unfortunately, Spotlight can't find a hidden file. For some reason, none of the standard Find commands will find these hidden files either -- at least I can't do it, though it should be possible. So you have to reset the Finder preferences to make all hidden files visible. A program like Pref Setter can help do that. That's a start toward an answer for you. Do you need more help on that?

02-03-2010, 02:42 AM	#7
Curtis Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Watertown, New York Posts: 4,567	SteveP, thanks to your advic, my Mac guy told me to go Finder>Go>Go To Folder> then paste this in: ~/.Out of the Park Developments/OOTP Baseball 10 That took me to the Config folder, wherein the first item was the app file. (So, thank you for getting me that far.) I opened the app file using Text Wrangler. There was no 'facegen parameter', but there was a 'facegen mode', which I set to 0. I saved the changes, closed the file and tried starting the game up, but received the exact error message quoted in post 5 above. I tried again, resetting the crashed_on_startup flag to 0 and trying to start the game. The icon blinked quickly, but nothing else happened. Tried a second time to start it up and got the same error message quoted in post 5. So, to answer your question, yes, I need more help.

02-03-2010, 12:28 PM	#9
Curtis Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Watertown, New York Posts: 4,567	Thanks for trying, Steve. As you may recall from your difficulties helping me get 10.4 installed some months ago, I tried twice to get PISDPaul's attention at that time, and he never responded. I sent him an e-mail, and I tried posting on the PISD website. This causes me to believe I won't get any better response this time, but I'll give it a shot. Maybe this time I'll try PMing him. Anyway, I'm afraid Version 10 is going to be my last for this game. I don't begrudge OOTP Developments the money for v.10, since I've gotten hundreds of hours of pleasure out of versions 7 and 9 (as well as a free copy of 8, which like 10 I never used), but because the Mac version has gotten progressively less user-friendly with each version, I'm not inclined to lay out my money again, unless someday I get a PC machine to game with. A game I can't install, can't play once it's installed, and can't contact the liscensor of is really not worth further investing in.

02-03-2010, 02:35 PM	#11
SteveP Moderator Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 3,109	Here's some more info: 1. In my setup, I have all of the visible OOTP files in one folder, inside my Games folder. That leaves some invisible files where the game expects them to be. There are two batches of these. One is in the visible Out of the Park Developments folder in Documents. Since I moved all of the visible files, this folder appears to be empty but in fact contains a hidden file called ".license". I believe that if this file gets moved or erased for any reason, the game may revert to being a "Demo". The other batch is the invisible Out of the Park Developments folder in the Home Folder. We've already investigated this. In any event, my copy of OOTP10 has worked flawlessly (well ... almost flawlessly ) for several months with this arrangement. 2. The way to get your licenses released is go thru the PISD webstore according to these directions: P.I.S.D. Forums • View topic - Welcome to Webstore Support and Some Common Answers It's usually pretty automatic. Edit: I should have added that my arrangement of the OOTP files was done during installation. I told the installer to install in my Games folder. That way, the OOTP application knew where the data folder was. Otherwise, I think I would have to use the box in Game Preferences to get that squared away. Last edited by SteveP; 02-04-2010 at 12:02 PM.

02-04-2010, 12:33 AM	#12
SteveP Moderator Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 3,109	FYI: I came across a nifty little utility program (Freeware, I believe) called HideUnhide (one word). When you launch it, it causes all files (or almost all) to become visible. When you launch it again, it hides everything that is supposed to hide. Very convenient. Better than what i was doing before, and great for these windows-ported software that spread things around in unexpected ways.

02-05-2010, 12:59 PM	#15
Curtis Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Watertown, New York Posts: 4,567	Thank you Steve, you can close this thread. Another satisfied(?) customer. (Well, more satisfied than I was.)

02-08-2010, 04:13 PM	#16
boris Bat Boy Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 8	Baseball fan, not a computer person Even if you guys were able to solve your problems, it is obvious that you have more patience, knowledge, and time than I do. I want to play a game. Period. Even if they gave me advice that would work, I don't want to do it. I like this game, but will never give them another dime unless I get some satisfaction. I know this has nothing to do with y'all, but I just read this thread, hoping for help or support in English, and felt the need vent. I am not a computer tech, do not want to be a computer tech, and resent the implication that I need to be one in order to play a game I paid for. thanks for listening, so to speak.

02-08-2010, 06:35 PM	#17
Curtis Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Watertown, New York Posts: 4,567	Well, boris, it's like this: Most of the computer games that I've actually paid for have required some amount of 'massaging' to make them work properly. A few were never made good, and a couple might have been, but the effort proved more than I was willing to invest. The ones that are the worst are the PC games that've been converted to Mac usage, and the best were the ones that were designed for Macs right from the start. I'm seriously considering getting two computers the next time I have to upgrade — a Mac for surfing the Internet, and a PC for playing games.