HL Platinum to DVD help
 

Hi, I just bought the platinum edition of HL which includes 5 games - HL, Opposing Force, CS, TFC, and Blue Shift. The problem is each comes on a single cd, and thus is a pain to switch in and out all the time. I am pretty sure that Blue Shift is the only game that still requires the cd to play after updating it, so I figured I could combine them into one nice DVD and then install off there.

My question is, how would I go about this? I know the installers are Wise, so should I attempt to setup a silent install? My only problem is knowing if all the updates that install along side the game would also install. I would like as little user interaction as possible, so that I can just click and it goes. My other idea was some type of advanced batch script. That way I could install the game, and then do all the updates in one install. Anyone got any tips? I am fairly familiar with slipstreaming things, if that helps.

Hi hunter444,

What I do with my games is install them, apply the latest update, extract the relevant registry entries into a REG file, archive the whole thing into a RAR archive and then put it aside (keep on hard disk, burn onto CD/DVD, you name it). That's a "full rip" as I call it but you can call it a "no-need-to-install-but-ready-to-use slipstreamed archive", too. :)

How do you know the important registry entries ? Is there a program that "watches" the reg while installing a game and then extracts all them to a single .reg file ?! Where can i find such programs :confused:

If i remember corectly, there exists a tool named RegistryTracker by Symantec.

There is many freeware programs like that..

Similar to NTmon and Filemon

RegSnap is the tool you should use for this. It traces changes traces to registry automatically. (Regmon muste be used , ehm "manually" :D)

Oh, guys, it's not that complicated most of the time. Just go to HKLM and HKCU and search for the name of 1) the game, 2) the developer or 3) the publisher. For complicated ones (very rare nowadays! developers adhere to standards and don't hide their stuff in the registry! GOOD!) just extract the HKLM and HKCU hives into a text file before and after installing the game. There you will see the differences. Also, there's RegMon (http://www.sysinternals.com , lots of other goodies, too!) for realtime monitoring of registry accesses.

Yes, you are right, it is not complicated most of the time, but RegSnap automatically logs the changes and can export them to a reg file.

Just run Regsnap, install your stuff, run regsnap again and you have got your reg file. Why doing it manually then ?