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Currently, Ren'Py interacts poorly with USB flash drives and other kinds of portable media. Since Ren'Py stashes its files in system-specific global locations, it's hard to move a game between computers.

As an idea towards solving this, I'm considering altering the search method a bit. My current idea is that Ren'Py will look in the game's base directory, and all directories above that, for a directory named renpy-data. If found, it will use that instead of the system-specific location. So basically, if you have a portable drive, you just need to create a renpy-data directory in the root of the drive, and Ren'Py will use it for saves.

Does this seem like a reasonable idea, and can people think of ways to improve it?

Sounds good. Actually, I've been using renpy primarily through a flash drive right now, since my laptop's monitor's been malfunctioning and I've been pretty much trading it back and forth to the HP Repair Center. Strangely enough, I haven't run into any problems so far. Admittedly, the game consists mostly of text against blackness right now though, so maybe problems will crop up later?

Samu-kun wrote: Strangely enough, I haven't run into any problems so far.

From PyTom's description, it seems like he's mostly talking about save games and persistent data, which are stored in different places depending on operating system, but never in the same directory as the game itself. I'm fairly sure Ren'Py doesn't have any problems just playing the game from any location at all, so long as you don't want your saves/persistent data to carry across from machine to machine...

Yes, please-please make Ren'Py portable, and also if there could be an option to make games portable as well, that would be great.

I run and develop from a USB stick and on every one of the 3 computers I use, I have different saves and everything. It's really bad.

Good idea! What about having an option to have save games stored on a server? So I have the game portable and can install it anywhere I want and still have access to my save games.

Wow that making games portable sounds like a great idea. I just got a flash of all three platform versions of a game on one usb stick. Could the save/load game function work between different platforms? Say I carry a usb stick and play for a while on my friend's PC, then a little bit on a mac and finally on my Linux, could that be done? That would be the ultimate in cross-platform gaming experience, no?

Yeah, and I don't see why it wouldn't work with this method, as the save format is already platform-independent.

FWIW, I simply have my machines setup where they all see my USB drive as drive H (using the Disk Admin feature in Windows). That way they always look in the same place for RenPy (which is stored on the drive), and it always finds it's paths where it expects them.

YMMV.

The problem is really with save files, persistent data, and multipersistent data, which are by default placed on the C: drive. (on Windows)

PyTom wrote:The problem is really with save files, persistent data, and multipersistent data, which are by default placed on the C: drive. (on Windows)

renpy-x.x.x:
--gamedata
----$gamename
-------saves
-------persistent
....
thats my opinion(i think thats really no problem )
or bin tree

That was the default for Ren'Py up until a few versions ago. We've moved away from this structure because it doesn't work well on Vista, especially where an application is installed globally.

PyTom wrote:That was the default for Ren'Py up until a few versions ago. We've moved away from this structure because it doesn't work well on Vista, especially where an application is installed globally.

Mmm...
Using dynamic archive?(thats slowly)
Or, using binaries.
Create the structure of data and use 1 file(using C).
or you need create independent under-programms for managment database.......
and...thats idiotizm, but....mysql?

It works fine on my flash drive. No traces anywhere between my laptop and desktop. I use a SanDisk U3 8GB Flash Drive.