Have same problems and can't repair it in the described ways. Maybe it helps to put together, what a openSUSE 11.1 user finds - after installing from game repository
installed versions are:
- ufoai 2.2.1-7.8
- ufoai-maps 2.2.1-1.2
- ufoai-music 2.2.1-2.2
created directories are:
- /usr/share/games/ufoai, keeps base/*.pk3 files
- /usr/lib/ufoai, keeps games.o and ufoai
executable is /usr/games/ufoai
as described it did not help to
- copy /usr/share/games/ufoai to /usr/share/ufoai, then
- copy /usr/lib/ufoai to /usr/lib/games/ufoai, then
- copy /usr/lib/ufoai to /usr/share/ufoai
- copy /usr/lib/ufoai to /usr/share/ufoai/base
starting the game from konsole shows up some debug messages, that directly focus on the solutions, that were told already, here the important snippet:
Campaign 'QuickSave' saved.
------- Loading game.so -------
LoadLibrary failed (game.so)
failed to load game library
********************
ERROR: failed to load game library
where the hell game.so must be placed?
[updated] replaced ufoia ;-)
[updated] added debug snippet