T-ravisaurusRex Posted November 24, 2020 Report Share Posted November 24, 2020 I downloaded Hero Designer to my new iMac as my old Mac died. Now that I have Java running smoothly, and I have the JDK installed, I can run Hero Designer fine. The problem is when I go to "Open Character" in the File menu in Hero Designer there is literally nothing on my Desktop. I click through to my Desktop and it's just a blank space, no files, no folders, nothing. Has anyone else run into this issue? What am I missing here? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Posted November 24, 2020 Report Share Posted November 24, 2020 The sole "filter" that HD uses to determine what files to show is based on the file extension -- e.g. if you're looking to open a character file, only files with a .HDC extension will be shown. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T-ravisaurusRex Posted November 24, 2020 Author Report Share Posted November 24, 2020 I fully agree with you Simon. I've been using the Hero Designer for a few years now and haven't had any problems until now. As I mentioned before, old mac died, transferred over Hero Designer to my new mac, tried opening .hdc files and they don't exist. It's quite odd. Just from my previous uses of Hero Designer I've always known (or thought) that you can only use .hdc files for character sheets and .hde files for prefabs. Is there any kind of bug report I could look to to see where the breakdown is? I'm attaching a photo so you can see what I'm talking about. When you look at the screenshot, you can see the hdc file in question that I'm trying to find and open, but in the open character search box from the Hero Designer, it's not recognized at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Posted November 24, 2020 Report Share Posted November 24, 2020 There is no breakdown -- there simply are no files with the proper extension in the Desktop directory. My personal bet: you have your system hiding file extensions, so the "Edit_2020.hdc" file on the desktop is likely "Edit_2020.hdc.xml" or similar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ibenny Posted November 24, 2020 Report Share Posted November 24, 2020 If you open the Terminal and enter: ls -hal /Users/yourusername/Desktop, what does it say? It is also possible that the file you see on the desktop is a symlink and the original file is elsewhere. Just ideas, may be worth checking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T-ravisaurusRex Posted November 25, 2020 Author Report Share Posted November 25, 2020 @Simon So I double checked on my finder preferences and made sure that file extensions were shown, and I had a buddy of mine test on his computer. The files are all .hdc with no hidden file extensions. Thanks for the possible solution though! @ibenny I'm going to try this next. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Posted November 25, 2020 Report Share Posted November 25, 2020 ibenny is telling you the same thing, just a direct route to see the extensions. Also note that your system will have prompted you at some point to allow Java to read your Desktop (and likely Documents) directory -- if you didn't give it that permission, then HD isn't able to read the directory. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T-ravisaurusRex Posted November 26, 2020 Author Report Share Posted November 26, 2020 Hi guys, I double checked everything. I went into my system preferences and gave java the authority to read/write the entire disk. I went back to old legacy Java versions. I went through the terminal and checked Java. All permissions are wide open. I've installed 4 different versions of Java. I've made sure that Java is allowed to read and write all files and directories. I just don't know what else to do. Every time when I open up Hero Designer, it loads up, I go to File, then Open Character, look for any and all .hdc files when I can see them sitting right there on my desktop, but the search box in Hero Designer is completely empty. I've made sure show file extensions is on in my system preferences. I've searched to see if the files could be symlinks and the originals elsewhere, still no. Is there a possibility that I need to go download Hero Designer again and start from scratch? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ibenny Posted November 26, 2020 Report Share Posted November 26, 2020 How about you move the .hdc files elsewhere, say, to the Downloads or the Documents to a designated folder and see what happens? Simon 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Posted November 26, 2020 Report Share Posted November 26, 2020 What ibenny said. re-downloading HD will not affect anything - the problem is not with HD. You could give a Word document a .hdc extension and it’ll be shown in the character open dialog...it’ll throw all sorts of errors if you try to open it, but HD will show it along with all other files of the right extension. