Moving the game, its mods and all the files to a new Windows (to 11)

[kleptomanisch]

Greetings, forum!

 

Trigger warning: Heavy use of the word "AppData" in question 2!

 

Question 1:
I bought the game about two years ago, and now, annoyingly, I might add, it is time to move to Windows 11. 
So I've downloaded the game again and tried gathering my save games and the mods I like to play with. To my absolute horror, all the terrain I have seen and set markers all over the place is no longer visible. If it weren't for my colorful markers, the map would be empty, save the place (chunk?) where I live. For example, I use the mod "Prospecting Together," and although there are still points on the map, the pretty squares "Prospecting Together" draws on the map are gone. Do I really have to do all that again?

Question 2:
And, since we're talking about save games, why, oh why, dear developers, do so many of you use the Windows folder "AppData??!?" My "AppData" folder is so gigantic that it is no longer feasible to leave a chunk of my drives alone for Windows and my system programs! I honestly need a bigger data drive, only for all the developers who think "AppData" would be a great place to store things in. Windows alone does a pretty good job giving everybody who looks for specific data, finding ANYTHING, a hard time!

If there is a way I don't know of to get my files without problems out of there or the game could save its folder "VintagestoryData" somewhere else in the future (or do it now, so I can grab my stuff easily), nobody needs to read my full rant.

[rant]
This kind of bad behavior started for me a long time ago with this other block game that I won't name here. Windows is very protective and greedy for everything it deems "MINE!" I, for one, installed Windows 11 on a new drive and use a dual boot until everything is copied to where it will need to go. It wasn't as easy as opening Win 11 and going to the system folder of Win 10 to copy my files, but after I finished and wanted to load the game under Windows 10 again, the save games could not be loaded, because Win 11 had its sticky little fingers on the files and marked them as "MINE!". Which meant I had to go to my save games, give Win 10 the rights it lost, and boot again.

I really love Vintage Story; you are doing an awesome job, but please forget the folder "AppData" ever existed. Moving to a new system is, for somebody like me, who plays all kinds of games more or less at all, a disaster! I want to easily find my save games, as I am able to read a well-structured code in Pearl, Java, or whatever computer language. Please, give the same care you undoubtedly use for your game code to the game itself and how it stores its files.

This use of "AppData" has, at least for me, gotten to be some kind of serious "misbehavior" and makes things unnecessarily hard. To be honest, "AppData" is one of my absolute pet peeves.  

I don't want anyone to take my personal opinion the wrong way. But I don't think I am the only one who hates the chaos Windows likes to make of things and prefers another place to store important game files. Even using the folder "My Games" on every Windows user's drive would be better. I guess it was even INTENDED for exactly that. Why don't game developers use this folder instead?

No harm intended, but I really needed to vent after I ran into the "AppData and its characteristics" again yesterday evening.
[/rant]

And thanks for a really great game!
 

[idiomcritter]

not sure if this answers the question...

I would wholesale migrate/copy these 2 directories 

appdata\roaming\vintagestory

appdata\roaming\vintagestoryData

 

map data is tokenized (my word) under the vintagestoryData\maps directory and contains the bits of map that have been discovered

if mods are being used with the map, that info might be storied separately (keyed to the map token?) under vintagestoryData\modData

and to keep the mod configurations if any, that would be vintagestoryData\modConfig

but yeah, copy everything under the two directory should preserve all the VS bits onto the new machine

Edited August 31, 2025 by idiomcritter

[smith]

Install game to C:\games\VintageStory1.21.0\
Create folder C:\games\DatapathVS
Create shortcut to VintageStory.exe
Modify the shortcut icon by adding the --dataPath "C:\games\DatapathVS\VintagestoryData" in the "target:" box

if your game does not see mods, change the line "C:\\Users\\User\\AppData\\Roaming\\VintagestoryData\\Mods" to "С:\\games\\DatapathVS\\VintagestoryData\\Mods" in the file С:\games\DatapathVS\VintagestoryData\clientsettings.json

 

Edited August 31, 2025 by smith

[kleptomanisch]

@idiomcritter That was the easiest way! And I did not think it would be THAT easy, so I didn't even try it. Because I saw some strange folders in the game files. The kind where the folders have a string of characters as a name. Something Windows sometimes creates, where the strange number is specific for the user account. Like 3f3ed6bc-40b2-2886-ef1f-c4cd0d5a8a1b.db. Of course, I did not see the ending .db at the time, because then I would have known that it might just mean I am looking at databases.

