Running AGS games from a CD

[TheJBurger]

Is it possible to run AGS games off a CD? (it is quite imperative that I do so at this moment)
Currently I just get this error when trying to run any games off the CD:

Code: ags

---------------------------
Adventure Game Studio
---------------------------
Unable to write to the current directory. Do not run this game off a
network or CD-ROM drive. Also check drive free space (you need 1 Mb free).

---------------------------
OK   
---------------------------

Is this possible? (And if possible, could you respond quickly! I need to have this done in less than 24 hours.)

[Pumaman]

AGS games cannot be run directly off a CD.

You can run most of the game off a CD using the info in this thread but you need to install as a minimum the acwin.exe and acsetup.cfg files to a writable directory somewhere so that AGS can create its writable files (eg. save games, temp files, etc).

[TheJBurger]

Ah, so would it just be simpler to ask the recipient of the CD to copy the entire game folder to the hard disk?

[RickJ]

Several AGS versions ago I was able to accomplish this using a simple script to lunch the game.  It changed the working directory to c:\ or some other writable location and then executed then the game located on the CD.  The save game function then uses that location to store esave game files.

I wonder if it is possible to use %APPDATA% or some other standard windows location in the config file to setup the save directory?   Anyone have suggestions for standard locations?   

[EnterTheStory (aka tolworthy)]

you need to install as a minimum the acwin.exe and acsetup.cfg files to a writable directory somewhere so that AGS can create its writable files (eg. save games, tem files, etc).

Would this be necessary if a game required no save features at all? For example, one of my - er my kid's - favorite games was "Barbie's Magical House.' All you do is wander around and find things to click. It was lots of fun.  There was no reason to save anything yet there was tons of replay value.

It would be possible to implement a kind of save game feature, by offering all possible saves at all times, but in a way that only the most recent save made any sense. For example, imagine a world treasure hunt based on a  map of the globe. You remember the last city you got to, and just start from there each time. Just an idea.

[Gilbert]

I'm not quite sure, but I think currently, no matter whether you really use the savegame features or not the engine itself will temporally create savegame #999 by default (I don't know if this can be turned off though), possibly as temporally storage and for the resetgame feature.
Also, still, it's recommended that the configuration file should be writable to cater for different systems of other people for them to run the game.

I don't know whether the engine will write to other temporary files in a game though.

[Babar]

Are savegames the problem? Don't savegames automatically save to My Documents\My Games now? An irritating feature for me, but it seems that it is one that would be useful if you wanted to run off a CD.

[Pumaman]

Well yes, with AGS 3.x the default is to save saved games into My Documents anyway, so I'm not sure if this restriction is still necessary. I would need to do some analysis and make sure that there aren't any other places where AGS tries to create temp files in the game folder.

It should work ok though actually, because AGS games do run fine from Vista's protected Program Files folder when you have the save games set to My Documents.