Moving the My Games Directory

How do I get this data into my game directory?

from GalCiv2 Forums
I see in the My Games, there's a prefs.ini where I can point mods anywhere I want, but not so for the rest of the directory. I hate automatically created directories in My Documents, and even worse when they aren't a built in window's folder (so that you can tell windows to put these directories somewhere else) and every publisher seems to have a different idea of a naming convention.

In short, I want the "My Games" info for my GalCiv 2 stuff to be in the proper place: namely the GalCiv 2 game directory that I picked during installation!

What's the best way to force it over there? Perhaps some file or registry entry I can edit?
10,266 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I don't think you can alter it. And technically, we're trying to follow Microsoft's guidelines here for user-specific data.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
A shame, that.
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
This particualr microsoft guildeline is definitely broken. My C: drive is full of various games save files. I have plenty of other disk drives (like the one I installed GalCiv2 on) with plenty of space, but my C: is always running out of space. Just because brain dead microsoft has a suggestion doesn't mean you have to follow it. At least give the customer a way to chamge the save directory location if microsoft's "suggestion" (note that's not a mandate) proves inconvenient.

Besides runniny my C: drive out of space, great game.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You may not be able to relocate My Games, but you can move My Documents in which it is located anwhere you like using Microsoft's TweakUI Powertoy, which you can get here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Just because brain dead microsoft has a suggestion doesn't mean you have to follow it.


Actually, you do. There are certain versions of XP that will not allow non-admins to write (i.e. save your games) anywhere but these directories.

Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hurrah for Microsoft.

I have the same problem, no space on my Windows directory. At least this game has small saved files. Some games I have create enormously huge files in My Documents, which is already chocked full as it is.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'd also like to move the "My Games" folder. I'm running a danish version of XP, so having an english named folder in "Dokumenter" ("My Documents") looks slightly odd

I already have an "Spil" ("Games") folder in "Dokumenter" and would really like to move "My Games\GalCiv2" to "Spil\GalCiv2".

That's not possible? Perhaps by tweaking some registry setting?

(As for "My Games" being an XP standard: It certainly would not be in an non-english XP. Also Vista has done away with the "My " prefix, so having the folder name "My Games" hard coded in the game would be a bad thing)
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top

This particualr microsoft guildeline is definitely broken. My C: drive is full of various games save files. I have plenty of other disk drives (like the one I installed GalCiv2 on) with plenty of space, but my C: is always running out of space. Just because brain dead microsoft has a suggestion doesn't mean you have to follow it.

Actually developers do in order to be Vista compliant (you can't write save data anywhere else). As a result, my next PC will end up having a much larger C: drive.

Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
This drives me crazy. My C drive is only an 8 gig partition, and it just got below 2 yesterday because the My Games folder keeps getting bigger (even though, of course, all my game installs are on other partitions).

On top of that my older Win98 PC (hey, it still works!) has less than a gig free on its C drive, and certain things won't install because the stupid install programs want a ton of room free on the C drive to extract themselves. Of course there's plenty of room on other partitions, but that's useless.

There are times I really miss the DOS days. But of course I then remember what I had to do to get TSRs in high memory so I could play games, and I reconsider.

-HM