Deus Ex / TNM Portable

[Dark Reality]

Due to the fact that TNM doesn't require the DVD-ROM to run and Deus Ex doesn't require the CD-ROM (and can be made to not look for the disc, if you make a simple edit I'm sure we all know), I think a portable version of DX and/or TNM would be very cool to have.

At the very least, a Portable Application needs to be able to run off a USB flash drive, iPod, external hard drive, or something like that without being installed. That means if I install DX at home and put it on my flash drive, it needs to work on other computers. DX, with the disc check removal trick, is portable. I've played it at work. The biggest problem is that it takes 3-4 minutes to save and load, on a 3GHz Pentium 4 (single core) with 1GB RAM and an Intel on-board GPU. The game itself runs like a dream, but the saving and loading delay is probably due to slow write times of a flash drive, as opposed to a hard drive.

Enter PortableApps.com. The folks at this site take strictly open-source apps and make them portable with launchers. From the root, you have a PortableApps directory, and in that, the app's name, and then Portable, makes up the folder. (Actually the name can be anything.) Any .exe in the root dir will show up in their custom start menu. Since DX's .exe is in the \system folder, it doesn't work with their menu... but never mind that. They actually put their own apps in a subdirectory, 'app', and the app's root folder contains a launcher, coded in NSIS, which creates a 'sandbox' for the app, launches the app, and when it closes, the launcher cleans up after it. PA.com doesn't care if the app shows up in the registry's MUI cache or other 'harmless' areas (they aren't going for full stealth) but they are dedicated to keeping 'personal' data off the 'host' computer. But never mind them, for this project. They won't touch anything that isn't FOSS (and even if TNM is, it needs DX, which isn't). But the launcher code is wide open, and they encourage people to make their own launchers for their own stuff.

If I knew a thing or two about programming, I'd code an NSIS launcher for DX and/or TNM, but I don't. It seems elementary enough... it's not like writing a program... more like a batch file. Even though it's NSIS, an installer program, it doesn't actually install. It just shuffles stuff around. Their launchers are actually like anti-installers, or inverse installers. They make programs run on computers without installation.

What we need to do (that is, if anyone's interested) is this: The game can actually run off a DVD-ROM. We can install DX/DX:GOTY and then install TNM, and add any other stuff (e.g. renderers) and code a launcher to move folders around. Either it can all be ran off a flash drive, or we can have the games on a DVD-ROM and have the launcher on a flash drive, and upon running, seek out the DVD-ROM drive (as the path will be different), copy the save folder(s) to the host computer, and run the game. Upon closing, it needs to back the save folder up to the flash drive, and then delete everything off the host computer. Or with 16GB flash drives approaching the $20 price point, we could ditch the DVD-ROM drive altogether (since more computers have USB than DVD-ROM).

To take it a step further, we could even code a launcher which renames the DeusEx.u and DeusEx.int and swaps in the Shifter, Smoke's Mod, ShifterPlus, or other DeusEx.u mod files!

With that in mind, portable DX/TNM might be preferrable to the old way. How long have you guys been playing the game? The TNM team, at least since 2000-2001. I've been playing the game since it was brand-new. I'm on my third computer since I got it, and I've played it on 2-3 other computers. Thus, why reinstall the app? Why not design a solution where we can put the game and all the mods we use on an external hard drive, iPod, flash drive, or whatever, and just plug it up to any computer we want to play it on. Even if you have a desktop, it's useful, because once you upgrade to Vista or Windows 7, your DX is ready to go without having to be reinstalled.

Your thoughts?

[Placebo]

hardcore

I see this only handy like on some kind of away mission, i'm not changing my home pc like socks

I'm not an expert in programing, but i do have a fast USB stick: Corsair Flash Voyager GT 4GB, i think it can manage the DX savegames in a few seconds, TNM...a few dozen . Also it's a USB 2.0 device. Maybe your usb stick or port was a usb 1.0, so that too may slowed down the load/save speed?

