[EL 1.0888] incompatible with windows 10 cloud backup *INFO*

[cybot]

i was able to run the game after i first got it. but tonight when i went to run it, it would open then immediately enter a stalled state. this left me scratching my head. everything was working properly, but the game was not working. long story short, I determined that the game for whatever reason is incompatible with the cloud backup feature of windows 10. this feature makes backups of the icons on the desktop, the files in the documents folder, and makes copies of your pictures and stores them to your one drive account. this is first time i have encountered an issue with windows 10 cloud features. when the feature is enabled, the documents are redirected from "C:\Users\%username%\Documents" to "C:\USERS\%USERNAME%\OneDrive\Documents". the game is able to find the files related to the game at the redirected directory C:\users\%username%\onedrive\documents\Evochronlegacy and "C:\users\%username%\onedrive\documents\SW3DG" but *something* within the game does not like the fact that the files are at that location. if i delete the files at the "c:\users\%USERNAME%\onedrive\documents\" location, I can run the game, but only once. the files are created again, at that point, i am back to square one. if i turn off the cloud backup so the files are not redirected to the onedrive folder, and the game works flawlessly.

I prefer to have the feature turned on, because it makes things tons easier for me, when i switch between my surface tablet and my laptop. there is something in the game that is balking the fact that i am using windows 10's cloud backup feature.

[Vice]

That leaves me scratching my head also. I have no idea why basic read/write operations would be blocked or otherwise interfered with when the game is attempting to read/access its own files within in its own folder in \Documents (or what kind of issue OneDrive's virtualization might cause). I'll plan on researching into it to see if there is a setting or other option that would allow the game to access its own files with the service on.

If it was some kind of interference issue, I would expect an error message to be displayed, so there may be something else going on when it's active. Otherwise, there may be nothing I can do on this side of the equation to get it to work since the game is only performing basic read and write operations from/to its files.

Edit: Couldn't find possible causes or explanations yet. I'll take another look at this tomorrow.

As a test, what happens if you try to point the game to the OneDrive folder using the 'savedir.txt' option ( viewtopic.php?f=26&t=3433 )? Or additionally, point it to some other folder such as 'c:\sw3dg\EvochronLegacy\SaveData', then see what happens when you use that as the primary save data folder and leave the \Documents\sw3dg\EvochronLegacy folder in place (which is the Steam cloud save back up folder).

[WhiteFang]

Windows 10 cloud backup - has a lot of issues.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/off ... 33539def0b

I would email them (contact is on that page) and explain using vice's response above.

Permissions:
- have you ever had a user account issue with Windows 10?
- I would look at your permissions for the folders
- I would also try running EL in admin mode

[Vice]

So I've spent some time working with OneDrive today to try and duplicate this issue. Here is what I've tried so far:

- Default settings with a fresh install (basically just activating OneDrive), verified '\Documents' was included for backup and that a '\OneDrive\Documents' folder was created, launched the game, things worked fine.

- Manually activated the backup process to trigger the upload operation. Waited for it to finish, then tested the game again. Worked fine. Launched the game several times to check for any potential intermittent issues, worked reliably every time.

- Disabled OneDrive in its settings menu, launched the game to test and it again worked fine.

After reading around on the net, it does appear that OneDrive has quite a number of reported problems with a variety of apps/games (apparently even blocking some Windows 10 Updates for some users). But so far, it seems to be working well with my game and its save data files.

So there may be something specific about the configuration and settings you are trying to use with OneDrive that is blocking required game file operations in some way. Could you describe what settings and drive configuration you are using?

I'd also be interested in other steps you've tried, including pointing the game to different folder with the option I described above in my previous post as well as WhiteFang's suggestions regarding permissions.

[cybot]

looks like adding the savedir.txt to c:\program files (x86)\steam\steamapps\evochron legacy\ with the contents set to "C:\users\%username%\onedrive\documents" did the trick. game starts up normally now. %username% is replaced with my actual user name of course.

[Vice]

Great, glad that worked at least. I'd still be interested in pinning down what may be not working on your setup though, in case anyone else might run into it in the future. I'd like to take a closer look at your system configuration since I can't seem to duplicate the issue and it hasn't been reported before. Please follow the steps outlined here: https://www.starwraith.com/evochronlegacy/faq.htm#208

No need to include the save game, just the zipped msinfo report. I can then take a look at the hardware, software, and environment conditions your system is running with to see if I can spot something out of place and/or try to duplicate it.

I also just finished running a series of extensive read/write file test operations with OneDrive live, even trying to provoke an intermittent crash and could not. Everything checked out and worked 100% reliably with many thousands of operations tested (including a mix of read, write, copy, delete, and rename), all with default game folder assignments and all tested using in-game functions and operations. OneDrive even picked up on the changes every time and performed proper backup operations (which I thought was pretty cool). Things seemed slower, so performance may be impacted, but reliability and functionality were 100% through all tests I ran.

[Marvin]

I've done my best to keep OneDrive off both my and my wife's computers so I'm not sure how it works. Ergo, I ask: Does it make use of the Internet?

[Vice]

Yes, it's an online backup service. I don't use it myself (different program), but may leave it on one test machine for further testing and analysis for now.

[Marvin]

Does that mean a slow connection could cause problems?

[cybot]

I have a slow connection, 6mbps download, 1mbps up. I only notice issues when someone else is also trying to use the connection in the household. or when I or someone else is trying to upload something. for whatever reason my ISP has it set so the entire bandwidth is used up when trying to upload something. it doesn't make much sense too me that a 1mbps upload could use up all 6mpbs of download bandwidth. but that an entirely different discussion.

as for your question in relation too onedrive, it can slow stuff down, particularly when it is uploading a large life (I have mine set to back up my outlook mail file). but it will only upload stuff that is newly created or that gets changed. since things like word documents of even images are rarely over a few MB's the process is fairly quick. then it's done it doesn't use up any bandwidth. addionally, you can control the upload and download speed used by onedrive from within the onedrive app settings. as for how much a slow connection would affect EV:L, I don't know. you would probably jumping around of other players and you would experience rubberbanding yourself, based on my experience with other games. I don't know for sure, but maybe vice might know?

as for the usefulness of onedrive, it is useful if you have more than one windows 10 device that you are switching between, or if you want to backup any pictures you might have stored on your PC. same goes for the documents. what this also means is that if you have an IOS or android device, you can access those same documents from anywhere. It also means that you can use those devices to store a document (like a .pdf file or what not) and then later access it from you PC. I have been a long time user of onedrive, I was using it back when it was called skydrive and still offered 15gb of free storage space.

[Marvin]

If he thinks it's a possibility and he can test it, he will probably test it.

[Vice]

I did run some performance tests. Bandwidth use and upload performance seems pretty good, at least on par with the other backup program I use. If there were a performance impact on network performance, I'd guess it would probably be fairly minimal, at least in my game where there aren't very many save data file edits/changes while the game is being played, only when progress is saved or settings changed.

The only significant performance decrease I noticed while testing OneDrive was when files were being changed/updated and OneDrive was catching up with those changes. It seemed there was a noticeable drop in read/write performance, slowing down load and save operations. But that is to be expected for that kind of real time analysis and file management. Nothing out of the ordinary or excessive. If loading performance were degraded beyond what a player might want, they could always temporarily disable the program while they game, then turn it back on when finished. I normally leave my usual backup program disabled anyway and only activate it manually to back up when I want to. But with OneDrive for these tests on the system I used (which is rather old), it worked well either way for me.

Overall, I found its reliability, performance, and effectiveness solid on my test rig.