USB install / run MTW?

[Dellathane]

Hi all!

(apologies if this isn't in the appropriate place)

I've been browsing the forums for the last few days as a guest and was so inspired by the lovely community you guys have here I thought I'd sign up. :2thumbsup:

Actually that's not the whole truth, I also joined for more . . . unsavory reasons, namely free help with getting MTW to work on a win7 64bit, 6 year old laptop (and yes it works better than under xp, thanks for asking).

Anyway out came the install disks and, as expected, there's a problem. Basically I click install and installshield starts up, the disc wurs and the blue bar fills up to 100%. Then nothing. The disc spins down and eventually all the windows close (but the processes - setup.exe *32, _ISDel.exe *32 and _INS5576._MP *32 still run, fully choking up one of my two cores).
I've done all the usual compatibly stuff and still no joy.

So my idea is this
Instead of wasting precious life force on my laptop, I'll install Medieval from my dad's computer (which works fine) onto a USB stick, transfer the files onto my laptop and conquer europe.
I've got this sort of thing to work with Age of Empires 2 and Unreal tournament 2004, and Company of Heroes doesn't notice when I reformat the windows hard drive on my desktop, so I'm hoping it will work.

But if I could run it straight from the USB then all my campaigns and stuff would be on there. Imagine. Play on my laptop on the train to Uni and then transfer to the larger desktop screen :rolleyes:
Medieval strikes me as a sensitive game though... I'll report back once I've found a large enough USB and/or stolen the external hard drive. A new era could be about to dawn

[Trapped in Samsara]

Hi Dellathane

I am interested to hear how you get on with this project. Best o'luck.

Best regards
Victor

Sapere aude
Horace

[drone]

I imagine a transferred install would work, for mods I just copy a fresh install to a new area and put the mod on top of that. Unless there are system specific files chosen at install-time it should work for you. I'm not sure about it running from a USB stick, but if it works that's a bonus.

USB 2.0 - 480 Mbits/s
SATA 1 - 1.5 GBits/s
Even with the lower throughput from USB, the lack of seek times may cancel it out. Good luck, and let us know how it goes.

Welcome to the Org, Dellathane! ~:wave:

[Trapped in Samsara]

Hi

Being picky but it's slow at work today...

You make a valid general point about data transfer rates, Drone, but I think that on the kit that many of us play MTW1 on (well, me anyway) the USB DTR would be better compared with an older standard's DTR such as Ultra ATA/100 which is rated at 100 megabytes per second.

That 100 MB/s is a theoretical maximum, of course. When you take overhead and congestion into account the USB 2.0 DTR looks none too shabby.

Best regards
Victor

Saper aude
Horace

[Plato]

Ordinarily, MTW requires a CD in the drive to run. So to have it portable on just a USB stick, there would also have to be an image of (I think) Disk 1, as well as virtual drive software on each computer.

Also, flash memory is not rated to survive as many re-writes as a hard-disk. But would MTW need to overwrite any of its data? Should be just savegames, presumably.

[Dellathane]

Well in the end I got Medieval installed by sharing my dad's computer's dvd drive on the home network and launching the installer on my laptop. Worked perfectly. Makes me think there is a driver/windows issue on my laptop. When launched though the game CTD instantly. I think the best fix might be a reinstall of windows, start fresh, possibly in 32bit.

I can't really move on to test USB stuff till I fix this issue or get it working on my desktop, but I don't think I can do either for a fortnight.

I don't think the data transfer rates will have much impact on gameplay, since isn't everything the game needs loaded into the RAM? So I reckon the only thing launching from a USB could affect would be load times for battles and campaign map.
The point about needing the disc in the drive is taken but it wouldn't be too detrimental. If you had the disc and USB you could potentially be playing medieval on the local library (university:devilish:) computer. Either that or one of the work arounds Plato mentioned.
I doubt rewrites would be a problem. You would need save dozens of times a turn on the same file name to get near the 100,000 rewrite limit . Doesn't win 7 move where it writes files to avoid damage to USBs?

[Stazi]

Hmm.. interesting idea. I've just finished testing it. First load 2-3 min. Going to the menu and coming back to game 35-40s. Loading a battle ~1min. Transfer rates of my USB - 25MB/s read, 10MB/s write.
Conclusion - it works but you'll need a lot of patience (or much faster USB stick). IMHO If you have at least 3GB RAM - create RAMdrive and copy the whole game into the ram. Works ultra fast. The only drawback is that you have to remember to copy your saves from ram to hdd or usb stick before shutting down your PC.

[Dellathane]

Nice one!
How did you do it? Install straight to USB or did you copy the files across?
I've often wondered about loading games entirely in RAM, good to know it can actually be done. I'll definitely give it a wurl.
Is there a way to change the directory Medieval saves the games, that would solve the problem nicely.

[Stazi]

How did you do it? Install straight to USB or did you copy the files across?
copy

I've often wondered about loading games entirely in RAM, good to know it can actually be done. I'll definitely give it a wurl.
I recommend "VSuite Ramdisk" but there are a few others you can try too.

Is there a way to change the directory Medieval saves the games, that would solve the problem nicely.
No. But you can try a program like SyncToy - make a directory for saves on your hdd and synchronize this directory with directory in ram when the game keeps saves. It's only an idea cause I've never tried such a tool.