[odawali]

DX IS portable. Since it doesn't require registry keys, you can simply copy the entire directory wherever you want and it will run fine.

If you don't like going through a long installation process, simply do a fresh install from CD, apply all patches, install any mods you want and then Zip or RAR the entire DX directory. Next time you want a clean DX install, simply unpack the RAR.

[Jetsetlemming]

DX does so require registry keys. They just don't require the game to be in a set location to work. You can't move it to a different computer without those registry keys and have the game work, though you can move it anywhere you want on a computer that has the keys.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE - Software - Unreal Technology - Installed Apps - Deus Ex and Deus Ex SDK. There's also Software - Epic Megagames - UnrealEd.

The Deus Ex registry actually does include a registered install location, but this can be changed on the fly without reinstalling the game.

[EER]

I remember running DX from an existing install after reinstalling my machine. DX may require registry keys, but I think it creates them upon running.

[that guy]

The tnm installer is actually already written using NSIS I believe.

I'm pretty sure you could just do as odwali says and install the whole lot to hard disk then copy it wherever you like. Including to a usb key. The easiest way to resolve the savegames issue is probably to find SavePath=..\Save in tnm.ini and change it to a directory in the c drive or whatever. Then create a batch file or installer or wahtever that copies savegames to and from that location on start/stop of tnm. Having said that, TNM has some pretty monster save files so you probably dont want to be copying them around a lot.

[Dark Reality]

hardcore

I see this only handy like on some kind of away mission, i'm not changing my home pc like socks

I'm not an expert in programing, but i do have a fast USB stick: Corsair Flash Voyager GT 4GB, i think it can manage the DX savegames in a few seconds, TNM...a few dozen . Also it's a USB 2.0 device. Maybe your usb stick or port was a usb 1.0, so that too may slowed down the load/save speed?

How about trying it? I have a Corsair Readout 4GB, and on PortableApps.com, I have the third-fastest drive, behind a Flash Voyager (2nd) and a no-name flash drive (1st), but not by much. Now, if you try it and it's as fast as you say, well, I can't be too surprised, but I know I have a USB 2.0 drive and I know it's on a USB 2.0 port.

DX does so require registry keys. They just don't require the game to be in a set location to work. You can't move it to a different computer without those registry keys and have the game work, though you can move it anywhere you want on a computer that has the keys.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE - Software - Unreal Technology - Installed Apps - Deus Ex and Deus Ex SDK. There's also Software - Epic Megagames - UnrealEd.

The Deus Ex registry actually does include a registered install location, but this can be changed on the fly without reinstalling the game.

Incorrect. I've actually done this - I guess you've been gone from GameFAQs longer than I thought. Now, it may make that registry key upon first run on a new machine, but it certainly does not require it to be there before starting.

Not only have I, for years, "installed" Deus Ex by unpacking a ZIP file containing the installation dir (C:\DeusEx) when my CD-ROM got scratched all to hell (I've since acquired GOTY; yay, no more installing 1.112fm) and it's worked that way for years. Plus, I stuck the folder on said flash drive and played it at work. It was totally playable but the save/load times killed it.

As for the registry keys, the PortableApps.com launcher can capture that on first run and take it out of the registry when it's closed. That's not a problem. Next time I install it fresh from the GOTY disc I'm gonna run this tool they use, it compares the registry before/after an installation to see what their launcher needs to sandbox for portability. Though if it's in a registry hive that doesn't require admin access and it doesn't store personal info, sometimes they don't bother. But since a game is something schools (and work!) don't like you running, I think the launcher should take the extra step to stealth the game and remove all traces.

that guy - good idea, but the advantage of an NSIS launcher over a batch file is that a launcher can do it more cleanly (albeit with a few hundred KB's larger footprint) and can easily be integrated into the PortableApps.com, geek.menu, or any of a dozen or so other flash drive start menus.

Their launchers don't currently support this, as far as I know, but it would be cool if you had "one launcher to rule them all". The first thing this launcher would do is ask you what you want to do... Vanilla DX or TNM (or Redsun or Carone or Zodiac if you have them) and then below be able to check off Shifter, New Vision, and/or HDTP. Now THAT would be ballin'.


