Change default save location

shaggygoblin

…as in, make all the “…User\My Documents\My Games\Freelancer…” become
“D:\Freelancer\Saves” (My install is on a second HDD so ‘D:’).

Is this done in a similar manner to renaming the Freelancer.exe by hexing?

Freeworlds: TOW has a save folder at the expected location,
but it is called Freeworlds, not Freelancer (“…User\My Doc~…\Freeworlds…”),
so it stands to reason if the save folder can be renamed, the location can be
changed as well…

But how/where is this done?

And if the answer is common knowledge, or at least not a mystery to most,
why is it not documented in the Limit Breaking 101?!..lol

I did search: Save Location; Save Game; Save File; Savexxxx.fl; Save…
No dice… after hours of reading through irrelevant material ‘containing’
the words searched, but nothing specifically mentioning the save location other than
“…go to this location to mod your savexxxx.fl files or restart.fl…”

FriendlyFire

Just make a symbolic link:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753194.aspx

The link would go from My Games\Freeworlds to whatever folder you want on your secondary drive.

adoxa

# Use "..\Saves" & "..\FreelancerShots" (relative to EXE) instead of your
# "Documents\My Games\Freelancer" & "Pictures" folders.
# Jason Hood, 16 November, 2015.

File: Common.dll
0A2FB1: C7 06 2E 2E 00 00 EB 0E	[ 56 6A 00 6A 00 68 05 80 ]
0A300A: 0C			[ 21 ]
0A3018: 7C			[ 13 ]
0A30BE: C7 06 2E 2E 00 00 EB 0E	[ 56 6A 00 6A 00 68 27 80 ]
142690: "Saves" 00              [ "My Gam" ]

```(Use [BwPatch](http://misc.adoxa.vze.com/#bwpatch) to apply, or DIY - [c]offset: new bytes [ old bytes ][/c].)

FriendlyFire

This might break Freeworlds since we alter the path at runtime.

? Offline

Change the path and click “Move…”

shaggygoblin

wow…just wow…
thanks for the quick responses!
Symbolics don’t fit my needs for…various reasons… and would have been my first choice before posing the question here, thanx for that though.

Moving my user folder default path is also not an option for the same reasons. Again thanx!

FW:TOW is it’s own install (copies FL install to new location inside FW Install, iirc, and gives new save path/folder), so it won’t break FW.

Adoxa, don’t you have better things to do than lurk on these ancient forums…lol? Don’t you have Mega-Corps like MS and Apple to teach how to properly implement code? Will give your suggestion a go, as it most closely fits my needs. If it works, I can use it to make unique save paths for all 12 of my modded FL installs. Crossing Fingers

…Various Reasons… $8000 Multi-RAID Server being used as a desktop is just 1 reason… Honestly, i swear it started just as a gaming rig i built for $800 and has mutated from there… sometimes, it even talks to me, has attitude/personality… it even has opinions sometimes… gets scary…
Number 2 reason, it has grown/evolved so much from what it started, i fear causing catastrophic failure/loss and not catching it till it has already been incorporated into several iterations of backups… eg: restoring backups will restore the cause of failure… paranoid i may be, but my paranoia is based on experience…

shaggygoblin

adoxa wrote:

File: Common.dll
0A2FB1: C7 06 2E 2E 00 00 EB 0E	[ 56 6A 00 6A 00 68 05 80 ]
0A300A: 0C			[ 21 ]
0A3018: 7C			[ 13 ]
0A30BE: C7 06 2E 2E 00 00 EB 0E	[ 56 6A 00 6A 00 68 27 80 ]
142690: "Saves" 00              [ "My Gam" ]

using ICY Hexplorer, My Common.dll has this at the mentioned offsets:
[c]0A2FB1: 8B 1D 24 92 39 06 6A
0A300A: D7
0A3018: FF
0A30BE: 90 90 83 EC 34 53 8B 5C
142690: 43 6F 75 6C 64 20 6E 6F
142660: 4D 79 20 47 61 6D 65 73[/c]

At offset 142654: [c]46726565 6C616E63 65720000 4D792047 616D6573 00000000 46726565 6C616E63 65725368 6F747300 25732825 6429[/c]

And this appears in the right-hand view:
[c]FreelancerMy GamesFreelancerShots%s(%d)[/c]

my common.dll is appaerntly already different. I need to sort out what/why it is. Adoxa, is the info you provided based on FL 1.0 no patch? This may be the difference. Will investigate further…

EDIT: my common.dll is v1.0.1223.11 with a size of 1.68MB which, iirc, is the one from the disk.

EDIT2: I 7zip >> extract to …\flpatch on the ‘Official Patch’ and checked the common.dll in there. Eureka! v1.0.1254.11 has the same info at the mentioned offsets. So, Adoxa, you wouldn’t by any chance remember the offsets for the original, or know where that is documented? Some of the Mods I play require the ‘Patched’ or v1.1, and some of them require the original. Your info above will allow me to set the Save folder to the path that session was executed from for the stuff that needs the 1.1… testing ongoing…

shaggygoblin

Confirmed to work with the Official Patch common.dll.
Thank you, Adoxa!
Now if we can get all the TC Mod Dev’s to implement this…lol!

adoxa

Here’s the 1.0 version (untested, but should work).

File: Common.dll
0A2F71: C7 06 2E 2E 00 00 EB 0E [ 56 6A 00 6A 00 68 05 80 ]
0A2FC8: 58                      [ 1D ]
0A2FD2: 4E                      [ 13 ]
0A303E: C7 06 2E 2E 00 00 EB 0E [ 56 6A 00 6A 00 68 27 80 ]
142660: "Saves" 00              [ "My Gam" ]

shaggygoblin

thnx, Adoxa…
will give it a run tomorrow and return here with results…
cheers!

shaggygoblin

Adoxa! Great News! It worked!
Thnx again!

Long Live Freelancer!