Change the demo record + videos destination path?

Hi all !

I have Xonotic installed on my SSD (which is a Kingston V300 SSDNow, by the way... and I just found out it has no TRIM, and given its sh*tty nature, it will die out sooner than I expected), so I am trying to reduce the writes to it as much as I can.

By default, Xonotic outputs demos and videos to C:\Users\MyUser\Saved Games\xonotic\data\demos (and, respectively, \videos). Is there any way I can change that path - say, the D drive (which is on my HDD)?

Windows 7 here, of course .

Thanks in advance!

xonotic.exe -userdir d:\xonotic_data

Yup, asyyy got it. Passing a given userdir will effectively relocate your entire Saved Games\Xonotic directory to whatever path you give as argument. Because Xonotic only ever writes in the userdir and nowhere else, you'll have zero writes from Xon on your SSD, while the game data will be read from the install directory.

Note that this means dlcache will not be loaded from the SSD either, but since that also represents quite a lot of writing I guess that's also something you want.

EDIT: If you still want dlcache on your SSD, you'll either have to move the files manually to the install directory (which I would not suggest because that would make the files subject to deletion if using the update script), or look into NTFS junctions to provide similar functionality as *NIX's symlinks. I remember seeing horror stories about junctions in win xp, but that has probably improved since. It's still a rather obscure feature to windows end-users as there is no access to it from the GUI.

What you would do with junctions is to not use -userdir as above, but instead link the 'demos' and 'videos' directories in your data dir on your SSD to new directories on your HDD, so that all reads and writes are offloaded there while keeping the rest of the data directory (including dlcache) on your SSD.

Yup, asyyy got it. Passing a given userdir will effectively relocate your entire Saved Games\Xonotic directory to whatever path you give as argument. Because Xonotic only ever writes in the userdir and nowhere else, you'll have zero writes from Xon on your SSD, while the game data will be read from the install directory.

Note that this means dlcache will not be loaded from the SSD either, but since that also represents quite a lot of writing I guess that's also something you want.

EDIT: If you still want dlcache on your SSD, you'll either have to move the files manually to the install directory (which I would not suggest because that would make the files subject to deletion if using the update script), or look into NTFS junctions to provide similar functionality as *NIX's symlinks. I remember seeing horror stories about junctions in win xp, but that has probably improved since. It's still a rather obscure feature to windows end-users as there is no access to it from the GUI.

What you would do with junctions is to not use -userdir as above, but instead link the 'demos' and 'videos' directories in your data dir on your SSD to new directories on your HDD, so that all reads and writes are offloaded there while keeping the rest of the data directory (including dlcache) on your SSD.

Thanks to both for your time!

So... I guess what I want / need to do is move the entire 'xonotic' folder from C:\Users\MyUser\Saved Games to D:\something something. And just leave the game installation on the SSD - so it will still boot up quick. Well... how do I do that? I take what asyyy said isn't it...

Junctions... I've no idea what those are. Nor do I think I wish to meddle with those, now that you brought up the term 'horror' .

You don't "just" have to move the directory.

After you've moved C:\Users\MyUser\Saved Games\Xonotic\ to D:\My New Xonotic Directory\, you also need to tell Xonotic that this is where you placed it. To do so, you have to pass that userdir argument asyyy mentioned to Xonotic as you launch it.

I suppose currently you're clicking xonotic.exe or a shortcut to it to launch the game. Well, now you must use a shortcut, and you have to configure it to pass the argument to it.

Concretely, what you'll do is create a shortcut to Xonotic.exe, then right-click it, and go to properties. In the "Target" field, you want to add the following after xonotic.exe:

Code:

-userdir "D:\My New Xonotic Directory"

(I made a screenshot some time ago for another commandline parameter, just replace the -nohome with the -userdir "yadda yadda")

After you've moved C:\Users\MyUser\Saved Games\Xonotic\ to D:\My New Xonotic Directory\, you also need to tell Xonotic that this is where you placed it. To do so, you have to pass that userdir argument asyyy mentioned to Xonotic as you launch it.

I suppose currently you're clicking xonotic.exe or a shortcut to it to launch the game. Well, now you must use a shortcut, and you have to configure it to pass the argument to it.

Concretely, what you'll do is create a shortcut to Xonotic.exe, then right-click it, and go to properties. In the "Target" field, you want to add the following after xonotic.exe:

Code:

-userdir "D:\My New Xonotic Directory"

(I made a screenshot some time ago for another commandline parameter, just replace the -nohome with the -userdir "yadda yadda")

I thought there's more to it than that. Okay... Thanks a lot!

There was an argument there already : -sessionid. Not sure what that was about, so I deleted it. Hmm...

The -sessionid doesn't come alone, there's an actual sessionid following it. Like "-sessionid MySessionID". If you remove -sessionid, also remove its argument.

If you were using that shortcut previously, I suggest you put that "-sessionid MySessionID" back. It gives a base name to several files, one of them being your player ID key. If you change sessionid, your player stats will be sent from a different user ID.

If you don't care about stats, don't worry. But if you do, set the -sessionid back to what you were using before.

The -sessionid doesn't come alone, there's an actual sessionid following it. Like "-sessionid MySessionID". If you remove -sessionid, also remove its argument.

If you were using that shortcut previously, I suggest you put that "-sessionid MySessionID" back. It gives a base name to several files, one of them being your player ID key. If you change sessionid, your player stats will be sent from a different user ID.

If you don't care about stats, don't worry. But if you do, set the -sessionid back to what you were using before.

There was no argument after -sessionid :/

Anyway, I don't really care about stats, so...