Rocks'n'Diamonds

Hello.
I usually don't use the installer version.
I just download the zip archive and unzip it into my profile, where I have a "Progs" folder created for such programs.
Then I create a shortcut to the "rocksndiamonds.exe" file on my desktop. And everything works.
Well, it used to. But now it doesn't.

Now, I have... ============================
Rocks'n'Diamonds 4.4.0.5 and Rocks'n'Diamonds 4.4.0.6 too (64-bit)
My compute system is Windows 11 Pro 64-bit 25H2

Can this be fixed?
Thank you.

Sincerely your, Eugene

Hi Eugene, that looks stange indeed!

I just download the zip archive and unzip it into my profile, where I have a "Progs" folder created for such programs.
Then I create a shortcut to the "rocksndiamonds.exe" file on my desktop. And everything works.

Yes, that should work fine, I think.

Well, it used to. But now it doesn't.

Some questions:

- Can you determine which was the last R'n'D version that worked that way?
- Does the problem also occur if you execute the EXE file directly from the directory extracted from the zip file?
- If all else fails: Does the problem also occur if you use the installer?

Can this be fixed?

If we find out why it does not work, I should be able to fix this, yes!

Hi, Holger.
I think I've found the cause of the program's strange behavior.
It's all about the user profile name. If the profile name (or profile directory) is in Latin characters, everything works. This works on releases 4.4.0.4, 4.4.0.5, and 4.4.0.6.
However, if the full program launch path contains non-Latin characters (for example, in Russian), this error occurs.
"C:\Users\edud\Progs\Rocks'n'Diamonds 4.4.0.6\rocksndiamonds.exe" works.
But
"C:\Users\Администратор\Progs\Rocks'n'Diamonds 4.4.0.6\rocksndiamonds.exe" doesn't work.
The word "Администратор" means "Administrator" in Russian versions of Windows. And this doesn't work even if I navigate to the directory where the program files are located in Explorer and try to run the program.
But if I use command console, navigate to the directory (cd "C:\Users\Администратор\Progs\Rocks'n'Diamonds 4.4.0.6\"), and run the program .\rocksndiamonds.exe, it works.

This has been a long-standing problem with non-Latin profile names in Windows. I've encountered similar errors with other software as well.
==============
Sincerely your, Eugene

P.S.
Yes, if you use the installer version, the program works.
Because the path in this case doesn't contain non-Latin characters.
It would be "C:\Program Files\Rocks'n'Diamonds 4.4.0.6\rocksndiamonds.exe"

Wow, that's crazy!

I thought that these were problems of the past, and that whatever user or directory names just work, regardless of them containing characters in Latin, Russian or Chinese (with the program just taking UTF-8 or Unicode characters and everything just works). Apparently not.

I wonder if I am able to reproduce this problem with Linux or Mac, as this would make debugging this issue easier for me, but I will try if I can reproduce this problem inside a Windows VM.

I assume that this is some sort of problem in R'n'D that hopefully can be fixed (and if it should be caused by some different behavior of Windows somehow, that it is possible to handle this correctly) so that your usage scenario works as expected.

Сhecked the situation in the root of drive D:
I created a directory named "Новая."
I unzipped the archive rocksndiamonds-4.4.0.6-win64.zip into it.
I renamed the resulting directory "Rocks'n'Diamonds 4.4.0.6" to RND. Just to be sure, I wanted to get rid of the ' characters.
The startup path was "D:\Новая\RND\rocksndiamonds.exe."
Nope. It doesn't work.
I moved the "RND" directory to the root of drive D.
The startup path became "D:\RND\rocksndiamonds.exe."
And everything works.

Just tested the this on the Mac, using a directory "TEST/Новая/rocksndiamonds-4.4.0.6" -- and it works just fine.

I then tested the same on Linux -- no problems starting and running the game from this directory.

And finally I tested this in my Windows 10 VM on my older intel based Mac -- and I get exactly the same error messages that you have quoted above!

So apparently this is not a general problem with R'n'D (which works fine when started from within a directory "Новая" on Mac and Linux), but must somehow be Windows related.

I will try to find out which special treatment is needed to make this also work under Windows.