Converting 4 Disc PC games, to 1 DVD PC Game

VagrantChrisX · #1 25-07-2003, 07:50

I am just wondering if there is a simple way to convert a 4 Disc PC game, for example: MATRIX, to 1 DVD game.

This was just an idea I came up with, because carrying around 4 discs, and taking them out everytime you install is just plain tiresome. I just like to have 1 DVD, and just put in the game disc, while the installation finds all the files easily. Then I use the same disc to play the game. Whoa, wouldn't that be nice!

Let me know, thanks!

mach7 · #2 25-07-2003, 08:27

Make iso's, slap them all on a dvd-r, then use Alcohol 120% to mount the images from the dvd-r. That's what I do!!

VagrantChrisX · #3 25-07-2003, 08:38

So you mean

Make the ISO's of all 4 Cd's, and then create virtual drives!!!???

Once I have all 4 Virtual Drives to my liking, mount each ISO to each virtual drive? thus creating the 4 CD structure on my Computer? Brilliant!. You are a comprehensible genius, excellent my good old man!

RincewindTheWiz · #4 25-07-2003, 11:01

Quote:

Originally posted by VagrantChrisX
So you mean Make the ISO's of all 4 Cd's, and then create virtual drives!!!???

Once I have all 4 Virtual Drives to my liking, mount each ISO to each virtual drive? thus creating the 4 CD structure on my Computer?

Well, what he means is making image files of the four discs, and burning those on dvdr. When you want to install, you can use ALcohol120%/Daemon Tools to load the first image, then when the installer asks for the second image, you load the second one in the same virtual drive, etc... No need to create 4 separate virtual drives...

VagrantChrisX · #5 25-07-2003, 11:23

Oooo Brother, I just downloaded Virtual CD, and made 4 different drives, which I will load the 4 ISO

It is cool though, I remmember using Daemon Tools awhile back, and the the thing about the Alcohol 120%, ( I thought he was making fun of my question, telling me to get Alcohol to join the 4 CD's together with the DVD, opps)

RincewindTheWiz · #6 25-07-2003, 13:30

Quote:

Originally posted by VagrantChrisX
Oooo Brother, I just downloaded Virtual CD, and made 4 different drives, which I will load the 4 ISO

Well, you might need Alcohol120%/Daemon Tools if you want to play without a crack, but otherwise Virtualcd will work too I guess...

Quote:

It is cool though, I remmember using Daemon Tools awhile back, and the the thing about the Alcohol 120%, ( I thought he was making fun of my question, telling me to get Alcohol to join the 4 CD's together with the DVD, opps)

Yeah, my sarcasm meter was kinda going through the roof, so I figured I'd give an extra explanation

mach7 · #7 25-07-2003, 15:14

Aye, I should have specified. Alcohol 120% gives you the virtual drive to mount the 4 ISO's, one at a time, as the installation of the game asks for them. It can truly be a space saver if you have a lot to backup.

ash2dust2 · #8 25-07-2003, 17:58

Wouldnt you run into the problem of the game looking to a specific drive letter for the CD on some games?

Still you could mount images as needed to the correct drive letter.

Eagle · #9 26-07-2003, 02:34

if the games uses installshield system I would created a new dvd-compilation and simply copy the .cab files from the other discs all together on the dvd and try it out.

VagrantChrisX · #10 26-07-2003, 09:22

thats weird, because listen to this, " Each Disc is customized with .cab files. Like textures.cab, game folder, and such. "

What if all 4 disc has the same directory tree? wouldn't the copy structure of each disc on the DVD erase the other CD structure? that means only 1 disc!!!

The ISO idea is great

Eagle · #11 26-07-2003, 09:36

i dont know the file structures but i would answer every 'overwrite?'-question with NO and only add the different/new files to the compilation

VagrantChrisX · #12 26-07-2003, 09:42

but if it says to overwrite? and you put No? wouldn't that not copy the files to the disk because there would be file conflicts?

Morglum007 · #13 26-07-2003, 12:06

If the game is using the installshield system with it's .cab system, then any game spanned into various CD can be easyly passed into one DVD. You only need to maintain the folder structure and put every datax.cab together. Installshield uses a very simply routine to determine where it place it's .cab and it only ask for next disk ( in the proper CD if spanned) if no files are found. Putting all the .cab together should solve that problem and no replacing/next disc dialog box should appear. In the other way you can be handling a not common installshield engine based, for example the new windows installer system. This way differs a lot from the other using "common" .cab with digital sign in it making it harder to crack.

First you should also know what type of installation do you have cause i'm not sure you where talking about a Installshield one.

TIP: Maybe you have "cracked" .cab files and files into the CDs which no correspond with the header in size nor CRC check with original placed into the .hdr file if present. This could give you that problem. ( Usually gives a CRC error dialog box)

And something more, that forgot lines above. If you have in different CD the same file with different sizes, you must preserve the largest one. If there is multiple files in different folders, you must preserve the folder estructure or will have a pretty bug between hands^^

VagrantChrisX · #14 26-07-2003, 13:44

Congratulations, you are so correct. I dug up an old copy of my game Bauldur's Gate and XCopy all 4 CD's to my Hard Drive, with each CD having Seperate folders. Then I burned the files to a DVD, and when I tried installing it had all the files it needed. I'm going to try to buy the Expansion, and make a DVD with the Expansion in it too! So I have all 2 games in 1 disc

the 4 discs only took 2.7 GB, I still have extra space to spare, yipee!

allegro16 · #15 29-07-2003, 11:19

Hi,

I noticed this topic today, cause i'm trying to backup the 7 disc The X-Files Game to 1 DVD-R.
I thought it would be easy, but none of the methods i tried seemed to work. (The Virtual Drive things sounds ok, but not what i had in mind)

I just thought it would be possible to just merge the 7cd's to 1 DVD.
I tried 2 things:

1.Use IsoBuster to extract the cd's to to an empty folder on the HDD (the folder has the name of each cd, so "XFILES1", "XFILES2", etc. Then include the autorun.exe and inf. (So folder contains files autorun.exe, autorun.inf and folders XFILES1 until XFILES7)
Burn it to DVD.

2.Create 1 folder, XFILES. Extract each cd to that folder with isobuster. (So no XFILES 1 to 7 but just the contents of all cd's.
It does not overwrite anything important, because most of the cd's consists of the same movies/audio (same size and dates, etc), only a few things differ and that is copied to the folder without any problem ofcourse. Only cd1 an7 do contain a lot of other data, but it doesn't overwrite anything.
Then burn it to DVD.

Both methods seem to work, but after a while it does ask for the next cd..

The main content of the cd's: (only folders/files marked * are present on almost all cd's.)

DIRECTX
GRAPHICS
MEDINST
MININST
QTW
XN*
XV*
XS*

CDICON.ICO
LAYOUT.BIN
SETUP.BMP
SETUP.INI
LANG.DAT
OS.DAT
SETUP.INS
SETUP.LID
NAV*.NMV*
README.RTF
AUTORUN.INF
DATA.TAG
AUTORUN.EXE
SETUP.EXE
_INST32IEX_
_ISDEL.EXE
_SETUP.DLL
_SYS1.CAB
_USER1.CAB
DATA1.CAB

I know a DVD version exists, but i couldn't find any info about it (the differences) I guess they simply removed the call for the next cd. But what file to crack or patch and how? Most are too big to open in Notepad..

Any idea how to get it to work? (Just like an original DVD or cd without the need to switch cd's??)

Thanks,

Allegro.