The More You Know

Moving your steam install? How? This question was raised after I installed Steam and downloaded Half-Life2, Episode One, Lost Coast, and Team Fortress 2 and fully patched them all. I installed Steam to my C: drive and figured that I would get to chose where each purchased game is installed to. Not true!

Steam runs all of its games as subsidiary applications of Steam. Each of the newer Steam based games stores all of its data files and executables under the same directory structure as the Steam client install!

For me, I have one disk for windows and a raid array for games. Having my games run off of my windows drive was getting to me as I know I could have faster load times. After some Googling, I found out how to do it! I compiled directions from a few sources as well as from my experience doing it!

It worked flawlessly for me! However, if you mess it up its your fault and you can just do a fresh install to fix things (you will just have to wait for the dl again though).

Rules!

1. Steam and all games must stay in thier current directory strucutre
2. That means you can’t split games and steam up across drives
3. You can only have 1 active steam install
4. This will break all shortcuts for games/steam. You will have to manually recreate or fix them. (not hard)

Steps: Moving The Install

1. Shut down steam if it is running (right click system tray icon => exit)
2. COPY the steam directory from the original location to the new one.
3. Rename the original directory. (e.g C:/Program Files/Valve => C:/Program Files/Valve_ORIG or C:/Program Files/Steam => C:/Program Files/Steam_ORIG)
4. In the new directory (not original), delete the file named “ClientRegistry.blob”.
5. Manually run “steam.exe” in the newly copied directory.
6. Watch steam “update” a.k.a verify itself. It won’t download anything/need to reinstall.
7. Run a game to verify it works
8. Delete the ORIGINAL install (e.g. C:/Program Files/Valve => C:/Program Files/Valve_ORIG or C:/Program Files/Steam => C:/Program Files/Steam_ORIG )
9. Done, except for fixing short cuts on your desktop/start menu (see below)

Updating the Shortcuts

1. Find the short cut that needs to be fixed either on your desktop or in the start menu
2. Right click it
3. Chose “Properties”
4. Change the “Start in” property to reflect the new drive & directory path (e.g “C:\Program Files\Steam\” => “X:\Program Files\Steam\” )
5. Change the “Target” value to use the new drive & directory path. The STEAM shortcut can’t have i its target edited, don’t worry it will work! (e.g “C:\Program Files\Steam\Steam.exe” -applaunch 440 => “X:\Program Files\Steam\Steam.exe” -applaunch 440 )
6. Click Apply, Click Ok
7. Repeate

One of my guild officers created WoW Jutsu and it got me thinking how powerful the armory could be if the data could be accessed. Essentially, the WoW Armory could be a web service that allows the player base to do interesting and cool things with the data. In fact, this has become more and more popular as people are using the Armory as a way to obtain census like data and report their findings.

I have a project in the works that may or may not see the light of day, but either way after Googling and inspecting the Armory, I found out how to obtain XML access. It is quite simple, you just need to instantiate a HTTP request with a modern user agent header. Not knowing this, kept my first inspection scripts from obtaining XML, but rather HTML.

Below you will find a simple script that will obtain a list of all players in a specific guild on a given realm. The script uses the Pear library HTTP_Client as well as PHP5’s built in XML abilities. Also the require line (”require_once ‘HTTP/Client.php’;”) for HTTP_Client may have to be changed based on how your Pear libraries are setup/included on your include path.

Example File : WoW Armory Reverse Engineer Example

Written in response to Jim Troisi’s following question:

How have the interrelated shifts which Scholte describes from capitalism to hypercapitalism in production, from statism to polycentrism in governance, from nationalism to pluralism in identity, and from rationalism to reflexive rationalism–all of these contributing to and being impacted by the growth of transplanetary connectivity and increasingly supraterritorial relations–impacted your personal life? Is your existence different from that of earlier generations because of these relatively recent changes? In what ways?

As I sit contemplating my life and all the wonderful questions asked by Professor Troisi, I come to the simple conclusion that I must tell the truth. The questions were made personal, so I must respond in a personal way. I’m sure that if I responded in any other fashion, it would come off artificial and forced. Rather than consuming more time with a worse answer I provide this stream of thought constructed somewhere between the hours of one and three ante meridiem on nationalism to pluralism.

When I consider all the things I hear on the radio, see on the television, and read in the news paper I wonder if I am a bad person. Not bad because I hurt people, steal, or commit any crime whatsoever. I wonder this because I could care less if I was American while everyone else seems so fanatical about being a true American. In fact, when I list all the things I think and believe I am, being American is not on the first page, the second, or the third. It is not even listed. Is this to say that I am treasonous? I think some would say that I indeed am. Some would even venture to say that I do not deserve America let alone to be American. I say that I deserve it just as much as the man who touts himself the “American Man”, complete with flags hung in his truck, on his house, and pegged in the front yard. We both did the exact same thing to be American. We were born.
I do not feel nationalistic tendencies. I define myself via a series of pluralisms, things that anyone in any governmental apparatus could be. For starters I am a life learner, engineer, programmer, hacker, gamer, yuppie (young urban professional), and a punk to some degree. I spend my time reading ModBlog.com, and Ign.com, reading and responding to technical and social forums, traveling the world to meet up with people I have only talked to/read about/heard about, and spending my free time working on various writings and programming projects.

I understand that people of different states, geographically defined or not, have different beliefs. They were indoctrinated or stimulated into existence by their parents, communities, and governments. I talk to and meet these people and forge personal connections with them. Each member of theses states largely believes that they are right. I say, how can so many different ideas of being right all be right?

Through travel, mass media, telecommunications, and other forces behind globalization I have learned that there are millions of people who all think they are right. Their beliefs are based on faith, their justification on faith, and their driving motivations on faith. How can I, with my limited ability to experience the world, sit down and decide that what I think is universally right. How can I say the American dream is the best dream and that the US Government is the best government when there are so many other ways of life I have not and will not experience?

If I am not going to blindly believe I am American and that I must live the American dream, then what and who am I? Through the economic, political, social, and environmental aspects of globalization I learn of other people who put their trust not in beliefs, but in morals. Through transplanetary connectivity, I have learned that it does not matter if I am American; it matters only if I can live morally and treat others with respect so they can live morally and happily. I am not defined by nationalism, I am defined by pluralism. I see, hear, and talk to people all over the world who say things that I feel personal attunement with. Without the recent increase of east for supraterritorial relations, I would be a different person. I would not have been able forge connections with so many different people of the world. Indeed my entire generation has access to this wider view, whether they chose to inspect it or not.

Earlier generations had successively less global exposure. In fact, I dare to believe it was easier generations ago to be American. Not because of the conditions, but because of the view. If we were all fish and living in a pond, we would never see all the things that live outside of the pond. We would be believe there was only so far up, down, left, and right. Never knowing there was an entire world missing. let alone other ponds. In short, we define ourselves and our world by what we are exposed to. We can only chose to believe what we are exposed to. In our world today, especially in America, we gain more and more ways to peer into every land and every pond.