Im not sure why i want to do this by i find it annoying to have to reinstall a game with every new computer and console ive gotten over time. How would one make a offline installer or backup, I would also want to make them look like retro media if possible.
By chance are there better ways of re installing games without torrents?
For torrented games, just don’t delete the installation files?
For GOG, burning your games on DVD is not even piracy. According to the EULA, you are legally allowed to keep one backup copy.
Uh… just burn whatever installer you used in the first place?
You could also just move the drive to the new PC without reinstalling anything.
It’s crazy, but people nowadays install games through online stores, and they pay to not own games :S
I used to do this for work, repackage installs for automatic deployment. It’s probably not worth your time, but you’ll definitely learn a few things trying.
You can just use a USB. Cloning your directories and copying them over is how backups work. Copying the files over as they belong accomplishes installing the game.
Cloning on Linux
Use the rsync command in Bash to clone directories.
- Open Terminal
- Command:
rsync -avh /path/to/source/ /path/to/destination/
Replace /path/to/source/ with the path of your game directory. Replace /path/to/destination/ with the path to where you want to clone the directory.
On Windows
You can use PowerShell
- Right click PowerShell; run as admin
- command:
Copy-Item -Path “C:\path\to\source*” -Destination "C:\path\to\destination" -Recurse
Replace C:\path\to\source\ with the path of your game directory. Replace C:\path\to\destination\ with the path for where you want to put the files. Probably the USB
Due to how they are affected by Bit Rot, I would bot use any kind of flash based media (USB Flash Drive, SSD, MicroSD, etc) for any kind of long-term backup.
While retro media is nice, dvds are prone to bitrot, depending on when they were made. Best to keep a copy in a RAID HDD enclosure setup, and dvds as a copy on a shelf if you’re doing so for vibes as well
If it’s a Windows game, you could use something like Inno Setup. Most of what you’d need is possible to do via easy to use GUI dialogs, and it has a scripting language to do more complex things if the need arises.
For Linux games you’ll probably use a Flatpak, or a package for your distro (e.g.
.debpackages or such). You can look for a guide somewhere.Games usually come already in installers if needed by the game. You can get away with just zipping up the directory if it doesn’t need things like e.g. Windows registry entries or additional supporting software like runtime libraries.
