|
I have a 4GB USB drive, and a lot of hours between classes during which I would sometimes like to play SC2. So I'm trying to make the smallest multi-player-able portable SC2 folder possible.
It worked before just dragging the whole SC2 folder minus the campaign subfolder, but during some patches, it would require an update which would fail.
Is there a surefire way to get a portable install, so I can just drag-and-drop a folder from a USB drive to a library computer and play pretty much asap?
Right now the subfolders I have are:
Battle.net (I assume this is necessary)
Logs (negligible space)
Mods
- Core.SC2Mod (probably everything here)
- Liberty.SC2Mod (there's like 3GB in here... no idea, probably necessary)
- LibertyMulti.SC2Mod (seems quite necessary)
- Challenges.SC2Mod (negligible space)
Support (negligible space)
Test (PTR? Probably can delete)
Versions (Can delete all but the most recent Shaders folder and most recent Base folder I think)
I still need to trim 25MB to get it to fit, but I'm not sure where.
|
why don't you just buy a 8gb flash drive, they only cost like $7 or $8 bucks...(including shipping)
|
Yeah gotta agree with drolkrad. 8 Gig drives are quite avaiable. This way you don't have to worry about patches adding little bits of data.
|
If it's just 25mb, you can just upload it anywhere easily. Or you can do what ^ suggested and get an 8gb
|
This topic was supposed to be less about my personal 25MB problem and more about trying to get it down to the most efficient size so this could turn into a sort-of guide on how to make a portable SC2 multi-player folder.
|
you could just compress the shit out of it with winrar, you can get really good compress's with it.
|
To be fair.. 8GB is pretty portable for today's standards. Most people own some sort of memory that is at least 8GB. If you don't, I suggest investing in one.
|
On March 29 2011 15:23 Chairman Ray wrote:
If it's just 25mb, you can just upload it anywhere easily. Or you can do what ^ suggested and get an 8gb
Compressing and decompressing files isn't exactly fast.
On March 29 2011 15:29 cHaNg-sTa wrote:
To be fair.. 8GB is pretty portable for today's standards. Most people own some sort of memory that is at least 8GB. If you don't, I suggest investing in one.
"Portable" for a program means that you can run it without having go through the install, thanks for trying, though.
|
On March 29 2011 15:33 ChThoniC wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2011 15:23 Chairman Ray wrote:
If it's just 25mb, you can just upload it anywhere easily. Or you can do what ^ suggested and get an 8gb Compressing and decompressing files isn't exactly fast. Show nested quote +On March 29 2011 15:29 cHaNg-sTa wrote:
To be fair.. 8GB is pretty portable for today's standards. Most people own some sort of memory that is at least 8GB. If you don't, I suggest investing in one. "Portable" for a program means that you can run it without having go through the install, thanks for trying, though.
No need to be brash here. He makes a valid point. I realize the point of your thread is to be minimal, but I think more to the point is most gamers have 8gb of portable storage readily available to them so it seems hardly necessary to go through this trouble.
|
On March 29 2011 15:33 ChThoniC wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2011 15:23 Chairman Ray wrote:
If it's just 25mb, you can just upload it anywhere easily. Or you can do what ^ suggested and get an 8gb Compressing and decompressing files isn't exactly fast. Show nested quote +On March 29 2011 15:29 cHaNg-sTa wrote:
To be fair.. 8GB is pretty portable for today's standards. Most people own some sort of memory that is at least 8GB. If you don't, I suggest investing in one. "Portable" for a program means that you can run it without having go through the install, thanks for trying, though.
I know that you're trying to just have folders put in a flash drive. I was just making the general statement that 8GB flash drives are commonly available and cheap. I know that you're trying to make SC2 folder as efficient as possible and putting it on your 4GB. But if you're really fighting for 25MB of space and trying to find more things to cut, what happens when more and more updates occur in the future? I'd say just save yourself the trouble right now and get a 8GB.
