SYBINX Posted August 6, 2009 Share Posted August 6, 2009 Hello, This is driving me crazy... I have enabled oblivion.ini to enable me to take a screenshot of my player. it takes a screeshot and tells me the name of the file but I cannot find it anywhere. I have looked in hidden files and folder, in the obveous places... and nothing. Does anybody know where these are stored on Vista. Because the landscape on some of the screenshots are awesome and I ant to see what they came out like. Thank you if anybody can point me in the right direction, I would really appreciate the help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skyfrog Posted August 6, 2009 Share Posted August 6, 2009 They should be in the Oblivion game directory. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SYBINX Posted August 6, 2009 Author Share Posted August 6, 2009 (edited) They should be in the Oblivion game directory. Yep that is what I thought but it's not...? They should be there but they are not. I found it, you're not going to believe where they are stored...? CENSORED Vista is a pain in the backside. APPData>Local>VirtualStore>ProgramFiles (86)>Bethesda Softwarks>Oblivion and they are all in here. :woot: Edited August 6, 2009 by EVANK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andre S. Veteran Posted August 7, 2009 Veteran Share Posted August 7, 2009 Actually, it's Oblivion who decides where to save its screenshots, not Vista. So, blame Bethesda. ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vip Posted August 7, 2009 Share Posted August 7, 2009 Haha I didn't notice the I, so I thought there was a new game and this thread was about screenshots of it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Minifig Posted August 7, 2009 Share Posted August 7, 2009 Actually, it's Oblivion who decides where to save its screenshots, not Vista. So, blame Bethesda. ;) No, it's Microsoft, for deciding the architecture of the file structure of Vista, and having to have game designers work around it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andre S. Veteran Posted August 7, 2009 Veteran Share Posted August 7, 2009 Screenshots are just files, and a program can save files practically anywhere it wants to. Most games under Vista use either their installation directory or MyGames/<gamedir>. I don't see why can't Bethesda do the same. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
00000 Posted August 7, 2009 Share Posted August 7, 2009 The game isn't running as an administrator so when it attempts to save to its directory in Program Files it gets saved to the path in the User's appdata folder instead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reacon Posted August 7, 2009 Share Posted August 7, 2009 PrtSrc :) Other than that, if you think the landscape in vanilla Oblivion is great, wait until you see it with 6.5 gigs of mods :woot: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LightIdea Posted August 7, 2009 Share Posted August 7, 2009 What mods to you run Recon? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ViperAFK Posted August 7, 2009 Share Posted August 7, 2009 No, it's Microsoft, for deciding the architecture of the file structure of Vista, and having to have game designers work around it. what the hell are you taking about? games can save screenshots wherever the **** they want. Ive seen them save screens in many places in vista. that post is nonsense. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Decryptor Veteran Posted August 7, 2009 Veteran Share Posted August 7, 2009 Fallout and Oblivion (for some stupid reason) store screenshots in the main game directory. That might have been fine with Windows 98, but under a proper security setup shouldn't ever happen. Vista/Win7 provides a way so that the game doesn't crash/throw up access denied messages, it re-directs the file writing to a per-user directory. So it's the game being stupid and Vista/Win7 working around the stupidity so it doesn't break. Edit: Source games do the same thing when they really shouldn't be, but for some reason they aren't effected by UAC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skyfrog Posted August 7, 2009 Share Posted August 7, 2009 (edited) what the hell are you taking about? games can save screenshots wherever the **** they want. Ive seen them save screens in many places in vista. that post is nonsense. You're wrong, so calm down. Vista and Windows 7 protect the Program Files and Windows directories. Programs not running as administrator are not allowed to write to them, so these writes get redirected by Vista to a folder in the user's profile directory. So they won't be in the same place they would be in XP. I don't see why can't Bethesda do the same. Oblivion is an old game, it came out before Vista. It was a bad choice on their part to save screenshots to the game's directory but under XP and previous versions of Windows this was allowed. Newer games should not have this issue. Edited August 7, 2009 by Skyfrog Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pc_Madness Posted August 7, 2009 Share Posted August 7, 2009 Fallout and Oblivion (for some stupid reason) store screenshots in the main game directory.That might have been fine with Windows 98, but under a proper security setup shouldn't ever happen. Vista/Win7 provides a way so that the game doesn't crash/throw up access denied messages, it re-directs the file writing to a per-user directory Personally I think its a stupid