GooTool Portable
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Thu, 05/21/2009 - 07:54
Hello,
I am following along on this site already for quite a while and am amazed at the fine community which is growing here. Thanks for all the additional fun you put into WoG. 
A question: As I am running WoG on a USB Stick I wish I could run GooTool as a portable application as well. Unfortunately it stores its settings in the registry. Is it possible to make it store its settings locally, say in an *.ini file in the GooTool directory? Or is this already possible and I am not seeing this?
Anyways, thanks a bundle for this Website and GooTool! Great work!!!
BiB
This should be easy to do, I'll add it to the TODO list.
Excellent!
I will refrain from asking when it will be done.
BiB
This is done as part of the upcoming 0.10.4 release. You just set "-preferences <filename>" on the command line and it'll use that file instead of the registry.
It's not exhaustively tested but it seems to be working OK.
Way to go!!!
Will try it ASAP!
Do I get this right? I run "...gootool.exe -preferences options.ini" for instance?
The options.ini should be in the bin directory together with gootool.exe?
Wow... I still cannot believe it - now WoG is 100% portable!!! *celebrating*
BiB
Ok, I tried it and to answer in case anyone wants to know:
Do I get this right? I run "...gootool.exe -preferences options.ini" for instance?
Yes.
The options.ini should be in the bin directory together with gootool.exe?
No. The file specified will be created automatically in the GooTool root directory.
A request: it would be excellent if GooTool has an option to make WoG portable as well. There still seem to be a few issues on how to solve that. In this thread on worldofgoo.com this is discussed.
BiB
You can specify the full pathname to the options.ini if you like.
I'm not really into copying pers2.dat around for you, but now that GooTool is portable for you, you can really easily just use the "backup" and "restore" options in GooTool, which save/load your profile from this site.
I see. Thanks.
Yes. That makes sense.
It becomes difficult when using computers which are not online, though (Notebook on a train, Computer of a friend etc.). But reconsidering - this may be a functionality not really fitting to GooTool.
The issues with Vista (as explained in the above mentioned thread) still need to be resolved anyways. Because as long as they aren't, WoG isn't really portable anyways.
BiB
World of Goo Portable now has support for GooTool. However, I do still have some request to make the programs interop better. So here are my suggestions:
-Have the original GooTool.exe remain open until GooTool actually closes
-Add more command line options for the three path fields: Original World of Goo, Modded World of Goo, and Profile Path.
-(Something that I won't press for) A "Build World of Goo Portable" command
The first two allows the launcher to work more closely with GooTool, so that there us a seamless experience across World of Goo Portable and GooTool. The last is just so that more people are aware of the portable option.
Author of World of Goo Portable. Download here!
Yay!
*applausing* Grand!
A question: Can I play WoG from the Stick without copying any files? Or must I always copy before playing?
BiB
What do you mean? If you mean copying World of Goo or GooTool, then no, because they would already be on your stick. If GooTool isn't present though the launcher will check for the presence of it on the local computer and copy it if possible. That can be disabled in the options box.
If you mean profile, it is always copied just before launching World of Goo or GooTool. I didn't put any way to disable that because otherwise you wouldn't need the launcher and you could just run World of Goo itself.
Author of World of Goo Portable. Download here!
Sorry... my question was not phrased in the most understandable way. Sorry... I am German.
But thank you for replying. Appreciate that a lot! I am (was?) working on a solution to make this game portable myself, so I am obviously quite interested.
So just to understand this properly - if I take my "WoG Stick" to a computer where WoG is not installed - will the game work without leaving traces on that computer?
BiB
Ahh. I was going to cover that on the FAQ. By definition, World of Goo Portable is 90% portable. That is, it gets rid of all traces except one: the 2DBoy profile folder. It's done for futureproofing, when 2D Boy makes another game. Of course if they use a new location, I'll change the launcher to delete the folder. As for GooTool, I'm not sure if it leaves any registry entries behind. It shouldn't, but it might try to automatically register the .goomod extention. If so, then davidc is the one you want to talk to for changing it.
Author of World of Goo Portable. Download here!
GooTool only creates the .goomod association when you run the installer - so it's up to your Portable app to create this as necessary if needed. If the installer hasn't been run, the file association is not created automatically by GooTool itself.
As far as registry usage:
- the installer creates HKLM\Software\GooTool which is only needed for the uninstaller. If you don't use the installer, this never gets used.
- GooTool itself uses HKCU\Software\JavaSoft\Prefs\com\goofans\gootool but, if you use file preferences on the command line, it should never create or touch this.
-davidc