It's the little things...

Talgor on 25/10/2002 at 16:15

Tsk, tsk... So, no Arx demo for me. The installer wants to unpack the stuff to C-drive, which I have on purpose as a very small partition... The only other installer which refuses to either let you choose and doesn't know how to use the TEMP or TMP globals was the Battlecruiser 3000AD installer, and that was made by somebody with a serious attitude problem... I DO hope the final version doesn't have anything like this, if it's worth playing... It can't be a big deal since every other game knows how to do installs to other than C...

Sneaky Acolyte on 26/10/2002 at 14:51

Doesn't that just irk you off? I hated it when installers did that to me. There was so much software that I didn't get to use because it tried to write to my tiny C: partition. The only thing I could do was to double the partition size, which required formatting and reinstalling and all that jazz.

Software on CD does not need to be unpacked like that, so I doubt that Arx will have that problem.

xman on 26/10/2002 at 15:56

Why on Earth do you guys want to have tiny C: partitions ??! WHY??!
With nowadays disks, what's the point in saving the last tiny byte out of C: ???

OK, programs should learn to use TEMP and TMP variables. But it's not an obligation! Only a convention! However, another convention is to use the C:\Windows\Temp directory.

Anyway, with an OS like Windows that loves to eat more and more space, it's suicide to limit as much as possible the space on partition C. Or maybe you don't even install Windows on C: (which is another thing that I can't understand (except for dual OSes...)) ?

Talgor on 26/10/2002 at 19:19

Having a tiny C partition is very useful when you're forced to use window$... You can easily make partition dumps and bzip them on your Linux drives, so that when window$ once again decides it's had enough and refuses to boot or otherwise becomes too unstable, you don't have to go through the whole install process again but can restore a "clean install" with a single command... Essential if you want to spare your nerves a great deal of excessive strain...

Anyways... it's still bad programming to do such a thing. The variables are there for a reason...

Wendelius on 28/10/2002 at 18:23

I have very little space left on my C: drive (depending on swap file size, this varies between 50Megs and 150 Megs of free disk space) and didn't have any trouble installing Arx Fatalis.

Considering disk space requirements are 750Megs, I think it's pretty clear that copying is done directly from the CD and doesn't require (too much or any) uncompress temp space on the hard disk.

Not a scientific observation but, I hope, an encouraging one.

Wendelius