Harrison
15th November 2007, 15:48
Much like the Amiga days when games came on a handful of disks, I also get annoyed when a game comes on a load of CDs, rather than on a single DVD. Why do they still sometimes do that? Surely manufacturing a single DVD is far less expensive than 5 or 6 CDs? and they can't think there are still that many people still stuck with just a CD drive. :unsure:
A good example of this is the game Warhammer: Mark of Chaos. This game comes on 6 CDs. Why? If installing from the CD's the installer is constantly asking for disc changes.
The good news is that it is normally quite easy to create a single DVD to install the game from out of the CDs. Some games won't install due to how the installation scripts are written, but normally if you look at the contents of the disks and find that each disk just contains a single file such as a .cab file then everything should be fine.
Using Warhammer: Mark of Chaos as an example, the first disc contained the installer, a load of other files for the installation, plus support material. The additional 5 discs just contained cab files. And working out the total file size across all 6 discs, it totalled less than a single 4.7GB DVD.
Creating the single DVD is very easy. Just create a new folder on your HD and copy the complete contents of each game CD into it. Once complete burn the lot onto a single DVD using your favourite burning application. I use Nero.
Sometimes the installer will look for the disc name before it begins the installation, so I always give the DVD the same name as the first CD, which always seems to work.
In the case of Warhammer, once the DVD is created the game installs perfectly from the DVD without asking for the other CDs as the installer finds the cab files on the DVD as it goes.
I've done this with many CD based games and it normally works perfectly.
There are some games that won't work so easily and for those people create conversion scripts to do any additional work needed. Most of these can be found on the gamecopyworld.com site and forum. Or do a search for "CD to DVD game conversion" in google, adding the game name into the search.
In addition it is also possible to split most big DVD9 games into 2 DVD5 discs, which is very useful for backing up DVD9 games, especially as blank dual layer DVD9's are still quite expensive. For these conversions have a look here. http://fileforums.com/forumdisplay.php?f=39
A good example of this is the game Warhammer: Mark of Chaos. This game comes on 6 CDs. Why? If installing from the CD's the installer is constantly asking for disc changes.
The good news is that it is normally quite easy to create a single DVD to install the game from out of the CDs. Some games won't install due to how the installation scripts are written, but normally if you look at the contents of the disks and find that each disk just contains a single file such as a .cab file then everything should be fine.
Using Warhammer: Mark of Chaos as an example, the first disc contained the installer, a load of other files for the installation, plus support material. The additional 5 discs just contained cab files. And working out the total file size across all 6 discs, it totalled less than a single 4.7GB DVD.
Creating the single DVD is very easy. Just create a new folder on your HD and copy the complete contents of each game CD into it. Once complete burn the lot onto a single DVD using your favourite burning application. I use Nero.
Sometimes the installer will look for the disc name before it begins the installation, so I always give the DVD the same name as the first CD, which always seems to work.
In the case of Warhammer, once the DVD is created the game installs perfectly from the DVD without asking for the other CDs as the installer finds the cab files on the DVD as it goes.
I've done this with many CD based games and it normally works perfectly.
There are some games that won't work so easily and for those people create conversion scripts to do any additional work needed. Most of these can be found on the gamecopyworld.com site and forum. Or do a search for "CD to DVD game conversion" in google, adding the game name into the search.
In addition it is also possible to split most big DVD9 games into 2 DVD5 discs, which is very useful for backing up DVD9 games, especially as blank dual layer DVD9's are still quite expensive. For these conversions have a look here. http://fileforums.com/forumdisplay.php?f=39