//edit: Also, what needs to be written while the game is running? Assuming we don't want to make any changes (e.g. display settings) what, if anything, stops someone from changing the .ini for DX and for TNM to point to C:\DXsave and then running the game from DVD-ROM and just backing up the save folder on a flash drive? Obviously admin access might (would?) be required to write to the C drive, and the renderer and resolution would have to work on all computers it's used on... unless there's some way to make it defer to a .ini stored on writable media. TNM 1.0.2 inflates my DX folder to 2.21GB, and that's over half my flash drive. (However, flash drives are really coming down in price... I should just drop $30 or so and get a 16GB Corsair Flash Voyager and not have to worry about it.

[Dark Reality]

This is going to be coming much sooner than I had previously anticipated, if everything goes according to plan. *insert villain laugh soundbyte*

Long story short, there's now a generic launcher that can do all kinds of things. It won't work for all apps, but it should work for stuff which is basically portable with few to no considerations - like DX. So here's the deal. Once I get it done, I'm going to release a series of launchers, each with an installer, where the installer simply sets up folders, it doesn't "install" per se. The launcher won't do anything, but what you'll then do is install Deus Ex GOTY anywhere you like (or DX retail and then install the 1.112fm patch) and then copy it into the folder designated by the launcher. That will get you DX portable, you'll be able to run it off a USB stick. TNM and Shifter will be a little trickier, but I'm going to try to release a launcher for every major DX mod out there, at least the ones people demand. The launcher will sandbox any registry keys needed, it'll copy the save folder to %APPDATA%\DX on the host machine, and when it closes, it'll MOVE that folder back to your flash drive's save folder. Of course, if you're doing this on an external hard drive, I'll have instructions on how to disable that functionality. On school/work computers, though, that process should not require administrative privileges.

The next step would be to get a menu, like the one at PortableApps.com. If you're going to have a lot of apps, you might consider the R34 mod, a fork which lets you put folders on the menu (so you could have a DX folder separate from the other apps, like Portable Firefox (FTW!)). Or geek.menu, another fork which includes TrueCrypt. If I can figure out NSIS, a future version would bundle a customized version of the menu with a DX skin.

[Dark Reality]

/facepalm

Here I've been trying to redirect the save path, and all this time it's been hard coded into DeusEx.ini.

What's more, for an app to really be portable, it's gotta work on limited (e.g. not Administrator, like at work, or school) accounts. As I understand it, limited accounts can't write just anywhere on the C drive. They can write to the USB stick, that isn't a problem, and they can write to their user folder, which from XP onward, is globally recognized as %APPDATA. No matter how you configure Windows, %APPDATA will always point to the folder with the same name as your Windows account within the folder called "Documents and Settings" by default. By default it's on the C drive; at work it's actually on another partition, the D drive. Regardless, in Windows XP, a program can be written to always use that folder.

But Deus Ex came out before Windows XP, and in any case, Deus Ex does NOT like %APPDATA in the save folder line in DeusEx.ini. Deus Ex is not intended to be ran that way; it's all contained within the DeusEx folder, wherever you've saved it. This contributes to its portability, which is great if you have an external hard drive. With a flash drive, you're kind of up the creek, at least if you want it to be easy.

While DX uses relative paths (the default is ..\Save), absolute paths work, too, though they cause a little bit of confusion. I just edited my DeusEx.ini to save to C:\DXSave, a folder that did not exist, saved the INI, and started the game. It took it an additional 30 seconds of just black-screen before the Eidos logo showed up. I hit the Windows key to check on the C drive, and it was not creating the folder. I can't explain the blackout. Anyway, I started a game on Easy, no skill point allocation, and saved where I started. Sure enough, it made the folder and saved to the C drive.

