Making saved games actually work

[Belgarath]

Ok, I have a few saved games that I downloaded from the downloads section of this very site. I put them in my "My Documents\Vice City User Files" folder, where the rest of my saved games are. But they don't work. Only the games that I've actually played and saved will work. They appear in the "Load Game" sub-menu, but when I click on one, it goes to the "loading" screen, chirps once, and then my screen goes black and stays that way. I have to use the windows key to minimize the game and shut it down with task manager. Any idea what's wrong? And yes, I know the subject of where to put saved games has been broached many times, but I've searched the forum and have been unable to find any thread discussing this particular problem. Any help would be great.

[Slayer]

Maye if you used script mods, the downloaded saves won't work because they're based on another script file.

[Belgarath]

Maye if you used script mods, the downloaded saves won't work because they're based on another script file.

No mods. I've never used any at all. I've only recently, within the last few days, gone looking for them. Until now, I've always played the game in its original form. Perhaps I should mention that the version of the game I'm using isn't a legitimate version. Believe it or not, I did actually buy the game, back when it first came out for PC, and as I always do, I made a backup. At some point, my original disc and case were stolen from my apartment, so I had to find a fixed .exe file for the backup, so I could continue playing. I have no intention of paying for a game twice. But, might that be the cause of the problem? I can't really see that being the case though. See, another thing that I neglected to mention in my initial post is that the saved game files that I downloaded from here aren't the only ones that don't work. I also had 3 saved game files of my own, in My Documents, from a prior installation of the game. Long story short, I had to format my HDD, so I backed up My Documents and all my other important stuff, formatted, and then put everything back where it was. None of those saved games will work either. And those saves were created using my copy of the original, with the fixed .exe, as well. No difference between the installation then, and the installation now.

[Belgarath]

Bumping this in case anyone else may have an idea, and hasn't seen this. I'm still unable to use any previous saved games.

[Gerard]

A modified .exe is a modification, and that is the most likely cause of your problem.

If you still have the box and everything from the original game, you can email/phone Take 2 and get them to ship you another CD (so long as you can prove you currently own it). They won't mind, they'll prefer it to you using a cracked copy, and it'll make savegames work.

For reference, I once borrowed my friend's cracked copy of GTAIII. He took back the play disk but left the install disk. I could install the game, crack it so that it didn't require the play disk, and disable windows audio so that it didn't go looking for the files that didn't exist. That meant the game would play, silently. Problem is, the modified exe didn't like savegames, and I could only play what I'd kept doing that time I'd run the game, and saving never worked.

The solution? Buying the game (again if you have to), or at least using a legitimate copy of the disk.

[Slayer]

Well I'm sure that there are more versions of a VC crack. I used the one that still requires CD2 to play and all saves worked fine.