Doomsday+Snowberry - Portable [e.g. USB] Info + HowTo

edited 2011 Feb 14 in General
Case: Use relative pathnames for IWAD's to allow a "portable" Doomsday/Snowberry installation. Example folder structure is like so:
E:\Games\Doomsday
E:\Games\Doomsday\snowberry\snowberry.exe
E:\Games\Doomsday\WADS\DOOM.WAD
Attempt 1: Snowberry always checks if the IWAD exists. If it doesn't, it'll reset the folder path to the last saved one. Setting the IWAD path for Ultimate Doom with above example structure - ..\WADS\DOOM.WAD - saved OK.
Result 1: Doomsday crashes less than 1/4 of the "wheel" up. Running Windows x64. doomsday.out had no error, just an abrupt end. Whatever.
Attempt 2: Discovered that the IWAD path must be relative to the userdir, which is E:\Games\Doomsday\snowberry\runtime - setting the new IWAD path to ..\..\WADS\DOOM.WAD should work, however that doesn't adhere to the Snowberry IWAD exist-check and it won't save.
Fix 2: Edit E:\Games\Doomsday\snowberry\conf\doomsday.conf, around line 26...
file iwad (
    option: -iwad
    must-exist: yes
    allowed types (file-type-iwad = wad)
...change must-exist to no.
Attempt 2: Restart Snowberry, set IWAD path to ..\..\WADS\DOOM.WAD - success and done.

Well there ya go, pretty detailed but I wanted to give some info incase someone has a use for this. Maybe an ultra-ultra-low priority bugfix (?) could be to improve the way snowberry detects IWADS, even putting in ..\ parent-folder sequences itself would be pretty fancy. It's not important at all really, but it's worth mentioning anyway.

I'll put this on the Wiki when/if I get access, ill keep it much shorter than this thread was :P

Comments

  • Hi, Jonus.

    I was looking for the info on how to make Doomsday 1.9 portable. Unfortunately, for me the method you gave failed.
    Doomsday hangs at about the first quarter of the wheel and can be closed only through the Task Manager.

    I have done everything as described, but... no luck.
  • The wheel stopping a quarter of the way around and hanging is a common symptom of a modified Iwad (i.e Doom2.wad).

    The Doomsday 1.9 betas will only work with a completely unmodified Iwad. Dday 1.8.6 and other ports are considerably more lax at this.

    A forum search would have revealed past threads about this. I'd imagine that Dday 1.9/2.0 final will be able to detect a modified Iwad and abort; hanging during loading isn't a good first impression or indicative of the problem.
  • None of the iwads used in my Doomsday was not changed in any way. I took those that are delivered with the ID Pack in Steam.

    Besides, when config files are restored to their original state, Doomsday is started without any problems with the same iwads.

    I guess, an attached log file would help?
  • Yeah, a logfile would help, but I can already tell that it means it didn't find the IWAD specified. It works fine for me, but let me double-check with latest beta. Double check the path specified in Snowberry. Oh - you might need to run Snowberry in XP compatibility mode, because the userdir is in %APPDATA% somewhere in Vista+ these days to comply with UAC.
  • Ok, I managed to make it start.
    But it loses addons every time I move it to another folder, because paths to their folders in the '\snowberry\conf\addon-paths.conf' cannot be replaces with relative paths.
    Did you somehow managed to solve it?
  • addon-paths.conf? No file exists in my beta6.9 installation... Regardless, if you mean PK3's like DHTP and whatnot, just whack them into /snowberry/addons/ folder where they should be ;)
  • Ah, yes, finally! Huge THANKS for all your help!
  • Ah, another question. I am trying to put Doomsday into place of the Steam's Doom. As they are launcged by the bat files, I tried to replace the .bat's contents with something like
    start snowberry\snowberry.exe
    

    But in result the Snowberry's started.... and all it's subfolders are recreated right in the root of the Doom folder. Can this be fixed somehow?
  • Hmmm not sure... I don't have Doom on Steam (I manually patched-up my WAD's from original floppy disks LOL) but the Heretic+Hexen Pack is only $10 I think I'll grab that right now (I don't own the Hexen Expansion nor Hexen II) and take a look ;)

    My guess is that it's the starting folder. Try something like this in the BAT file first:
    echo %CD%
    pause
    

    To find the working/starting folder which Steam launches in and you can work from there. So in the BAT file, use the correct starting folder for Snowberry. Note that you can use %CD%\..\snowberry if needed, .. being 'parent folder' which you may already know, and you can chain many together. Example:
    START "" /D "%CD%\..\Snowberry" ".\snowberry\snowberry.exe"
    

    Those two empty "" are needed to specify a title, it's a 'feature' of using the START command with >8.3 filepaths and/or FQDN's.
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