Game CDs to DVD conversion?

[Kyle2k]

Hi everybody

My goal is to discuss here how to put multiple game CDs in a single DVD. In my opinion, forcing a backup using Daemon Tools (although is a great program), is not exactly my first choice. I think it would be great if we could create a single game DVD from multiple-cds games, with autorun and no more CD swaps during the install procedure .

I had success w/ a few games :

thief: deadly shadows
farcry, painkiller, doom3 (easy, as you all know)
XIII
diabloII & expansion
Star Wars KOTOR

...but i had no success with :

emperor: battle for dune (only with daemon tools)
the suffering
phantasmagoria I (even with daemon tools...)

Phantasmagoria is a 7-cd game, begging for a DVD backup (saves a lot of storage space!). Daemon Tools does not seems to work in this particular case, because at the end of the first chapter (CD#1), the game asks for the second CD.

So, if you have experience with a particular game, making a total DVD conversion, please post here your story!

Thank you all
Kyle2k

[union jack]

kaisai tools also require some ms file 23 meg anyway u can obliterate there install just name all disk CD1 AND LABEL YA DISK CD1 BURN THE GAME IT NOW INSTALLS FROM DVD WHHHHHO HOOOOOOOOO FAN****INGTASTIC
I KNOW IT WORKS


IF IT DOSNT WORK FOR U BUY A GAME CUBE OR A MEGADRIVE

[union jack]

I Believe The Dune Game Has Same Cd File Namez On Each Cd Rename Then They Wont Play Hmmm
Do A Full Install Tehn Zip Or Ace It (prob A Install All Feature)

[Grumpy]

I wonder if it would be possible to put up to 6 different games onto 1 DVD? It sounds feasable to make seperate folders for each game, then make a autorun file that opens a html page on the DVD! On this html page could be 6 different links, to take you to the setup file of each different game! Simaliar to the magazine disks! So what does everyone think? Doesnt sound to hard now, Does it? I think
And for the record have successfully converted to DVD:
Battlefield Vietnam
Colin Mcrae 04
Doom3
Farcry
Mafia
Manhunt
Max Payne 2
NFS Underground (This one does ask for CD at the end but cancel message and game still works!)
Rome-Total War
Splinter Cell-Pandora's Tommorrow
Tomb Raider-The Angel of Darkness
True Crimes
Ut2004

And have write ups on how to do: (As I dont have these games, just typed them out for someone else)
NHL 2005
EURO 2004

So send me a PM if you want a Readme Doc sent!

[Kyle2k]

Originally Posted by union jack

kaisai tools also require some ms file 23 meg anyway u can obliterate there install just name all disk CD1 AND LABEL YA DISK CD1 BURN THE GAME IT NOW INSTALLS FROM DVD WHHHHHO HOOOOOOOOO FAN****INGTASTIC
I KNOW IT WORKS


IF IT DOSNT WORK FOR U BUY A GAME CUBE OR A MEGADRIVE

Hey Union, my english is not THAT good...

can you repeat in a way i can understand? seems to me you have a point.

***

Grumpy, i was wondering the same... multiple different games to a single DVD...can you explain how? (i did not understand the html thing...) my e-mail: aromero2000**********com

Thank you again
Kyle2k (your brazilian friend)

[The One]

Putting the CDs into different folders with an autorun probably wouldn't work for most games unless they are cracked and don't require any data from the disc during gameplay. Also during install you'll keep getting a prompt for the next CD and you'll have to select the folder. Most games will put the install source path somewhere and be something like E:\Setup. If you put the CDs in seperate folders, the game will look for the game in say, E:\CD1 but the 4th CD is in E:\CD4. If you are putting different games all on one DVD but all files from each games CDs are in this folder it will probably work except in rare cases where the setup must be run from the root of the drive which I have ran across before. The game may also need to be crack even if there is no protection because some games will only look for the game files on the root of the install drive.

These are the games that I have coverted to DVD
Baldurs Gate 1
Hitman Contracts
Painkiller
FarCry
KOTOR
Enter the Matrix
Commandos 3
LOTR ROTK
UT 2k4
Splinter Cell

And maybe some others that I don't remember

I'm looking at Emperor Battle for Dune and it looks like it cannot be converted to 1 DVD because the movie files from each CD have the same names. This means they will overwrite each other and I'm sure there is no way to change the path that the game looks for the movies. I'm sure it just looks for the movies in the setup source path.

[Asimov]

Hey Kyle2k how did you manage to make a working copy of XIII.

I tried it by copying all the files to the same directory and burning. It installs fine but the crack still requires that you insert the cds as you play the game. So its kind of useless.

How did you get around it.

[Zokkke]

You can convert even every Game on multiple CD's to DVD...
You have to load a crack and copy the content of every cd in one folder, without any subfolder...
you have to burn it with tools like nero or anything else you can make your own compilations
and when you now install the game from cd it don't will ask for any cd-changing!
You don't have to work with any image filez or virtual drives...

But my question is how i can convert any dvd to multiple cd's(without any splitting file)?
Zmokkke

Originally Posted by Kyle2k

Hi everybody

My goal is to discuss here how to put multiple game CDs in a single DVD. In my opinion, forcing a backup using Daemon Tools (although is a great program), is not exactly my first choice. I think it would be great if we could create a single game DVD from multiple-cds games, with autorun and no more CD swaps during the install procedure .