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unclevlad Posted November 26, 2020 Report Share Posted November 26, 2020 I'd also suggest a simpler test...well, somewhat simpler. First, create a Hero Characters folder somewhere NOT on the Desktop. Your user home folder, Documents, whatever. Open HD, create a new character. Don't care what. Fill in a few values, give it a name, Save Character to your Hero Characters folder. Now close the character and use Open Character...NOT the Recent Character short cut. If that works, it's still permissions...and on a Mac, it wouldn't surprise me the Desktop folder has its own special permissions anyway. (Try saving to the C drive root in Windows. Trivial 15 years ago or so, but I think 7 blocked that very hard, as a security measure.) HD just uses a very bog-stock class for saving/loading files; underneath that, Java's going to use straight calls to the file system. There's nothing custom here. It DOES use the system's security settings in the process, tho...so MacOS is saying "no, you can't, I won't let you read that folder" or if it's saying there's no files here" then you'll get what you see...nothing. This isn't a place where you want to force things to behave the way you want... Easiest is to just keep your personal files in "personal space" and not on the Desktop, which is at least partially in OS Space. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T-ravisaurusRex Posted November 27, 2020 Author Report Share Posted November 27, 2020 Whelp. I'm still out of luck. I actually went ahead and purchased the newest version of Hero Designer since the version I was running was from 2006. So started with a brand new fresh HD. Went in like unclevlad and didn't even try to open any of my saved .hdc files. I straight up created a new character. Built him out a little bit and then saved the newly made character to my documents folder. Nothing. According to HD when I go to "Open Character" there are no files or folders anywhere. I can click on "Documents" and it's completely empty. I can click on "Downloads", same, completely empty. Click on "Applications", nothing, completely empty. It's almost as if Hero Designer is blocked from accessing literally anything on my computer, but Java has full permissions for all files and folders on my computer. I even went to other programs like Pages and Gimp to see if the files are recognized by other programs... sure enough, every other program on my computer can see, view, and find all of my .hdc files (can't open them) but they exist. So I'm completely stumped. I'm the administrator on my Mac, there's no other user accounts and no one else uses the computer. I think this may be some kind of problem with MacOS Catalina, although I am at a complete loss as to how to solve this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T-ravisaurusRex Posted November 27, 2020 Author Report Share Posted November 27, 2020 Would a trace log help at all? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Posted November 27, 2020 Report Share Posted November 27, 2020 The trace log won’t show anything - the problem is not with HD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ibenny Posted November 27, 2020 Report Share Posted November 27, 2020 Did you try the route I’ve suggested? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unclevlad Posted November 28, 2020 Report Share Posted November 28, 2020 I would also believe HD *is* being blocked by the Mac. I'm not a Mac wizard, but that's what it's sounding like. I presume you can use Finder to open the documents folder and see the file? And, have you checked that you see the full file name, and the Mac didn't impose itself and slap on its own extension somehow? AND last, in HD, you're making sure you're opening up the SAME document folder? Cuz in Windows, there's you, and there's also the All Users user. HD will ONLY show files with the hdc extension, so it won't show up in Applications or Downloads. And yeah, the trace log won't show anything wrong because not finding an HD file type is perfectly normal. Make a folder for YOURSELF. NOT ANY KIND OF SYSTEM FOLDER AT ALL. Make it from Finder. Then you're the owner, and that might matter. Play in THAT folder...make some documents and spreadsheets, and verify other files can read/write in that folder. NOW make up a character in HD and save it into that folder. Shut down WITHOUT CLOSING the file. Restart; it should reload. I'm fishing for issues related to who has ownership of the file, as that can bite you. (Variations on this have happened more and more as Windows' file security has gotten more anal, and It's possible it's the same here.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T-ravisaurusRex Posted December 3, 2020 Author Report Share Posted December 3, 2020 On 11/27/2020 at 7:08 AM, ibenny said: Did you try the route I’ve suggested? I did try your route. I created new characters in HD and saved them to Documents, Downloads, Desktop, and inside the HD folder. Still nothing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T-ravisaurusRex Posted December 3, 2020 Author Report Share Posted December 3, 2020 On 11/28/2020 at 3:52 PM, unclevlad said: I would also believe HD *is* being blocked by the Mac. I'm not a Mac wizard, but that's what it's sounding like. I presume you can use Finder to open the documents folder and see the file? And, have you checked that you see the full file name, and the Mac didn't impose itself and slap on its own extension somehow? AND last, in HD, you're making sure you're opening up the SAME document folder? Cuz in Windows, there's you, and there's also the All Users user. HD will ONLY show files with the hdc extension, so it won't show up in Applications or Downloads. And yeah, the trace log won't show anything wrong because not finding an HD file type is perfectly normal. Make a folder for YOURSELF. NOT ANY KIND OF SYSTEM FOLDER AT ALL. Make it from Finder. Then you're the owner, and that might matter. Play in THAT folder...make some documents and spreadsheets, and verify other files can read/write in that folder. NOW make up a character in HD and save it into that folder. Shut down WITHOUT CLOSING the file. Restart; it should reload. I'm fishing for issues related to who has