Have Steam track modded KSP playtime

[Hektos]

Hello fellow KSPers. I have been playing KSP on steam since last year and have been keeping my modded KSP installs on a separate HDD (so that updates do not break them). However, this causes Steam to not track my time played on any modded installs. I know this is a fairly trivial for some people, but I see my play time as a sort of "badge of honor" for myself.

What I want to know is, is there any way to keep my vanilla copy in the steam folder (for updating purposes) but also have Steam track the play time from my modded copy of KSP? I know I could switch the folders in and out of the SteamApps folder, but that creates a new problem when there is an update and can bork my modded installs (thank you Steam auto-update ).

If anyone knows of any solutions that would be much appreciated

[Kip336]

You could leave your modded KSP in your steam folder, and turn auto updates off? That way, when there is a new update, steam will mention that in your game library.

You'll have to do a bit of copying and pasting files for each update though; Backup your modded KSP, update KSP, backup the update and then restore your mods, but that would work, and wouldn't require you to switch your folders every time you play.

[Hektos]

You could leave your modded KSP in your steam folder, and turn auto updates off? That way, when there is a new update, steam will mention that in your game library.

You'll have to do a bit of copying and pasting files for each update though; Backup your modded KSP, update KSP, backup the update and then restore your mods, but that would work, and wouldn't require you to switch your folders every time you play.

I had thought about that but (as far as I know) you can't disable auto-update completely and the game will still start an update when you go to launch.

EDIT: I'm an idiot! I totally forgot about the "launch options" that Steam has. If you paste the location of your modded KSP into the set launch options of steam in quotes, followed by %command% it will launch KSP from a location other than SteamApps and still keep track of your play time.

Ex:

"D:\Kerbal Space Program v0.25\KSP.exe" %command%

There doesn't seem to be any adverse effects as far as I can tell (aside from a slightly longer startup time).

Edited December 19, 2014 by Hektos