I had success w/ a few games :

thief: deadly shadows
farcry, painkiller, doom3 (easy, as you all know)
XIII
diabloII & expansion
Star Wars KOTOR

...but i had no success with :

emperor: battle for dune (only with daemon tools)
the suffering
phantasmagoria I (even with daemon tools...)

Phantasmagoria is a 7-cd game, begging for a DVD backup (saves a lot of storage space!). Daemon Tools does not seems to work in this particular case, because at the end of the first chapter (CD#1), the game asks for the second CD.

So, if you have experience with a particular game, making a total DVD conversion, please post here your story!

Thank you all
Kyle2k

[Grumpy]

@ Kyle2k
I wasnt actually saying I knew how to do this, I was just wondering if it would be possible? Some Magazine discs give you Demos to several games and when you first insert these discs a HTML (web page on disc) opens with a list of demos, you just click on the link to install the demo, so basically the link is linked to the setup.exe (or install.exe whatever it not important).

@ TheOne
Yes all valid points you have made here. If I were to even try this I would only try it with single disc games as yes multiple Cd's from the same game would actually make it harder, like you have said. I was just thinking out aloud. Some games with multiple cds would work but definately not all. For example it would be nice to say put all the Battlefield games (1942, Road to Rome, Secret Weapon) on the one DVD. but this wouldnt be possible to do as easy as BF Vietnam. And as BF Vietnam is already 3 CD's to 1 DVD you wouldnt try to add it with all the others. Thanks very much for you input it helps to keep us all thinking.

[VanTokkern]

Creating a DVD with multiple games is a fairly easy process.
All you need to do is copy all the files from CD1, and ONLY the installation files from the other CDs into a directory, do this for every game you wish to add. The autorun files from the other CDs might mix up if you copy them over the one from CD1. This was the case with Rome: Total War.
Don't put them all in the same folder. Nearly all games name their installer setup.exe and you can't have two files with the same name in one folder. Renaming it is no problem, BUT; setup.exe gets it's information from setup.ini, renaming this will start causing problems. You should just give every game it's own folder on the cd. The installation will look for files in the home directory; it won't browse the CD. (Example: When installing Warhammer from "D:\Warhammer\setup.exe" it will look for files in "D:\Warhammer", not "D:\" )
One important thing; You need to alter the msi files IF the game uses one. If you want to know how to do this read carefully;

1) Go here and install this application.
2) Right click on the msi installation file you wish to edit, and click "Edit with MaSaI Editor".
3) Go to the tab "All Tables" and choose the folder "Media".
There's only one table you need to alter here: "VolumeLabel".
You can change this to whatever you want it to be, just make sure you name it exactly (case sensitive) as you wish the name the DVD itself. If you're adding more than one game on the DVD name it something like "GameDVD". You could also alter DiskPrompt but it is not required.
4) Save it somewhere, make sure it's easy so you can find it back.
5) Replace the old msi, with the one you just altered.

You need to follow these steps for EVERY game you add to the DVD which uses a msi installer. If it doesn't use a msi installer you don't need to do anything.

EDIT: The above is incorrect. The things I described in here only apply to games with an msi installer. Other installation methods (sometimes) have other ways of checking the cds.

Creating a html autorun does not work. Your cd-rom does not know what to do with this file. I do know how to get an autorun going but don't know how to create one , im no programmer, so can't help you there.
Hope this was of any help to you people, if you have any questions just ask.

[Grumpy]

Creating a html autorun does not work. Your cd-rom does not know what to do with this file. I do know how to get an autorun going but don't know how to create one , im no programmer, so can't help you there.

Um like this:

Make an Autorun CD-ROM

To make a CD run a program automatically you use a file named autorun.inf you create the file autorun.inf in a text editor like Notepad. The file autorun.inf is than located on the CD's root directory. The first line of the file needs to say

[autorun]

add a second line with "open=" and the program desired. For example an autorun.inf file like this

[autorun]
open=explorer.exe /n,/e,.

would make the CD open up Windows Explorer. Rather than launch an executable you can have Windows launch an html file, use the following for example

[autorun]
open=start.exe yourfilename.html


I quite often make my own Auto starting software CD's but have never actually tried it with multiple games! I do believe that it could work using the HTML way but not actually sure? Thats why I asked.

[VanTokkern]

Thanks for that Grumpy, I'll try it right now, with my poor html skills :P I did not know what you just said. but it's worth the try. As I have no programming skills what-so-ever. If I manage to get it working I'll let you know. And as far as the multiple games on one DVD, games that are originally coded for multiple CDs, works like a charm
I only need to get that autorun working now.

[VanTokkern]

Hah! Got it to work. Thanks to Warhammer which came with brilliant autorun files You can alter all the links, background, pretty much everything.
I can personally vouch adding multiple games, which come with more than one CD, will work perfectly fine on a DVD.
I don't have an answer yet to your problem Grumpy. I guess it should work fine if you can figure out a way to execute files with html. I, for one, don't know how to do this.

[Grumpy]

yeh sorry bout tht i relized the way i used to do it wont work in Xp ive just been testing it!
But this WILL open the HTML on the CD (between the lines but not the lines as well)
----------------------------------------------------
[autorun]
open=Games.html
icon=cd.ico

shellexecute=Games.html

----------------------------------------------------
Now just a bit more corrections on the html itself and I'm sure I can get this to work! Just need to brush up on my html

[VanTokkern]

Do you happen to know a program which lets you alter cab files?