Digital Copy

[BentonGrey]

Howdy gents, I need some advice.  I'm now pursuing my PhD in Fayetteville AR, while my wife and I maintain our home in Arkadelphia, 4 hours away.  Needless to say, my life has gotten a lot more complicated.  Basically, I'm traveling home on the weekends and teaching/taking class TTHs.  So, my FF hobby is fighting for time with many, MANY other demands.  The biggest issue at the moment, though, is my simply not having access to my files.  My PC is at home, and I've got a new, Windows 8 (heaven help me!) laptop in my apartment where I spend the middle of my weeks. 

What I'd like your help with is brainstorming ways to set up a simple, effective way to have work I do here show up there and vice versa.  Challenge one is getting a copy of FF for this laptop, as it doesn't have a CD drive and GOG is no longer selling it.  (Anyone know if they're going to get it back?  I can't imagine why in the world it would be pulled from them, as FF was PERFECT for that site!)  So, it looks like I'm probably limited to Steam, but that is obviously going to have different paths and such, and I forsee major headaches getting things to sync up properly.

On the syncing front, I've got SugarSync which, in theory, has my FF folder synced to this laptop, but because of 8's incredibly asinine security settings, I'm having a hard time getting that to work. 

So, does anyone have any brilliant ideas about how I can get things running smoothly?

[spydermann93]

Honestly, Steam isn't a bad way to go on this, especially if GoG is down.

I currently have the Steam version installed on my computer and it works wonderfully with all of the original tools.  Even if those don't work, Alex repackaged and rebuilt the mod tools to work well with any form of installation and hosted them on his site.  As far as I'm aware, with limited testing on Windows 8, the Steam version should run well.  I think Alex's tools were also updated to work with Windows 8, but I could be wrong.

As for things like keeping hero files and the others consistent, I unfortunately do not know of any convenient ways to update across both of your computers.  You could upload zips of your files to a file hosting site like Mediafire (the best free-to-use site right now, in my honest opinion) and download it on your other computer OR you could just use USB devices to transfer the data whenever you're at your other computer.  I have an external hard-drive and that's how I transfer all of my data from computer to computer.

[hoss20]

In regard to syncing your files, what about something like Google Drive? It's an online storage drive meant for sharing files (15 GB for free, I believe), but I imagine it would fit your needs also. I think besides uploading files, it allows you to "grant access" to files on your system and, therefore, you could synchronize the file or folder each time rather than uploading it after updates. I'm not 100% sure about that feature, though.

[spydermann93]

I just realized!

There's also Dropbox, which updates in realtime

[Cyber Burn]

In regard to syncing your files, what about something like Google Drive? It's an online storage drive meant for sharing files (15 GB for free, I believe), but I imagine it would fit your needs also. I think besides uploading files, it allows you to "grant access" to files on your system and, therefore, you could synchronize the file or folder each time rather than uploading it after updates. I'm not 100% sure about that feature, though.

I use Google Docs/Google Drive at work, and while it is a nice way to access files from different computers, my experience is that you have upload a file every time you make changes to it. Basically, you upload a file that you are working on from computer 1, go to computer 2 and download the file, then after saving any changes you make to it, re-upload the file. You'll also need to either re-name or delete the original file, otherwise, you have multiple files floating around.

When working on multiple computers, my preference is to use a USB drive. Much less of a pain.

As for synching computers, that is way above my area of knowledge. Sorry Benton.

[stumpy]

Honestly, if there was any way to avoid Steam and its constant phoning home and updating when your game hasn't changed and so on, I would take it. But, the original FF appears to be gone from GoG and I don't see it on GamersGate anymore, either. I assume FFvT3R is similarly unavailable. :-(

Actually, for at least the original game, I am pretty sure that you can use virtual CD software (e.g. MagicISO) to create a disk image of the original CDs you bought on a PC that has an optical drive, pop the ISO onto a USB drive, and then install from a virtual drive on your new PC. I know that that approach was at least somewhat common with the original game. I don't know if the somewhat more sophisticated CD DRM for FFvT3R was amenable to the same technique.

[BentonGrey]

Thanks for the responses and advice guys!  So, for the moment, here's what I'm trying.  I've bought both games through Steam (why GOG, why?!), and I'm using SugarSync, for which I've got plenty of space, to sync my desktop FF files to my laptop.  I got it working, and don't ask me how!  Ha, anyway, I imagine it will take a few days to get everything copied over, but my plan is to have multiple shortcuts, one for my laptop, one for my desktop.  I think that will solve part of the problem, though I've still got to figure out a way to deal with the fact that all of the file paths for my maps and art files will be wrong on the laptop.