Yes, obviously trying to make a list of efficiently making a SC2 flash drive is very helpful and that's awesome that you're trying to spread the knowledge, but just saying that your original message seems to be emphasizing more of a personal flash drive issue.
|
I wouldn't mess with Liberty.SC2Mods. From the looks of it, quite a few core files (like textures and sounds and stuff) are contained within it, so messing with it would probably be detrimental.
Dunno about "Test." I think the PTR doesn't really install itself fully until you first attempt to run it, though you can always delete the "Starcraft II Public Test" executable if you don't plan on using the PTR any time soon.
|
Doesn't SC2 tell you that It can't find a reg entry when you run it via copy and paste? It's what happened to me when I tried running SC2 beta at school.
|
This is also very much applicable to all the people with smaller ssd drives that want to save space, so I'm interested in hearing more tips, for sure.
So maybe we could stop talking about how big/cheap flash drives are today and focus on his question.
|
You'll be pleased to know that StarCraft doesn't care if you copy paste it around. However you need to bring your personal StarCraft II data with you. eg My Documents/StarCraft II.
If you don't want to have to re-download all the maps/portraits etc, you will also need to copy ProgramData\Blizzard Entertainment.
I expect you'll spend more time trying to work out which files you can get away with cutting then is worth it. Get a job, work for an hour, buy a bigger flash disk. That's the optimal solution.
|
Assuming you have internet I recommend finding a small file in there that fits the size restriction and ticking it into dropbox or a few rars and emailing them to yourself.
I'm not sure about the PTR thing but the executable should be removable if you don't plan on getting on it.
Inside the Support folder the SC2Editor doesn't appear to do anything? it's 18mb that goes a good ways toward helping you fit it on.
If you haven't already I'd delete all the SC2.exe's inside the versions folders. They don't appear to do anything either
|
Is there any way to run it with all the files localized to one folder? Maybe something like linking the paths that SC2 searches for (like ProgramData/Blizzard) to your own folders if you were using Linux?
|
I hope someone actually answers your questions OP, I would love to hear of a way to minimize the space SC2 would take to be played off of a Flash Drive (which I understand it as what you refer to as "portable").
Suggestions on getting a bigger flash drive don't actually answer the question being asked...
I don't have enough expertise to help, but you have my support.
|
How big is the Test folder if you've never run PTR? It's nearly a gig if the PTR client is installed. If it's bigger than the amount of space you need to trim, I'd try that first.
I assume you can safely delete the map editor. It's in the Support folder and it's just over 18MB.
Yes, everyone, this problem could obviously be resolved by using a bigger flash drive, but people can do that now. What's wrong with trying to find a way to do it on a smaller drive if possible?
I imagine your first map load each play session would be ungodly slow off a flash drive. Flash over USB has a respectable seek time (the time needed to start loading a particular file into memory) but a really bad transfer rate for large files like textures. Might wanna load a game vs. the computer first, so you don't get dropped for slow loading on ladder or have crazy lag at game start that screws up your initial worker micro. Just some rampant speculation from someone who's never run this particular game off a portable drive.
|
It won't.
All components of SC2Mods are used at some point in the game; the only way I see it running is that you'd yank the single player portion out of them by editing the MPQ but then at any patch the launcher will tell you to fuck off.
Plus SC2 writes a shitload of stuff into the registry.
The only way I see it working reliably is that you directly install SC2 onto an external solid state drive (flashdrives will have atrocious access rates), copy/sniff then export all the registry keys as a "patch" for the location you'll play from.
AND you need to insure the drive will have the correct letter too, sometimes some configurations won't allow you to randomly switch hard drive 'drive letters' (forgot the correct word) unless you purposefully set them off limits to like Z:\ while making partitions.
|
Well you could try removing high quality textures and that sort of stuff from MPQ, along with single player files, as I doubt you would like to use anything higher, that should save you some odd megs or gigs. Oh and in worst case scenario, you may need to replace something with dummy files. BUT remember that this kind of tinkering is against TOS afaik, but one thing you could try to do is get blizzard do "multiplayer" only client (like they had with SC1 and Diablo). Find some site where you can pull up petition and get people sign it.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
