Windows Path Inconsistency

[KevinTMC]

This is a small matter, and it was caused by my own stupidity, but I thought it should be mentioned.

I have multiple installs of KSP on my Windows 7 PC (downloaded from the KSP store and unzipped into folders). I usually launch KSP via shortcuts on the desktop. Yesterday, when having trouble finding a PartDatabase.cfg, I realized that one of my shortcuts had the wrong folder listed in the "Start in" field on the shortcut, which was causing PartDatabase.cfg to spawn in that folder.

I played around with it some more, and determined that no matter where KSP.exe actually lives, the KSP.log, PartDatabase.cfg, and Physics.cfg files will be generated in the folder listed in "Start in". I'm guessing that that is not the intended behavior, because everything else--e.g. save files, craft files, screenshots--appears to ignore the "Start in" setting and stays with KSP.exe in its actual folder.

[sal_vager]

I blame Windows

I have no idea how you set your shortcuts up, surely if you made them manually for each KSP.exe they will point to the correct folder?

[KevinTMC]

Oh, it was easy for me to do this.

Step one: Create a shortcut that points to C:\KSP_win\KSP.exe. The "Start in" field will naturally be populated with C:\KSP_win.

Step two: Make a copy of this shortcut, changing the target to C:\KSP_win_nomod\KSP.exe...but forget to change the directory listed in "Start in".

Step three: ???

Step four: PROFIT!

As I said, it was caused by my own stupidity, but I thought I should mention it, especially in case there might be people out there who are wanting to redirect their KSP data to another directory. (In which case they'd surely be disappointed that only KSP.log, PartDatabase.cfg, and Physics.cfg moved when they attempted to change the reference directory.)

[sal_vager]

But, you copied a shortcut with C:\KSP_win in the Start In field, what if you make a shortcut from each KSP.exe you want to use separately from each other?

[KevinTMC]

That would have been a smarter way of going about it, yes.

(But then I would have had to go to the trouble of copying the -popupwindow flag over from one shortcut to another...and at the time I suppose that felt like too much work. )

But again, bottom line: I just wanted to make sure that Squad were aware that KSP is, in a limited way, paying attention to what is in the "Start in" field when launched from a Windows shortcut. My guess is that they'd prefer for whatever might be in that field to be ignored altogether (which it seems to be once the program has fully launched).

[sal_vager]

While this is handy for Windows users I don't think it's KSP that's using the Start In box, Windows is doing that so it can find the KSP executable.

I'll move this to Tutorials as it might help some players

[NathanKell]

Sounds like just using "PartDatabase.cfg" instead of KSPUtils.ApplicationRootPath + "\PartDatabase.cfg" or something...which might be intended behavior, you never know.