Steam Burning on DVDs

SYCrash

well isearched on the forums but didnt find my question answered
i am thinking since my internet download speed is horrid that i redownload a game... take the installation folder off of steam and burnthem onto dvds
that way id get prequistics installed along with the game .. since prequistics wont be available if i just take the steam apps folder and throw it on dvd or hard drive
does steam's back up save the prequistics ?
steam save files dont matter that much since i can pretty much just search for any that dont have steam cloud supported and backthemup on some disk or with them

just additional info : steam as i noticed .. when downloading a game saves it into a path andthe game appears as a number which is probably its id
and im thinking of taking that folder after all downloading is done .. but problem is that i already installed all the games so its probably deleted now ... and my internet speed would make me have to download a 1 gb file for 3 days ... so i just need confirmation if this is possible
and why prequistics.. im planning on reinstalling an OS on my laptop and im going to need those prequistics

zeromyst

I'm not sure if I am understanding the question but there is a good article on the Steam support website about backing up game data and save games.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=8794-yphv-2033

As for the Smite question, why not just re-download it from the Hi-Rez Studios website and then add it to Steam?

http://www.reddit.com/r/Smite/comments/1bmwqj/adding_smite_to_steam/

Hope this helps.

SYCrash

well no not quite ... i still have no idea if it takes the prequistics(or so is it written) into them ( meaning all the files or programs that are needed for the game to start... lets say like direct x..)
as if you reinstall an os most of these are gone ... and simply the game will simply not work ... telling me missing files or something .
and thank you for the smite to steam link

ceres

We don't talk about torrenting games for any reason here. I went ahead and edited your post so that I don't have to infract you. Please do not re-ask the question.

Essee

If you copy the files for the game from the Steam folder itself (by default you'd want to copy the folder Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps), if you move it to the same location on another computer and tell Steam to "Install" or "Download" or whatever, it will only need to (potentially) download stuff like DirectX for you when you run the game, and NOT the whole game, because it will detect all the game files you've copied. So it should at least save you a LOT of downloading. But yes, frameworks like the .NET Framework/Visual C++ or DirectX or whatever will still need to be seperately installed on whatever computer you want to use to play the game. You can maybe save some additional future downloading by finding the standalone installers for some of these things and burning them to a DVD (the .NET Framework is a default Windows update though). DirectX is a little weird in that when a lot of games claim they're installing the latest version of it, what they really mean is they're installing additional parts of DirectX that the particular game uses, which aren't included in the download from Microsoft's site. So you may have the latest version of DirectX but there might still be stuff to download. And I've noticed that when it comes to Visual C++, practically every game ends up installing a different version of the redistributable, so that you end up with 2005, 2008, AND 2010 (for example) all installed on your computer at once. I don't know why this continues to happen. It's stupid.

SYCrash

ceres wrote: »

We don't talk about torrenting games for any reason here. I went ahead and edited your post so that I don't have to infract you. Please do not re-ask the question.

i am sry and i already know the rules... i did not want to torrent nor do i think i said anything about torrenting .. i literally am formatting my disk ... and i need the installations of the game ... so id have the game without any problems what so ever.... and dont forget that games need to be confirmed by steam to run .

and essee your right .. thats why i wanted to know what happens after download ... do the files stay at the download folder ... or the steamapps/common or steamapps/user folder..
and if i take the finished download .. then put it in another pc at where it was in the first would the installation work .. will steam identify it as a working game and not let me download the lot all over again except for maybe the updates / dlcs or what ever comes after

mts

just back up your steam apps folder and put that back in once you reinstal

Essee

SYCrash wrote: »

and essee your right .. thats why i wanted to know what happens after download ... do the files stay at the download folder ... or the steamapps/common or steamapps/user folder..
and if i take the finished download .. then put it in another pc at where it was in the first would the installation work .. will steam identify it as a working game and not let me download the lot all over again except for maybe the updates / dlcs or what ever comes after

Yeah, just take the whole SteamApps folder I told you about and put it in the exact same place on the hard drive after you install Steam, and then tell Steam to "install" one of the games, and unless it's been updated you won't have to download anything (unless when you try to run the game it detects that you don't have something like Visual C++). I can confirm all this because I just switched computers and moved all my data, including several large Steam games I really didn't want to redownload. I swear it works! If it does try to tell you it wants to redownload the whole thing (it attempted this with one of my games-- Mass Effect?), I think what I did was either just stop the download or restart Steam and it came back to its senses. One of those two things.

SYCrash

Essee wrote: »

Yeah, just take the whole SteamApps folder I told you about and put it in the exact same place on the hard drive after you install Steam, and then tell Steam to "install" one of the games, and unless it's been updated you won't have to download anything (unless when you try to run the game it detects that you don't have something like Visual C++). I can confirm all this because I just switched computers and moved all my data, including several large Steam games I really didn't want to redownload. I swear it works! If it does try to tell you it wants to redownload the whole thing (it attempted this with one of my games-- Mass Effect?), I think what I did was either just stop the download or restart Steam and it came back to its senses. One of those two things.

oh so it will automatically download all those missing ex: direct x files if it finds them missing ? so all i have to do is just either take steamapps or use the steam back up ? and then burn them onto cds?

ok just an addition of questions... the steam cloud service will take care of most of my save datas ... all i need to be wary about is the ones that dont have steam cloud support?

Essee

SYCrash wrote: »

Essee wrote: »

Yeah, just take the whole SteamApps folder I told you about and put it in the exact same place on the hard drive after you install Steam, and then tell Steam to "install" one of the games, and unless it's been updated you won't have to download anything (unless when you try to run the game it detects that you don't have something like Visual C++). I can confirm all this because I just switched computers and moved all my data, including several large Steam games I really didn't want to redownload. I swear it works! If it does try to tell you it wants to redownload the whole thing (it attempted this with one of my games-- Mass Effect?), I think what I did was either just stop the download or restart Steam and it came back to its senses. One of those two things.

oh so it will automatically download all those missing ex: direct x files if it finds them missing ? so all i have to do is just either take steamapps or use the steam back up ? and then burn them onto cds?

ok just an addition of questions... the steam cloud service will take care of most of my save datas ... all i need to be wary about is the ones that dont have steam cloud support?

Yep, all of these things are correct! Regarding saves: depending on the game you might have to do a little digging on where your saves are held (one of the most common places is your computer's user account's AppData folder-- you will need to have "show hidden files" and maybe "show system files" turned on if they're not already enabled to find that folder), but it shouldn't be hard to find that out with a bit of googling. People ALWAYS want to know where their games are saved, after all! Anyway, yep, if the game has Steam Cloud support (Steam Cloud showed up September 2008, so almost all games after then should be using it, and plenty from before it came out that added it in as well), your saves will all be on Steam's servers. There's probably also a local save, too, in case you're worried, but you shouldn't need to worry about digging for it since they ought to be on Steam's servers.

Steev

Just be warned that sometimes, Steam cloud messes up. I've had an instance or two where a save didn't get uploaded to the cloud properly, and when I loaded it up on another computer my save got overwritten.

A lot of people in the Steam thread suggest Game Save Manager, although I've never used it myself.

SYCrash

thanks for the help guys youve helped me alot