Generic hint regarding Mods and Live Version (or: How to avoid double mod-download with PTS and live)

Hiya,

if you are on PC and have the live as well as PTS installed, you will have in the folder "my games" two directories for Snowrunner and SnowrunnerBETA - which contain the mod subscriptions with download files. So if you have subscribed 50 mods and maps, you will download them for each of the sessions. Although both folders are content-wise the same.

I tried and verified, that you can work around that with the "MKLINK /J" command to LINK e.g. the mod directories of SnowrunnerBeta to the corresponding directories in Snowrunner as any mod/map update is the same for BOTH versions. For details: Look at the "mklink" help.

Edit/Update: Your SAVE Files are in My Games\SnowRunnerbeta\base\storage

Go to your snowrunnerbeta and back up the two folders "base" and "media" there. Plainly to be sure.

Your mods for the live and PTS version are in .... My Games\SnowRunnerBeta\base\Mods

Edit for Clarification:
First delete the SnowrunnerBETA\base\mods directory.

in command shell, then use:
MKLINK /J c:....\SnowRunnerBETA\base\Mods\ c:....\SnowRunner\base\Mods

Its always the directory first where the "link" shall be placed (likely your BETA) and thats pointing to the second parameter - the new directory it shall refer to. You will find the directory where the ".modio" subfolder is. Its "hidden".

You link both directories once -> no "double downloads" any more. Totally transparent for the operating system. So any access to snowrunnerbeta-Mods is treated as if you access snowrunner-mods. If you downloaded a mod once, you got it in BOTH mod-directories as one is referencing the other. Works like a charm and reduces download traffic & time 😉

If you have not much space in your profile folder left, you can also "link" the Mygames\Snowrunner with some gigabytes of mods completely to a different location. I did that too, works also perfectly. Move the folder to a new disk and then "mklink /J x:\source y:\destination

last edited by JTT

@JTT
So if i'm understanding it correctly, and you want to link the pts dir to the live dir. Meaning the actual location is for the live version, and pts is reading the mods from live and not vice versa.

  1. Do you delete the content of the beta mod folder first?
  2. Does this work with symbolic links?
  3. In shell, changed path to what i think the default is so you can just copy/paste and change username.
MKLINK /J C:\Users\Username\Documents\My Games\SnowRunnerBeta\base\Mods C:\Users\Username\Documents\My Games\SnowRunner\base\Mods

And hit enter and that is it?

Edit:
Ok so it works, but not in powershell "mklink : The term 'mklink' is not recognized" but it works in cmd.
So you need to delete the directory you want to link to.
To link to .modio directory for beta, you need to delete that directory and link it like this. Remember the quotations for paths that has spaces in it.

mklink /J "C:\Users\Username\Documents\My Games\SnowRunnerBeta\base\Mods\.modio" "C:\Users\Username\Documents\My Games\SnowRunner\base\Mods\.modio"

Afterwards if you go to the beta mods folder, you'll see a new .modio shortcut dir.Udklip.PNG

last edited by idiocracy

@idiocracy

Yep, I used the CMD. Was not aware that the powershell does not work with it.

MKLINK is different from the "create shortcut" context menu, as its not creating a *.lnk file being interpreted by the windows explorer but linking the file entry directly to the file in the master file table of the storage.

And yes, you need to delete the PTS (beta) mod directory first to get rid of a "real" directory with "mods" in it before you link it to the mods of the live version. Its not an issue, as both directories are exactly the same as long as you have updated these. And as long as you use the same mod.io account, you have the same subscriptions.

At the beginning, a double download was not an issue - but as mods have partially 600mb and I have more than a dozen - you'll notice. Especially if you have not much bandwidth or in some cases even limited monthly traffic.

Noticed this as my partition with "Documents" where the "My Games" folder was located is separate from the standard windows installation and it got suddenly "pretty crowded" there. My current sizes: 100mb size of the "My Games\SnowrunnerBeta" versus 13.1gb of "Live with the mods in it". So roughly 13 gb mods/modmaps.

last edited by JTT