decision on Microsoft's part, if you can't trust the developer of an app with their own folder, who can you trust? That said, all screenshots being saved to a single folder might be handy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skyfrog Posted August 7, 2009 Share Posted August 7, 2009 Personally I think its a stupid decision on Microsoft's part, if you can't trust the developer of an app with their own folder, who can you trust?That said, all screenshots being saved to a single folder might be handy. For one thing it's to prevent malware from infecting or deleting program and system files. If a program could freely write to it's directory, then any other program could also including viruses. The only time programs are allowed to write to the Program Files directory is when they are being installed. It's a far better system security-wise. Also different users probably have their own custom settings and may not want to share their saved data with every other user. Programs are supposed to save this stuff to the current user's profile folder. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HawkMan Posted August 7, 2009 Share Posted August 7, 2009 In any case windows has a had a my games/game saves folder since vista and I think even XP. why devs can't use them I dunno. EA can't even use the same game save folder across it's own games. thoguh some actually use the game saves folder, while other place an EA folder directly under my documents *groan* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Decryptor Veteran Posted August 7, 2009 Veteran Share Posted August 7, 2009 Personally I think its a stupid decision on Microsoft's part, if you can't trust the developer of an app with their own folder, who can you trust?That said, all screenshots being saved to a single folder might be handy. Storing per-user data in a system wide location isn't a good idea, it doesn't matter if the developer thinks it is. Edit: And allowing apps read/write access their their install locations regardless of the permissions of the user running them is a security vulnerability. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andre S. Veteran Posted August 7, 2009 Veteran Share Posted August 7, 2009 Edit: And allowing apps read/write access their their install locations regardless of the permissions of the user running them is a security vulnerability.Why? Team Fortress 2 still does it, and I assume at least other Source games too.Oblivion is an old game, it came out before Vista. It was a bad choice on their part to save screenshots to the game's directory but under XP and previous versions of Windows this was allowed. Newer games should not have this issue.Good point, although I hear Fallout 3 has the same behavior. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Decryptor Veteran Posted August 7, 2009 Veteran Share Posted August 7, 2009 Why? Team Fortress 2 still does it, and I assume at least other Source games too.... Yeah, and it's not good (there's been stuff with gmod due to it's lua implementation and being able to write to folders it shouldn't) I wonder why it can do that though, why is it special and can apparently bypass UAC? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mad_onion Posted August 7, 2009 Share Posted August 7, 2009 Steam installs a service which means that it only has to show one prompt when the service installs and never again. http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/show...mp;postcount=26 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Decryptor Veteran Posted August 7, 2009 Veteran Share Posted August 7, 2009 I could have sworn the service was just for the steam community in-game UI. Well, consider me learned. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deletedxyz Posted August 7, 2009 Share Posted August 7, 2009 Other than that, if you think the landscape in vanilla Oblivion is great, wait until you see it with 6.5 gigs of mods :woot: No doubt about that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andre S. Veteran Posted August 8, 2009 Veteran Share Posted August 8, 2009 Yeah, and it's not good.Really, I'm just curious. Why is letting a game write to its own install directory a security risk? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Decryptor Veteran Posted August 8, 2009 Veteran Share Posted August 8, 2009 Off the top of my head, one that comes to me is putting executable code in the application folder as a low permission user, and having it execute as a high permission user if they then use the app. Edit: I'm assuming such "let them do whatever they want" function wouldn't only be limited to games, there are lots of apps that want to store per-user settings in a single system-wide directory. I've got one that stores it's recently opened files list in the program files directory (not in it's own folder, in the program files dir) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AgentGray Posted August 8, 2009 Share Posted August 8, 2009 it's not "the application" that has write access to it's own directory, it's a user having write permission by default without elevation to the programs folders...NT is a user based platform, built around users rights, (as are all modern OSes) not application-specific rights, meaning it's the problem with a USER having write access to program directories, not applications. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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