I am running torchlight on Mac OS X
version 10.9.3
it runs fine, and i can play as long as i want, but save files are never made, and i cannot continue my game.
i have tried to create directories similar to what worked for other users, but i cannot seem to get these to
work, maybe they are in the wrong place. i made them here...
/Users/username/AppData/Roaming/Runic Games/Torchlight/mods
.../Torchlight/saves
on top of that issue, i am trying to run it from a partition which is case sensitive. i know that this sometimes
causes problems, so if you could find a solution which takes this into account, i would greatly appreciate it.
thanks

Case sensitivity can be game breaking. If the developers didn't use the exact same writing of files and folder names everywhere in the source code, you'll be out of luck fixing this on your current drive.

The folder paths you've created are Windows only and thus won't work. I can't check it here, but my guess is, that on OS X the game saves its settings somewhere under /Users/USERNAME/Library/Application Support//runic games/torchlight/
Check if the two subfolders saves and mods are present.

I've created the directory hierarchy in application support
i found that the game will not run unless the spelling is...
.../Runic Games/Torchlight/
and i created a log of the running of the game, which shows an error that a file cannot be save,
where as the save file is correctly saved, the mods.dat file in the folder MODS cannot be saved.

21:45:35: Saving character to :/Users/rub321/Library/Application Support/Runic Games/Torchlight/save/save.tmp
21:45:46: Unable to save file: /USERS/RUB321/LIBRARY/APPLICATION SUPPORT/RUNIC GAMES/TORCHLIGHT/MODS/mods.dat

i tried making many folders called mod MOD Mod Mods MODS mods, but none of them work.

any ideas?

According to the log the game is trying to save to /USERS/RUB321/LIBRARY/APPLICATION SUPPORT/RUNIC GAMES/TORCHLIGHT/MODS/ but this directory doesn't exist on your case sensitive file system, as you're using /Users/rub321/Library/Application Support/Runic Games/Torchlight/Mods
You could try creating a separate folder structure /USERS/RUB321/LIBRARY/APPLICATION SUPPORT/RUNIC/TORCHLIGHT/ and put a symbolic link named MODS inside, which points to "/Users/rub321/Library/Application Support/Runic Games/Torchlight/Mods"
Thus the game is redirected to your original folder when saving in MODS. The advantage of a symbolic link is, that if the game at another point uses the other writing, e.g. for reading the mods.dat, it'll find it in it's original folder.

You might run into problems creating the separate folder structure because of write access issues. You might have to do it explicitly with admin rights and grant the user who's playing the game Read (r--) and Write (-w-) permissions to the new folder structure.

i've created the folder structure on my hd using all caps folders, so that the mods.dat file now saves
so now the game successfully saves both the save file and the mods files, and i checked the log and
it does not show any errors. however, i am still unable to continue an in-progress game or load a
saved game. i will play with it more such as making symbolic links so that the mods.dat file appears
to live in the mixed-case directory hierarchy, along side save.tmp etc.

update:
ive made symbolic links for the MODS directory
and it appears to not have made a difference, which probably means that all references to the
mods folder, refers to the ALL CAPS directory hierarchy.
any ideas about what might be going wrong would be greatly appreciated, as the hunch being followed
now appears to be solved, without resolving the issue.

I found this on the Runic support forum, it's quite similar to what we were trying to do:
https://support.runicgames.com/kb/articles/46-how-to-run-torchlight-on-a-case-sensitive-volume-mac

They're basically suggesting to move the "Runic Games" folder from "/Users/rub321/Library/Application Support/" to a case-insensitive disk. (You could use a thumb-drive)
Then create two folder structures on your original disk and create symbolic links to the moved "Runic Games" folder inside
1. "/USERS/RUB321/LIBRARY/APPLICATION SUPPORT" and create a symbolic link named "RUNIC GAMES"
2. "/users/rub321/library/application support" and create a symbolic link named "runic games"
Both pointing to the original "Runic Games" folder on the case-insensitive disk

Btw, if nothing helps, there's always the option to download the Windows version and run it with Wineskin.

I tried using an external storage device to hold the runic games folders and content, but torchlight was
unable to startup with this change. i created symbolic links using the osx finder, but would hard symlinks work better, etc? can i make these using the finder?
also i tried using a device formatted in fat, and one in the osx filesystem case insensitive

here is the crash data that seems relevant
Crashed Thread: 0 Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGBUS)
Exception Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE at 0x0000000000000038

VM Regions Near 0x38:
--> __PAGEZERO 0000000000000000-0000000000001000 [ 4K] ---/--- SM=NUL /Applications/Torchlight.app/Contents/MacOS/TorchlightMac
__TEXT 0000000000001000-000000000105f000 [ 16.4M] r-x/rwx SM=COW /Applications/Torchlight.app/Contents/MacOS/TorchlightMac

Thread 0 Crashed:: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0 libsystem_c.dylib 0x9075335f flockfile + 18
1 libsystem_c.dylib 0x90798e7f fwrite + 42
2 com.runicgames.TorchlightMac 0x00a5fa26 CDynamicPropertyFile::saveSettings(std::basic_string<wchar_t, std::char_traits<wchar_t>, std::allocator<wchar_t> > const&, bool) + 288
3 com.runicgames.TorchlightMac 0x00a5feaf CDynamicPropertyFile::SaveSettings(std::basic_string<wchar_t, std::char_traits<wchar_t>, std::allocator<wchar_t> > const&) + 33
4 com.runicgames.TorchlightMac 0x008c6da5 CGame::CGame(std::string, CSettings*, bool) + 825
5 com.runicgames.TorchlightMac 0x00a82f1d main + 653
6 com.runicgames.TorchlightMac 0x008c1882 _start + 216
7 com.runicgames.TorchlightMac 0x008c17a9 start + 41

i wonder what these string variables are refering to, the location of the settings file maybe?

update:
ive tried placing only the save, and MODS, folders onto the case-insensitive disk, and leaving the
settings files in each folder hierarchy. the game now loads but does not continue or load any save game.
also ive tried instead of linking to the runic games folder as a base for the hierarchy, but instead,
Torchlight, and the game would crash like with Runic Games.


UPDATE:
solved, thanks so much DeMignon. see last comment.