Not going to Steam because of multiple installs. Really?

Bram Hengeveld · Feb 16, 2015

I have seen the title above coming by a few times now in discussions about GSC's availability on Steam and I must say I don't get it

You can perfectly fine have repeated clean installs of your steam game, although it will require a tiny bit of work.

The biggest benefit of Steam, besides having auto-updates, is that once you have downloaded the core files of the game you can unpack these files as many times as you wish for a clean install without having to download 11GB of files each time.

If you have a few mods installed make sure you drop these into a separate folders outside of your steam game.
You can simply "reinstall" GSC by deleting the entire GSC folder in steam
Restart GSC in steam
The game files will now extract themselves again and you have a 100% clean installation
Copy your favorite mod in and enjoy
Repeat the process for each time you need a specific mod.

Msportdan · Feb 16, 2015

to be fair who needs mods.. the stock content has such good physics and feeling why would you use mods that arent up to reizas standards. Especially since the new update..

If your going to use mods, may as well play rf1..

yusupov · Feb 16, 2015

this is apparently over my head...if i delete the GSC steam folder, im deleting the files, & in trying to start the game steam wouldnt be able to locate the files & so begin downloading them. thats my logic & how i thought it worked, what am i missing?

James Cook · Feb 16, 2015

Msportdan said:
to be fair who needs mods.. the stock content has such good physics and feeling why would you use mods that arent up to reizas standards. Especially since the new update..

If your going to use mods, may as well play rf1..

Agree with this. I've tried plenty of mods with GSC but very little is as good as the default content, therefore I generally stick with Reiza's work.

As for multiple installs.....never felt the need for it myself.

Bez · Feb 16, 2015

Have you tried the Porsche and Ferrari mods by @Patrick Giranthon , really fun cars and very nicely modded

Kenny Paton · Feb 16, 2015

It's a habit I got into with rF1 and GTR2, but I agree that the best content is Reizas own. But I do like my BTCC mod and the F1 one as well, and Bez is spot on about Patrick's Porsche and Ferrari cars they really are very good.
Anyway storage is so cheap nowadays, I have flash drives that are much bigger than my first hard drives.

Msportdan · Feb 16, 2015

i agree with the 430 and 997, but are these now redundant with the new tyre updates etc with 1.25?

James Cook · Feb 16, 2015

Yeah the Porsche is great. I don't think many of the mod tracks hold up very well though.

Jan Mikuž · Feb 16, 2015

I think this is misinformation. As far as I know you can't have multiple steam installs of the same game simultaneously on one system.
I think Bram is talking about installing the game multiple times...

Edit: Ok, reread it and I understand what he's talking about. Installing/deleting a mod every time you want to use it in your steam install. It's a bit cumbersome( need to reset your controller settings, fov and the like) but yeah, it probably works like Bram says.

Msportdan · Feb 16, 2015

what would be nice, since there is a shortage of tintops, and mods seem a pain. Is to have the marcas cars in the steam install available.?

Reiza any chance?

Andy_J · Feb 16, 2015

I have not switched over to steam yet (might do, but not yet) as I have a standard vanilla GSCE installed and up to date via GSCE GSYNC, and another that is full of quality mod cars and tracks.
Some of you (MsportDan) state that their are no mods good enough, have you tried the BEZ Blancpain mod? You'd change your mind I think. I also use a GT500 mod I found and I really love that. Fantastic cars. I also have Indycars/Champcar mod which is ace on the American tracks.
Yes I think Bram is referring to repeated clean installs rather than multiple installs on the same hard drive.

Honestly, you should not diss the mods unless you have actually tried them in my opinion.

Bram Hengeveld · Feb 16, 2015

Jan Mikuž said:
need to reset your controller settings, fov and the like

Don't think you have to as they are kept in the mydocuments folder, but to be sure back them up

Bram Hengeveld · Feb 16, 2015

Mid-pack Jack said:
have you tried the BEZ Blancpain mod

To be fair that's not a mod but an illegal conversion imo. Hasn't got much to do with creating stuff.

Apart from Alex' extra add-on tracks for GSC I haven't touched any mods either, and also don't feel the need to as the base game provides more than enough content.

When I want to play the regular GP4 converted tracks, ill fire up GP4

But x amount of racers, x amount of flavors of course. Do with your game what suits you best.

Alex Sawczuk · Feb 16, 2015

Bram said:
Don't think you have to as they are kept in the mydocuments folder, but to be sure back them up

Hmm, mine aren't...

Bram Hengeveld · Feb 16, 2015

Alex Sawczuk said:
Hmm, mine aren't...

In that case back them up

I thought that games nowadays have their userdata folder in the mydoc folder to be Windows 7 compliant? My other games do at least.

Alex Sawczuk · Feb 16, 2015

We're special

Andy_J · Feb 16, 2015

Bram said:
To be fair that's not a mod but an illegal conversion imo. Hasn't got much to do with creating stuff.

Apart from Alex' extra add-on tracks for GSC I haven't touched any mods either, and also don't feel the need to as the base game provides more than enough content.

When I want to play the regular GP4 converted tracks, ill fire up GP4

But x amount of racers, x amount of flavors of course. Do with your game what suits you best.

Each to their own Bram. We use the BEZ Blancpain mod in the race club here and it was great and many tracks are also used that are not in the vanilla game. They provide hours of great racing. Like you said though, use whatever you like, what suits you best.

morsify · Feb 17, 2015

Of course you can reinstall as many times as you wish, so perhaps Bram is saying:

1)install GSCE in steam, install your mods and then copy the whole file structure out of Steam. Now copy this set back in whenever you want.
2)repeat 1) above.
This would work, but it needs a lot of copying/moving files each time you want to change mods, and you've got the added problem of making sure all copies are kept updated somehow.

I do use mods, not necessarily other cars, as the Reiza content is the best & has plenty of variety, but for instance, the F_Extremes, I need a few more long F1 style circuits to make a season, and as an offline racer, I also like to edit and add in my own AIW or GDB tweaks to balance the AI to my ability across a season, set my preferred rules, & create my perfect championship, all without ruining the default files.

Multiple installs allowed me to have a particular set of tracks, gdbs & AIWs in one install, say for F1 racing, and a completely different set in another install; plus a clean install for testing and online racing.

But it is no big deal, I can just use a Mod Enabler to remove or add them as I need to.

Really the only downside I see in the single install, is that you never know with Steam when there may be an update, so if you're not careful you might get some modded files overwritten & wonder why the game is suddenly not working properly.

So it's definitely a good idea to use a mod manager & remove all mods at the end of a session, in case the game is updated before you play next time.

Bram Hengeveld · Feb 17, 2015

You don´t need to do it every session of course. Just can just put all your mods in the game and the moment there is a conflict you can do as described in post #1.

Have used rf1 for years and never needed multiple installations