Xenobiology Posted October 15 Report Posted October 15 I've been trying to find a way to feasibly run VS through a 100-ish gb USB I've had for awhile now due to the fact that I'm stuck on a loaner laptop from my college. Of course, being a loaner, I have no access to downloading or updating anything on the main system itself. I've managed to (I think) properly download the game to the USB, but run into the issue of needing to install or update .NET to do so, of which I cannot due to the firewall. I miss playing the game, if I'm quite honest! And repairing my typical PC is taking a lot longer than expected due to a combination of issues (financially & warranty wise (real great that computer part companies can just decide to try to out-wait you when you try to get them to cough up their end of a warranty =^=; )). If anyone knows a way to get it running on a USB somehow, please let me know. Otherwise, I really do think VS would benefit from its own portable download option. I've been able to play that Other block game via PrismLauncher through their portable install but frankly there seems to not be a lot of portable options for games now-a-days that I can find & run. Which sucks! There's plenty of reasons to have portable options and I think they help expand the range of players for a game.
Nathan Flaminio Posted October 15 Report Posted October 15 Ask a fellow student if you can use their computer to update. Maybe they'll be interested in playing, too.
Teh Pizza Lady Posted October 15 Report Posted October 15 Use a friend's laptop to download .NET 10 Runtime and .NET 10 Desktop Runtime for Windows x64 as zips instead of installers. Extract both to the same dotnet folder on the USB drive. Since you have VS installed (and just lack .NET 10) here's what you need to do: Borrow a friend's laptop to download both the .NET 10 Runtime and the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime for Windows x64, as zips under "Binaries" rather than the installers. AFAIK the desktop runtime zip holds only the desktop-specific parts and depends on the base runtime, so you will need both. Extract both into the same dotnet folder on your USB, merging if your computer asks. When it's done dotnet.exe should sit directly in the folder with shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App\10.x and shared\Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App\10.x underneath it (the x will vary depending on whatever is the latest version of .NET 10 when you attempt this.) Copy and paste the below file into launch.bat (see below) Make sure your USB is structured like so: USB:\VS\ dotnet\ (extracted .NET 10 runtime zip) VintageStory\ (the game) VintageStoryData\ (saves, mods, config) launch.bat launch.bat contents: @echo off set DOTNET_ROOT=%~dp0dotnet set DOTNET_MULTILEVEL_LOOKUP=0 set PATH=%DOTNET_ROOT%;%PATH% cd /d "%~dp0VintageStory" start "" Vintagestory.exe --dataPath "%~dp0VintageStoryData" A quick check before running the launch.bat file is to right click and open the USB in Terminal and type the following (assuming it's your D:\ drive): .\VS\dotnet\dotnet.exe --list-runtimes If it prints a line starting with Microsoft.NETCore.App 10., then you extracted everything correctly. If you get an error instead, paste it here and I can try to help. I have over 10 years of experience managing .NET applications so I think I can probably be of some assistance. 2
Xenobiology Posted October 16 Author Report Posted October 16 On 10/15/2026 at 7:07 AM, Teh Pizza Lady said: Use a friend's laptop to download .NET 10 Runtime and .NET 10 Desktop Runtime for Windows x64 as zips instead of installers. Extract both to the same dotnet folder on the USB drive. Since you have VS installed (and just lack .NET 10) here's what you need to do: Borrow a friend's laptop to download both the .NET 10 Runtime and the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime for Windows x64, as zips under "Binaries" rather than the installers. AFAIK the desktop runtime zip holds only the desktop-specific parts and depends on the base runtime, so you will need both. Extract both into the same dotnet folder on your USB, merging if your computer asks. When it's done dotnet.exe should sit directly in the folder with shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App\10.x and shared\Microsoft.WindowsDesktop.App\10.x underneath it (the x will vary depending on whatever is the latest version of .NET 10 when you attempt this.) Copy and paste the below file into launch.bat (see below) Make sure your USB is structured like so: USB:\VS\ dotnet\ (extracted .NET 10 runtime zip) VintageStory\ (the game) VintageStoryData\ (saves, mods, config) launch.bat launch.bat contents: @echo off set DOTNET_ROOT=%~dp0dotnet set DOTNET_MULTILEVEL_LOOKUP=0 set PATH=%DOTNET_ROOT%;%PATH% cd /d "%~dp0VintageStory" start "" Vintagestory.exe --dataPath "%~dp0VintageStoryData" A quick check before running the launch.bat file is to right click and open the USB in Terminal and type the following (assuming it's your D:\ drive): .\VS\dotnet\dotnet.exe --list-runtimes If it prints a line starting with Microsoft.NETCore.App 10., then you extracted everything correctly. If you get an error instead, paste it here and I can try to help. I have over 10 years of experience managing .NET applications so I think I can probably be of some assistance. Alright, I'm doing this mostly on my own as none of the folks I know were free to do things with me (unfortunately), but I was able to download the zips. However, I warn you I'm not the best with these kinds of things ^^; I *think* I did everything right, but this is what I managed to error when trying to test in Terminal: Quote PS C:\Users\[CENSORED]> .\VS\dotnet\dotnet.exe --list-runtimes .\VS\dotnet\dotnet.exe : The term '.\VS\dotnet\dotnet.exe' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again. At line:1 char:2 + .\VS\dotnet\dotnet.exe --list-runtimes + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ + CategoryInfo : ObjectNotFound: (.\VS\dotnet\dotnet.exe:String) [], CommandNotFoundException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : CommandNotFoundException This is the folder set up at the moment:
Teh Pizza Lady Posted October 17 Report Posted October 17 15 hours ago, Xenobiology said: Alright, I'm doing this mostly on my own as none of the folks I know were free to do things with me (unfortunately), but I was able to download the zips. However, I warn you I'm not the best with these kinds of things ^^; I *think* I did everything right, but this is what I managed to error when trying to test in Terminal: This is the folder set up at the moment: Yeah so you need to run the .bat file from the USB drive. This is your clue here: 15 hours ago, Xenobiology said: PS C:\Users\[CENSORED]> .\VS\dotnet\dotnet.exe --list-runtimes It should read something like PS D:\> before you type the command. Try that and let me know how it goes.
Dilan Rona Posted October 18 Report Posted October 18 Linux in a sense already has a portable option. Don't see any reason why it can't be distributed the same way in a zip file without an installer. But then again, we are talking about people that may not be technical on windows to begin with and would find it easier with an installer, and an application launcher in desktop and start menu.
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