Change save game directory from c: to e:

Grumpwagon

I don't have much space on c: anymore so I try to keep all my games on my e: drive. I installed BGEE to e: but it's still saving all my games and characters to c:\User\Documents\BGEE. How can I get everything running from e:? Did I just miss something during the install wizard?

Windows 7

Rythgar

As far as I'm aware, there's no option to change that. However, you COULD potentially use a mklink command to trick the game into finding the relocated save directory. Not entirely certain its worth it, though. The savefiles aren't that big, and the only real size problem that could emerge is from any custom portraits you use.

Unless your drive is literally 99% full, don't worry about it.

Grumpwagon

Thanks, I didn't think anyone would reply -- was starting to feel silly. Seems kind of odd there isn't an option for this. It shouldn't cause a huge space problem, but my type A is kicking in pretty hard not being able to consolidate everything to the same drive.

@Devs: If there really isn't a way to do this with the current build, I would be one happy customer if it was implemented in a future patch. No huge rush, but it would be nice.

Rann

If your e: drive has lots of space, you could also move your entire Documents folder to e:. For anyone wanting to do this, simply right-click "My Documents," bring up Properties, and go to the Location tab -- then browse to the new location you want. If you change the location, you'll get the option to move everything in it over as well. Then, assuming the game saves to the special folder "My Documents" (as opposed to hard-coding to wherever it was located on install), you should be good. (I keep all of my personal stuff on the M: drive of my machine for this reason -- I find it's good to keep my programs and documents separate from the disk with the OS on it.)

IncoherentDrudge

BGEE decides where to save games by making DLL Function call "SHGetFolderPathW" to Shell32.dll to find out where the KNOWNFOLDERID FOLDERID_Documents is located at. The friendly name is "Personal". After it gets this name it adds something like "Baldur's Gate II - Enhanced Edition" after it and puts all the save data there

I was able to change the install directory by changing the registry key where Personal pointed to. This basically would change where every program that acts like this afterwards look for "My Documents"

There were two I found:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

I changed both of them to point to my Skydrive. When I changed the one in Shell Folders nothing happened. Also there's a big note there telling you to not change the values in "Shell Folders".

Then when I changed the one in User Shell Folders it worked. You'll see something along the lines of %USERPROFILE%\Documents. Change that to wherever you want Baldur's Gate to save it to.

You may need to change both named Personal though, I don't know. To make life easier just pop these commands in the run, and change %USERPROFILE%\SkyDrive\Documents with whatever you want it to save them. You may only need the first one.

REG ADD "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders" /v Personal /d "%USERPROFILE%\SkyDrive\Documents"

REG ADD "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders" /v Personal /d "%USERPROFILE%\SkyDrive\Documents"

This has a strange effect that may give you two documents folders, but it leaves the data in the documents folder where it is and makes Baldur's Gate and other apps that call shell32.dll like that automatically save where you choose.

--------------------------------------------

Another option is to delete the Documents folder, and then making a Junction called Documents in its place pointing to wherever you want the save to be as well. You can download junction from Microsoft's sysinternals page: http://download.sysinternals.com/files/Junction.zip

Deleting Documents may require elevated privelages due to issues of hidden files like thumbs.db You can delete them individually by running an elevated command prompt, and removing the attributes from them like:

taskkill /f /im explorer.exe
attrib -h -s thumbs.db
del thumbs.db
taskmgr

Then run explorer.exe non-elevated to get back.

This should work regardless however to remove the folder:
RD /s Documents

Then make the junction like:
junction Documents E:\newDocumentsLocation

To reverse this you can delete the junction and re-create the folder like:

junction -d Documents
md Documents

Even if this is a late response to an old post I ran into this on Google and saw it as a challenge. Hope this helps someone.