The other thing is getting an icon in the PortableApps.com menu. The menu simply goes up to the parent dir from where it starts, and scours every folder at that level for .exe files, but only one level deep, excluding its own folder. So when I copied my DX+TNM folder over, all that showed up on the menu was the TNM uninstaller. The System folder is down one level too far for it to look. I did some tinkering with the generic launcher I mentioned above, but the way it wants to set the folder up, I don't think we can have launchers for both DX and TNM, let alone Shifter and the others.

Here's what this project needs to really be cool: First, a program that will take a batch process and convert it to a .exe. This .exe will serve as the launcher. It'll prompt the user for the external save folder, or if you leave it blank it'll skip that step, e.g. if you're using an external hard drive and don't need it. Or I could have a second set of launchers that skip the step entirely. Second, a program that will edit a plain-text file automatically, that will search for the line that starts SavePath= and change it to SavePath={user input}, or if there's no user input, SavePath=..\Save. For DX and TNM all it would do is redirect the save folder, and then upon closing DeusEx.exe or TNM.exe, *move* (as opposed to copy) the contents of that folder into the save folder on the removable media. Shifter and other DeusEx.u mods would be a little trickier, as DeusEx.u and DeusEx.int would first get renamed to .u.old and .int.old and .u.shifter and .int.shifter, which are copied to the folder and renamed as such by the user (you), would get renamed to .u and .int, and then the game would be launched. And of course upon exit, the process would be reversed. Also, we could swap out the save folder for a save folder dedicated to Shifter, so your Shifter saves don't intermingle with your vanilla saves.

Also, an update on JetSetLemming's claim about the registry. No such registry key/class/folder/whatever on the work computer (which is an admin account, which can access the registry). Not to mention the DX I'm using at home was installed under XP, and it worked in Vista, and it works in Win7. I installed from a retail GOTY edition disc. I did the NoCD edit to the .ini, and added TNM, and TNM 1.0.2, but my DX is otherwise unaltered. So as to cover all bases, it does, like any other program, leave an entry in MRUCache. That just lets the sysadmin know what's been run on his/her computer. Oddly enough CCleaner, while it says on its registry tab that it cleans the MRUCache... it does not. And maybe it's best left alone, but I wipe the MRUCache of any trace of apps run from my flash drive when I get done using any PC that isn't mine.

Anyway, despite all of this headache, DX and TNM are already portable. All you have to do is copy the DeusEx folder to a removable drive, go into DeusEx\System on the next computer, and start DeusEx.exe or TNM.exe and it'll run fine. The only problem, and the reason for all this fuss, is that flash drives, even fast Corsair drives on USB 2.0, take a minute plus to save, which by extension means every level transition takes a minute plus. Additionally, if you're computing on the go, there's a lot of value to be had in Portable Firefox and other offerings from PortableApps.com, so integration with their launcher menu is an ideal worth striving for. But on the most basic level, you can just take it on the go if you don't mind the details.

[Xesum]

Deus Ex would be too high tech for the DS.

[Dark Reality]

Deus Ex would be too high tech for the DS.

Umm... yeah? I suggested it wasn't on OTP where? I did make such an inquiry back on GameFAQs, and I still believe it could be adapted/ported, but it would require a major overhaul of the engine. Even still, it wouldn't be the DX we know and love. Now, the PSP, on the other hand, it can reportedly run PlayStation games, but as its hardware is more on par with a PlayStation 2, it can't run those games (e.g. DX The Conspiracy) directly, but a port would be possible - if they cared to do one. I suppose we can hope that the "every platform" trend extends to DX3 and the full 360/PS3 game gets down-ported to the PSP. What's gonna be sad is when they try to port it, or release some mini-game under its name, for the DS. They'll call it Deus Ex 3, maybe append some subtitle, but it won't be close to even the PSP version. I don't have a DS anymore, but the DS emulators have come a long way, so at least I'll get to try it on the PC. (No PSP emulators I know of, though.)

