Hey, about a week ago I started this quest to get as many game CD's onto a single DVD as possible. several wasted DVD's and a crapload of time I should have used writing a research paper later, I realized its easier said than done. I've tried straight file burning but that doesn't work since most games use common file names. I've tried ISO images, both as seperate ISO images for each game, as well as the entire DVD ISO image. I'm running out of ideas, except mabey going through each game, changing the file names so nothing conflicts then fixing the MSI files (if it's at all possible, and I refuse to do that unless somone can tell me a relatively quick way to do it), or finding some way to add each game to it's own directory on the DVD. personally I'm hopping for the latter. In any case, somone give me somthing to work with here! Mitch
Sounds like a real problem. But to be honest, can that even be done like you were saying? I don't think it can, and I never heard of anyone doing it. I checked on google haven't seen anything...someone else has asked the same question but in regards to ps2 games.
Yeah thats just the thing, I've seen plenty done for console games, but nothing under computer games. I think it would have saved me a bunch of effort if I just found somthing saying it was impossible. What I'm thinking of trying, actually, is to see if in orce I can change the volume labels, so as to add directories for different games (ie. CD/Red Alert 2 D1; CD/Red Alert 2 D2; CD/Yuri's Revenge; CD/Generals D1...ect...) if you havn't noticed, I started all of this out of my hatred for the 10-some Command & Conquer cds people leave laying around my computer room. Anyways, I'm thinking of trying that but I need to go get some blank DVD's first. All I have left is an RW, but it's currently full with some other crap I'm not willing to loose.
use alcohol 120 to make the iso image of each cd. You will have an mds and a mdf file for each cd. (i.e.)--doom3cd1.mds,doom3cd1.mdf,doom3cd2.mds,doom3cd2.mdf... Just keep each game iso together in seperate folders You can fit around 6 cd's per 4.7gb dvd r. When you later want to run one of the disks. use alcohol 120 again and mount the .mds on a virtual drive. When i first got my dvd burner I was able to take about 120 cd-r and took a little over 20 dvd's.
thanks, I heard about that, but I was hoping it wouldn't come to that as I wanted a standalone DVD. mabey take a little time, create an alternate autorun menu that combines all the options of the origional CD autorun menus into main menu. And the only problem I see with that is that to change CDs in the middle of a game, you would have to take the time to unmount the image, remount another (to me thats more of a nusence then just changing CD's, especially since the others that play these games would have to get me to do it for them). Some of the games I could fix to run under only 1 ISO image, but others I can't. This grand DVD idea also started as I wondered how I could make a single DVD of older multi-CD games that don't use *.msi (i.e. I don't know how to fix the setup so it will run on only 1 disk).
Putting multiple game cd's that use the msi install script onto one dvd is easy. Download a program called Orca from the Microsoft website (it's free). Once that's installed, edit the msi file, navigate down to the media section and remove the cd labels, and disc volumes. Save file, burn and install from a single dvd.... easy. EA Games are a lot harder, since they use volume labels and other stuff. Anyone with ideas on that, lmk.
thanks, that answered some of my questions, but theres still one thing thats unclear, all of the games have common file names, do you mean put them into their own folders? I've already tried to simply edit the volume lables and such and just burn directly, but each burn failed because of the common file names (even when burned in image files). I;m not sure if it makes a difference, but I've been burning in track-at-once mode (stupid, stupid, stupid! even if that didn't cause the conflicting file names to stop the burning process, track-at-once messes up all the time non-the-less). more then that, if I put each game in a folder, won't I need to have the volume ID edited to specify to look in the sub-directories, rather then simply delete them? or will the games simply go-a-lookin' for the specific file it needs throughout the CD? If all else fails, do you know what file(s) games need to run on? I was thinking, at worse, I could simply remove all volume info in the msi files, as you said, and install manually going into the CD sub-directories (or making a nice, neat little autorun menu seperate of the game autorun menus), and then making a copy of the specific game files needed to play a game inside the root directory (I.e. have all files in a subdirectory, and on top of that have copies of required game-play files in the root directory.) I have no troubles spending extra time installing the games, my goal here is to be able to play multiple games without any no-cd cracks, without having to mount images and without having to specifiy locations... that or tell me how to successfully burn all the games straight to the root directory . Thanks everyone for helping, and I hope the answers I find will help others.
This thread may help a little (I just quickly scanned it, but didn't read it fully): http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/117079 I just delete the values in DiskPrompt and Volume Label. That way you don't have to worry about what to label your dvd.. call it what you want. This also has a bit of info: http://www.neowin.net/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t284524.html So, essentially, I have a dvd with a few games on them in their own separate directory that I install from. I add the latest patches and <cough> to the disc before I burn them. Afaik, there's no way to install multiple games from a dvd and still be able to use that dvd as the 'original' disc.
(sighs) dang, I was hoping I wouldn't need no CD patches. in any case, you wouldn't happen to know how to fix older multi-CD games to burn onto DVD would you (I.e. Myst 3). It's funyn because now I have a bunch of DVD's, but not a single CD... thanks.
