Can Open Ren Py games
- Thread starter 808chef
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IIRC Windows cannot really handle file paths containing questions marks, and with shoddy programming spaces might be an issue too. If those are not question marks in the actual file path it's probably a locale issue e.g. Japanese or Cyrillic symbols, Japanese RPGM games love to crash on startup because of that.
- Jun 10, 2017
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In this particular case, it's not really the questions marks that are a problem, but the fact that each one of them replace a character that can't be displayed/handled by the system.
You've Ren'py who search for, lets say "c:\èàèèèé\gamename\lib\gamename.exe", the system (or something else mid process) that translate this into "c:\??????\gamename\lib\gamename.exe", and the system that fail to find the file, because there's effectively no folder named "c:\??????\".
anne O'nymous I just don't remember in which contexts Windows substitutes question marks specifically. Pretty sure at least the old file explorer and notepad would print all kinds of random gibberish including accents and those ancient symbols no one ever uses deliberately, or failing that go straight to unicode fallback boxes. Does Ren'Py not use OS-level language packs if you have, say, Cyrillic or French already supported?
- Jun 10, 2017
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I don't think that Ren'py is directly in concern here, I already played without problem games that had Cyrillic in there file's names. It's more like you already said while naming the old file explorer.
Mid process there's something that don't deal with "wild characters" and translate them into question marks. I know that myself have few programs like this, way to old but that I never replaced because I never found another one that I like to use. But in this case OP should have encounter this kind of problems years ago and understood it or changed the program.
So, I'm mostly in the dark here. Windows have native support for UNICODE since a long time now. Even when the right font isn't installed, and so it can't display the characters, internally it's not a problem and it should be able to find the directory. Therefore, it's perhaps something totally unrelated. The question marks being here just because there's a font missing, making us follow a wrong lead.
qwerty75345 , try to install the game somewhere else, in "c:\my lewd games" by example. Somewhere where the path have only ASCII characters (regular none accentuated Latin letters), and try again to see what happen. I can works, or perhaps give you more accurate information.
It's not just windows. The issue happens when someone creates a URL that isn't just ASCII characters.
A single Question mark is also not uncommon in GET URLs to indicate the data assignment after the domain name.
example: domain.com?name=fred
Various other character such as space can be replaced with codes for them such as %20 hex code for "space".
Then there are other issues between windows and unix or network based urls.
windows sees directories with capital letters the same as lower case. However unix systems and the network don't.
You can see problems created by that when you have sloppy windows developers who don't standardize their URLs/directories properly and produce say a game and then try and port it to other systems. A great example is all the developers creating mods for ARMA and the number of directory issues there.
In windows This, this, THIS, thiS... are all the same in UNIX and the network they are all different. The reason is the network/ internet is based off of unix. There is an old saying in and network developers use everything is file. You can google that "Everthing is a file" if you don't understand the context of it.
Anyway the short answer is that windows may not be the fault here. It can be software and anything that is translating that address to visible characters.
The real fault is the stupidity of the person who created the initial URL not using a standardized ASCII URL.
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Can confirm, as someone with a french name, that some programs throw a fit at any accents or abnormal characters. Moving the folder into a directory that avoids any characters should solve the problem.