Anyway, here's the latest on DX Portable. While it requires absolute or relative paths, you can't just say C:\Documents and Settings\blah blah blah. No spaces. So Documents and Settings becomes DOCUME~1. And on a flash drive, even with the save folder redirected to the local hard drive, it still takes about 30 seconds to load, whether you've been to the area or not. Saves are as quick as playing from a local copy. Now, if you got a pair of big brass ones, you could just copy the entire DeusEx folder to the host PC and just sync the save folder, and call it a day. And if you're friends or otherwise on real good terms with the owner, maybe you can get away with it (although it's kind of illegal, copying the game like that). But if it's a school computer or especially a work computer, well, that's some awful thin ice you'd be skating on.

Best thing to do, it seems, is just to run it from a portable hard drive. You know, the kind that don't need their own power cord. They just run off the one USB cable, which provides power and data. They're a little bigger than iPods, fit in your pocket or a nice case. And they start at 20 or 40GB and go up to, I think 320GB. So you can carry a pretty respectable music collection, some movies, more games, and/or a TV series or two. (As it is, my flash drive has the first season of Torchwood, minus the 6 I've watched, plus Firefly, that whole season/series - 16GB is a lot!)

[EER]

On a related note, have you checked out Thinstall? I think it's kind of interesting, although a colleague who tried it told me there were some quirks that caused him not to use it.

[Dark Reality]

Thinstall is a bad word around portableapps.com, but since we're not there, I'll explain it... Thinstall is very expensive to use legally, as in to the tune of $6,000-$10,000. While one could pirate it, it's just not worth it, since DX itself is inherently portable and Thinstall won't solve the issues that stand in our way. A cheaper solution is Ceedo with Argo. That's only $40 and includes an installer similar to Thinstall that lets you install stuff to your flash drive or whatever and take it on the go. A good solution for something that isn't portable that you want to be, but since DX is fairly cooperative anyway, it's fine.

And besides, everything in the DX community has been released either in good faith (e.g. Shifter) or explicitly under a friendly license like Creative Commons By-Nc-SA (e.g. TNM) so I would want to stick with that. I mean if I were going to pirate Thinstall I might as well just include the GOTY version of the game, the latest TNM, all the mods, and put it up on BitTorrent, but that's not where I want to take it.

[EER]

I understand, I didn't know pricing was THAT outrageous.
I'll look into Ceedo as well, first impression is that it's interesting. Note that I'm looking at it from a hobbyist POV, not specifically DX packaging

[Dark Reality]

Fair enough.

Ceedo is alright for what it is. Their menu is definitely nice to look at, and has a lot of options. And their included Argo software lets you install to the Ceedo drive, and it sandboxes the install with a virtual registry and hard drive, so when it runs, all that stuff gets loaded into memory, and the program is no wiser. Still, this doesn't work well for stuff that requires drivers - a good example being DAEMON Tools, the virtual drive loader. Any regular program and most games should be fine, though. They offer a demo or you can pay $40 for Ceedo, and Argo comes with it. (They make it sound like it's a separate tool and they're being so generous giving it to you for free, but if you ask me it's all one package.)

I just use the PortableApps.com menu. It's free, it's open source, and the people who make it are working hard to establish it with hardware (flash drive manufacturers) and I like where they're going. Something like that should be free, because U3 was a mess and being closed source, it couldn't be fixed. PA.c doesn't have a sandboxing environment to install regular apps to; instead they have a community of programmers and other nerds who take open-source apps and repackage them to work portably. They only work with open source because it's free to modify and redistribute - they do it through SourceForge, so it's all on the up-and-up. They do provide launchers for freeware, where you install the launcher and then follow instructions in its readme or installer as to how to extract the app and where to put what files. Some freeware is portable already, but a launcher ensures that it ties into the menu, and that it keeps its settings in a separate directory, for quick backup (through the menu's backup app) or updates that don't wipe out your settings.

Now if you want to see something really clever, google Xenocode. They portablize apps that sandbox themselves without something like Ceedo - I guess they're more like Thinstall then - but they can portablize apps that run off a web page. Seriously. You can launch Firefox, Google Chrome, a couple media players, etc., right from their site, and when you close them, they've left no trace on your PC. It's pretty cutting-edge.