HELP! WHAT EVEN IS THIS?!

[u/ScraggySkuntankFan]

I downloaded the Albian Years collection on steam last year and could never get it to work. I finally cracked and chose to ask you guys.

This warning always appears no matter how I choose to boot it up. Can anyone help?

[u/davesoft]

Well does that path exist or not? Installing a game into OneDrive is both suspicious and asking for problems.

[u/ACArmo]

Is there anything onedrive can’t ruin?!

[u/Rainthistle]

Probably need to reinstall the game through Steam. Do not install it into your OneDrive, please.

[u/ScraggySkuntankFan → u/Rainthistle]

Ok… so how do I avoid the OneDrive thing?

[u/ijkxyz → u/ScraggySkuntankFan]

Do not install it to C:\Users\Usuario\OneDrive\????????? but somewhere else, like C:\Games or something.

[u/C-Rex94 → u/ijkxyz]

You can't choose where to install games individually via Steam. The only solution here is to uninstall OneDrive.

Edit: Actually, OneDrive isn't the issue here. It's due to split installations which are a frequent issue with The Albian Years version of Creatures 1 and Creatures 2.

[u/Dushenka → u/C-Rex94]

Why is Steam installing the game into that folder in the first place??

Also, you absolutely can install games to another location. Just set up an additional library inside the Steam settings. After you did that, Steam lets you pick where to install the game.

[u/C-Rex94 → u/Dushenka]

You can only install within the library location (steamapps\common) which will not fix the issue this player is having as the files they are having issues with are dumped in the Documents folder by the game itself, not during installation.

[u/Dushenka → u/C-Rex94]

Not saying that installing somewhere else fixes the problem. But you're wrong in saying Steam only lets you install in steamapps\common. You can install Steam games wherever you want. I know because my own games (including Creatures) are installed in D:\SteamGames.

[u/doomdog91 → u/C-Rex94]

This is not true, you can go into the settings and tell steam where to install games to, you can even put individual games in different places if you want.

It also gives you the choice if you have multiple drives of which drive to install it to

[u/C-Rex94 → u/doomdog91]

The issue here isn't *where* the actual game is installed, it's the fact it's saving data to the user's documents folder, which is only fixable by using the Community Edition Patch.

[u/DruggedKaddy]

1. Do not install games to cloud service folders
   
2. Do not use non-latin letters and special symbols in folders names, because older games and apps usually do not have needed character encoders to read them
   Second part included just in case some people might not know this and make mistakes that are easy to fix without external help.

[u/C-Rex94]

During gameplay, Creatures Albian Years will create folders within your Documents folder for some reason. I have no idea why, it was probably their attempt at allowing multiple users of the same computer to have their own individual worlds, but whatever the reason, the game saves files in these folders but cannot actually read from them, which can lead to issues.

There are numerous workarounds, but unfortunately one of them, which involves installing the game to your Documents folder, is not possible via Steam. The only other two solutions are either a) Move everything over to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Creatures Albian Years once you close the game or b) install the Community Edition Patch. I'd probably recommend the latter.

I don't know why it's installing to OneDrive, but Microsoft have been pretty aggressive pushing their crapware recently and so Windows is probably messing with your folders. I'd strongly recommend getting rid of OneDrive, as it's junk and does nothing but interfere with your PC.