ownership of the file, as that can bite you. (Variations on this have happened more and more as Windows' file security has gotten more anal, and It's possible it's the same here.) So here's where things got really interesting. I guess you could say I found a work around, but it is weird and odd and doesn't make any sense. To answer your first questions, yep I could see all the documents and the folders in Finder, yes I had all full file extensions turned on, I was definitely using the same document folder. So then what you told me at the end of your comment... Make a folder for myself through Finder. Did that, still didn't work. But here's the weird thing, I got really frustrated and started taking that folder and shoving it all over my computer. Screw it, what's the worst that could happen at this point. Well, I finally shoved it into the Library > User Folder..... what the hell, it recognized it. So I started throwing files into the User Folder, it can see all of those too. But the weird thing is, my Documents, Downloads, Applications, every folder I use on my computer are within that User Folder. Now as long as my hdc folder is on the very top level of that User Folder, HD recognizes it and uses it, but as soon as I put that hdc folder down into one of those sub folders, like Documents, it's off limits and blank and disappears. So there is definitely some kind of security flaw in my computer that I'm going to have to research on the Mac side of things and try and find out why all the folders within my User Folder are off limits to Java, but any folder added into the User Folder is readable and works. Thank you to every one of you who have taken this long journey to help a poor player trying to recover all his old characters for gaming. I truly appreciate you all trying to help me out. Happy gaming to all and to all a good night. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strand Posted January 24, 2021 Report Share Posted January 24, 2021 I have a Mac Mini with Catalina. (Just for perspective) I too had problems (I wonder if you people have not solved this) I had this issue. I tried opening things from the download Folder...No. Other folder, No. So I moved it to the one place where things get installed. I put it in the Users folder under my name. I dropped Hero Designer in here. This is where the Music folder is at. From inside Hero Designer, I created a folder here and in THAT, I put any new characters that I created. I put pictures there too, since I could not access pictures from any other folder. (other than Hero Designer) This is what works for me. I hope this makes sense. CleverName 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Posted January 24, 2021 Report Share Posted January 24, 2021 12 hours ago, Strand said: (I wonder if you people have not solved this) Once again: there is nothing to solve. The "problem" (such as it is) is between the user and understanding access permissions on their own system. HD cannot and should not bypass these. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strand Posted January 25, 2021 Report Share Posted January 25, 2021 I'm sorry, I should have been more explicit in what I said. It wasn't directed at Hero Games. It was directed at the people installing the program and if they were still having issues installing it. I was pretty sure I had gotten it installed properly. Though I was not happy that I couldn't save character files to the Documents folder and realized later that it had to do with permissions. I've decided that I don't want to go into Terminal and try to change the permissions. Again, I will try to be better at explaining what I am saying. Sorry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisber Posted January 28, 2021 Report Share Posted January 28, 2021 I recently upgraded to MacOS Catalina, and had the same problem. The issue is that Catalina has very strict file permissions. I was forced to go to System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Full Disk Access From there I added /System/Library/CoreServices/Jar Launcher.app My Mac is now less secure, but at least Hero Designer can find my characters! Doctor Negaton and Dagger 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dagger Posted February 18, 2021 Report Share Posted February 18, 2021 On 1/27/2021 at 8:33 PM, chrisber said: I recently upgraded to MacOS Catalina, and had the same problem. The issue is that Catalina has very strict file permissions. I was forced to go to System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Full Disk Access From there I added /System/Library/CoreServices/Jar Launcher.app My Mac is now less secure, but at least Hero Designer can find my characters! Thank you! I just got a new iMac to replace my MacBook and had the same problem described in this thread. Making the Full Disk Access change you described fixed it. 🙏 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CleverName Posted April 20, 2021 Report Share Posted April 20, 2021 I would just like to say, I think placing HeroDesigner in the user folder is a better solution than changing system-wide security settings. Derek Hiemforth and neondrmr 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Villain In Glasses Posted December 24, 2021 Report Share Posted December 24, 2021 Thanks for the solution. It is not the first thing I'd think of to put an application in the user folder. I had waited to upgrade macOS (now Monterey) for a couple of years while 32-bit applications got upgraded or replaced. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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