I’d love to be able to have 2 installs, one modded (including stock files) and another clean (with allowed mods as per “installs”).
I tried this, but since the game calls the files in “my documents” I’m SOL. Is there a way to point the modded version at a different directory for all the player-specific glop?
Why not just add an install file in the install folder that says 'whateveryouwant.txt" and then include a folder in your base directory with the same directories as your data directory.
I thought that cliffski said that mods (pointed to in installs, like “Tribe”) would not overwrite stock files.
Ah not for overriding, but adding new stuff it works ^^
Yeah, I want a separate, modded install so I can mess with the stock modules (I want to limit many to specific races, perhaps even all to specific races (even if this means making race-specific copies of many modules, then changing all the ship files).
I don’t know how technically apt you are, but a virtual desktop seems like it would work great for you, since you just want it to test features and whatnot.
There’s a variety of programs that can run “virtual” installs of Windows within your current installation.
As a side note, for those of you running Linux or OS X, this might be a solution to running it on your current setup, as GSB doesn’t have very steep system requirements.
On the plus side, you could even run games or ship builds side by side if you did that. I’m not sure if you could simply copy the GSB install folder to the virtual desktop and have everything unlocked from the get-go as well.
I run macs as well as PCs, and on my mac I would simply create a new user. Never occurred to do that with my PC, though I’m sure I can just set up a user account, and install a fresh instal for my 2d user to bash.
Wow, multiple users under XP is abysmal.
I got a GSB install working, but there are only 2 choices for the account, either full admin, or so limited you cannot even delete a desktop shortcut.
I DID delete a couple shortcuts, and it deleted them not only on the GSB account, but on my main account! Unreal how backwards that is.
It’s odd because only a few of the shortcuts I have on my main desktop showed up on the new account. Fast user switching takes 12 seconds (til it settles all the way down). Should be virtually instant. Stunningly bad (course all windows multitasking is crappy compared to unix).
Here’s a better link, to the actual software instead of W7 “XP Mode”.
You can install Virtual PC 2007 in XP, I believe. It should be pretty snappy, it’s easy to set up, and you won’t even have to switch user accounts.
You’re unfamiliar with how it works. XP combines start menus from “All users” and from your own user account. If you delete a shortcut from “All users”, then it’ll be gone from all. If you delete a shortcut from your own account, it won’t effect the other.
The program installation will decide whether to put it’s shortcuts in “all users”, or under your own account (many installations ask.)
This is probably why you had trouble deleting shortcuts when not admin… Because you were trying to delete shortcuts from the shared location.
Maybe you’ll still think it’s backwards after this explanation. It is pretty old now 
A user is a user, if I have a shortcut to a shared file, etc, the alias should belong to username, not root, that’s frankly absurd. Even if a program asked to install it for all users, I’d assume it would create an alias under that user’s ownership, since that is the only logical thing for it to do. It’s crazy to install what is just an alias, and not allow the user who owns the desktop to remove it without affecting every other user on the system since after all it’s just a pointer. Note that even as admin, if I then went back for this user and cleaned up his desktop, I also cleaned EVERYONE’s desktop of that alias. This means that once such an alias is in place, there is no way for me to delete it from any single user’s desktop individually? Unix of course dates to a period when there were hundreds of users on any given machine at once—the windows paradigm treats multiple users as an afterthought clearly (as did the pre-NeXTStep Mac OS, BTW, like Windows it was also never meant for multiple users). Current unix-based PC OSes gain proper multiuser pardigms from their older bones, really, as an accident of the history of UNIX.
I’ve been using multiple user systems since, erm, 1983 personally (mostly unix, but some VMS back in the day), but had never used it on windows since my windows machines are single user only, so yeah, I’m not familiar with it—my multi-user knowledge on the mac is just old UNIX stuff I know from decades ago.
I wasn’t expecting an explanation that good. Interesting post, thanks. 
windows is a disaster, but I have a lot of sympathy for microsoft. Imagine you started writing some software 20 years ago, and you have been fighting to stay ahead of everyone else for those twenty years, but every single improvement or change you have made in those twenty years MUST be backwards compatible with the very first code you wrote.
What a total nightmare, no wonder it’s such a mess 
It’s quite impressive that windows is usable at all tbh.
I got my 2d install working though, and have started a slightly altered version—using JSGME to swap out all the files on a clean install, so I have altered none of the actual files.