Converting multi CD games into a DVD

[Harrison]

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.

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

[Buleste]

I got Mark of Chaos on DVD thank god. Must be a bitch installing of 6 CD's then finding you need to download the patches which then takes a year to download. It's a good game but way to big storage wise. I want to know why nightlong for the Amiga was 3 CD's but for the PC it was one i think. I know you got Quake for free but still as it's just a straight conversion it shouldn't have been that big (although it did allow it to be advertised as the biggest Amiga game ever.)

[Demon Cleaner]

I have CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X3 on 4 CDs

[Harrison]

Well, that should easily fit onto a single DVD.

That reminds me. An additional step sometimes required when combining discs into a single DVD, or splitting a DVD9 game into 2 DVD5s is to edit the installer to tell it where to find the files. This is very easy using a free utility called Orca. You just drag the installer file into it and get a load of properties that you can change. Selecting the Media section lists where the location of all the files to install are. You can edit the disc name for each file so the installer knows where to look. Very easy and useful. A bit like the old Amiga Assign command.