How to run two versions of VS on the same computer?

[allstreets]

Looking for advice on how to run two different versions (1.15.10 and the newest version of 1.16, with mods on both) on the same PC. I know I need to have separate folders for each of them, but I'm not sure what else I should be doing beyond that.

[daretmavi]

On Linux you need just to extract the archive vs_archive_1.15.10.tar.gz and run run.sh script.

On Windows, I suppose, this could work as well, but you need to run Vintagestory.exe.

[Streetwind]

There is something called a "data folder", which stores savegames and mods and configs. No matter where you install the game to, it'll always use the same data folder (%appdata%\Vintagestorydata), and there is no way for you to tell it otherwise during installation. That makes it tricky to set up multiple parallel installations that do not get in each other's way.

You can, however, tell Vintagestory.exe on startup where it should expect its data folder to be. So you'll need to create a custom shortcut for each individual installation to point to individual data folders, and then use only those shortcuts to start the game.

I've described my approach here.

With that setup, whenever I want to install a new version, I simply:

• Create a new directory for it
• Create a new Data subdirectory inside it
• Run the downloaded installer and install into the new directory (answering "no" to the question whether to uninstall older versions)
• Copy over the custom shortcut from an older version
• Edit the custom shortcut to match the new directory name

And that's it. New version, runnable in parallel with an arbitrary number of old versions, with no mod or savegame sharing between them.

 

Edited February 6, 2022 by Streetwind