Flash drive and pc games

[muradin]

If I were to put a pc game on a flash drive, with all the dependant files and all that. Would I be able to play it as long as a computer could play it? Without installing it?

[AzVortez]

i've tried that, it didn't work for me. but emulators work

[DoctorZettabyte]

Yes, so long as the game is not tied to the registry. Don't quote me on that, but it should work. It really depends on what you're playing. Anything like Half-Life 2 probably won't work, but I'd say something simple, like Starcraft would.

I think the determining factor here is how your computer treats the flash drive. For example, my flash drives are treated like removable storage, so I'd be hesitant to play games on it. However, if I had a bigger one and it was treated as an actual drive, that'd be a different story.

-DocTera

[muradin]

I dont know, but it would probably be removable storage, but does Starcraft work like Warcraft 3?

[Basan]

SC-BW's latest patch makes the game able to be ran without the CD's much like the more recent patch to WC3-TFT did. ;) But it takes a lot more disk space because you need to copy certain files from the CD's and then rename them after the game archive files. And that I don't like. :P

[muradin]

So it's not a simple matter of copying Wc3 files. Do you think it would fit on a 500mb flash drive? Not including custom maps.

[FrankZ]

No, WC3 including TFT takes a lot of space (let's say averaging 1GB) so you probably won't be able to fit it there.

Side Note: (a bit off-gaming topic) Hey, its pretty handy to put your operating system (let's say my XP) on your flashdrive, since you can run it anywhere as long as the PC supports generic flashdrive identification (GFID).

[Neo]

Actually with flash drives reaching sizes of like 16gigs, big games aren't that far fetched.

I would imagine some games could do it, but others that might rely on copy protection schemes of lameness might choke.

-Neo

[DoctorZettabyte]

Actually with flash drives reaching sizes of like 16gigs, big games aren't that far fetched.

You could cram The Orange Box and Steam on there if you wanted. Just an observation.
You could also squeeze about two compressed copies of UT3 on it.
That's also...~32 copies of Starcraft without the No-CD patch (1.15.2).
The Ultimate DooM will fit on there 1820 times, give or take a few.
You could get Diablo II (standard install) on said flash drive roughly 24 times over.
Four copies of Counter-Strike: Source and one copy of Steam will fit on a 16 GB flash drive.

Double those figures for a 32-GB flash drive. I don't know why anyone would think to install 3640 copies of the Ultimate DooM on a single flash drive, but hey, whatever floats your boat.

-DocTera

[Galiant]

My Starcraft is on an External Hard Drive(USB Harddisk) and it works fine.

[Neo]

Well you couldn't really take it to another computer though -- SC relies on registry for a few things :p

-Neo

[TimP]

Well you couldn't really take it to another computer though -- SC relies on registry for a few things :p

-Neo

I suspect that's the case. Most[1] games probably wouldn't mind being run from a drive that's not the primary Windows drive, but if you try to plug it into another computer and run it you'll most likely have issues.

[1]: As I write this, I'm reminded of a certain "Jack Nicklaus Golf (some sequel)" that came as bundleware with my Pentium II 333. The game loaded the resources from a hardcoded path, which I believe was on the root drive level (C:\Game), so when I tried to make it a good citizen and reinstall it into Program Files, the game refused to start.

[muradin]

Well after seeing this, I'm going to try it, if it doesnt work, Oh well. Thanks for the input.

[tzzA]

My Starcraft is on an External Hard Drive(USB Harddisk) and it works fine.

That's different from a junk drive. Those plug in and just kinda sit there acting as extra space, not moveable file transfer space. Oh, and for Kyle's sake make sure you have USB 2 and not 1.1. 1.1 is epic slow.

[Toucan]

I would say stacraft would have to work.
I have a starcraft copy (version 1.09) that I play straight from cd rom, just put the disk in and run the game. No disk crack and install.exe are all obviously on the disk to.
But it doesn't require any type of configuration or setup, just pop the disk in start the program and play.

WoW works just copying its folder over a network to another PC so I imagine it would work on a flash drive as well.

[Neo]

Well SC uses registry, but besides that it's location doesn't really matter I don't think (well as long as you installed it to whatever it is you're playing it from)

WoW is different inasmuch as it doesn't require registry (I'd be surprised if this was the case at all) and/or it simply uses it's own configuration files, and is probably designed to it doesn't have to stay in one location. In my experience, most ORPGs are similar.

-Neo