@smith This is exactly what I was looking for. Just rerouting Windows to a path I approve of. I never would have thought of this kinda obvious way, because I suck at remembering how to… "talk" to Windows. 

I'll mark the second answer as solution, but both were equally helpful. Thank you!

[Bumber]

23 hours ago, kleptomanisch said:

Question 2:

And, since we're talking about save games, why, oh why, dear developers, do so many of you use the Windows folder "AppData??!?" My "AppData" folder is so gigantic that it is no longer feasible to leave a chunk of my drives alone for Windows and my system programs!

My first impression was that this was probably a result of some standard that devs were following, but it turns out they're actually completely misusing it. (I don't get why you assert you'd have more space if they dumped the data somewhere else, though. Do you have different folders on different drives?)

The worst abuse is of the "AppData/Roaming" folder. This is for user data to be synced across multiple computers. This is not where you put settings specifically for one computer (e.g., graphics settings). It is absolutely not where you install the program itself!

Main software installation belongs in Program Files. It's designed to be read only. If that's an obstacle for updating files, you can put data in ProgramData, which will be shared across all users on the computer. If you need a different version for each user, you can put it in "Appdata/Local". An installation is absolutely not Roaming! Just create a fresh install on the other machine.

User configuration files do belong in Roaming! Keybindings? Yes. Saved worlds? Yes. Mods? Debatable. Ideally the zip files go in ProgramData or Local and you just keep a list of them in Roaming (along with the user configs).

Screenshots. These are media deliberately created by the user, so they go in My Documents or My Pictures. They're for manually sharing with others.

Sources:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/584279/whats-the-idea-behind-the-name-of-the-appdata-fold
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/design/app-settings/store-and-retrieve-app-data

Edited September 1, 2025 by Bumber

[kleptomanisch]

I honestly never thought of it that way, since I use my computer all alone. Might be a bit narrow-minded, because Windows is not always privately or for one person used.  Although some games do ask if they are meant to be used for multiple users. So that seems the better practice, just my personal opinion.

And my computer does have different drives. Eight, in fact. Even in the nineties, I used to split the one drive at least in two, to have a space alone for Windows and system programs.  This was just the easiest way for me, since I often renewed my Windows, as in re-install. Everything on C could be tossed out, everything else was games, big programs and especially save games. Sorting out what I wanted to keep was easy that way.

That is the reason my C drives is always the smallest one, and tends to get crammed. Maybe my idea is just not the best anymore. 

[Brady_The]

1 hour ago, kleptomanisch said:

I honestly never thought of it that way, since I use my computer all alone. Might be a bit narrow-minded, because Windows is not always privately or for one person used.  Although some games do ask if they are meant to be used for multiple users. So that seems the better practice, just my personal opinion.

And my computer does have different drives. Eight, in fact. Even in the nineties, I used to split the one drive at least in two, to have a space alone for Windows and system programs.  This was just the easiest way for me, since I often renewed my Windows, as in re-install. Everything on C could be tossed out, everything else was games, big programs and especially save games. Sorting out what I wanted to keep was easy that way.

That is the reason my C drives is always the smallest one, and tends to get crammed. Maybe my idea is just not the best anymore. 

That's how I roll as well. I don't think it's too stupid of an idea. I wish programs would make it as easy as VS to store their data elsewhere. Not many programs ask at installation if you'd like to use a different drive either.