How to keep everything contained on Removable Storage?

[Hiayaya]

Long story short, when I download adult games, I download them to a removable storage device, because I'm in a situation where I have to share a computer. (I am an adult, I just have to share due to living situation. Computers are expensive.)

This was going well enough, until I had realized that most of, if not all, of my games are putting something in the %appdata% folder or other odd places. Thankfully, I found it on my own, and scrubbed the files out, but now I'm curious if there is anyway to keep *everything* about a game located on the portable storage, and not have it create files in weird, out of the way folders, so there's no sign of the game ever being run on my PC? I really don't need someone nosy running across the %appdata% files for Dungeon of Meat or stuff like that when trying to mod Minecraft. Not a conversation I'm interested in having.

 

[Insomnimaniac Games]

I'm not the best with Renpy, but you could try setting 'define config.save_directory' to 'None' in options.rpy, in the game folder. (Anyone better with Renpy, please correct me if I'm wrong).

You'd have to manually move saves over to new versions of games of course. RPGM already does this, and I have no idea about Unity or Unreal.

 

[whowhawhy]

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[zonesamabaka]

could be wrong but afaik, it cant be done simply, or reliably with all games, and reconfiguring windows (with something like symlinks) is complicated & may not work right anyway

virtualization works to keep it isolated from everything else on the pc (and as a bonus stops malware that's still making the rounds)

either a password-protected virtual drive you boot up with a VM (less simple, more resource intensive & large file, may be asked why its there by roommates)

or, what's more simple is using windows sandbox (comes with

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) and giving the config file you boot it up with access to read/write to your external drive.
you can enable windows sandbox through the "Turn windows features on or off" gui

Spoiler: rough basic config

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anything you want to save you'll want to copy into that external drive folder on the sandboxed desktop before you close it down
and vice-versa paste the backed up appdata folders into C:\users\WDAGUtilityAccount\AppData folders once inside the sandbox if you need to

the only thing that's added permanently to the computer would be the .wsb textfile that you use to start up the sandbox. without the external drive there's nothing to find on the pc

 

[Sarcastrophe]

You can open the game inside a virtual machine. But moving your saves from Roaming folder to your USB when your playing session finished is far better advice.

 

[whowhawhy]

Unity

afaik the devs have to implement their own save system and those who don't want to or don't know how, write save data to the registry.

 

[Goeffel]

[...]and reconfiguring windows (with something like symlinks) is complicated & may not work right anyway [...]

which is why I cancelled my original answer. symlinks require understanding (and manipulating filesystem from a secondary OS), or you WILL fuck things up. And it most likely is even more of a hassle nowadays than back then in windows 7 (which was quite symlink-friendly, actually)
The virtualisation solution seems much better/ userfriendly/ feasible to me.

afaik the devs have to implement their own save system and those who don't want to or don't know how, write save data to the registry.

Is this really still a thing? Last time I personally encountered this was in older Illusion games (SB3 or so)
Back then it was bad, nowadays it's more like outright embarrassing ...

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But, mainly, to make sure: OP, You do have a multi-account/-users setup? So that everyone who uses the shared computer has an account of their own, with their own "home" folder, their own settings, browsers, bookmarks, savegames, etc.-yadda-yadda ?

I am not aware how multi-user-friendly windows 11 "home" edition is, maybe one needs a "professional" version for good results?

 

[anne O'nymous]

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It's the only legit answer since games made with engines like Unity or Unreal will possibly save in the game directory, but they'll also add entries in Windows Registry.

 

[zonesamabaka]

It's the only legit answer since games made with engines like Unity or Unreal will possibly save in the game directory, but they'll also add entries in Windows Registry.

oh i didn't see that till now lol that is a better solution, i assumed sandboxie couldn't do that i guess
sweet

 

[Count Morado]

Is this really still a thing?

It's still the default and many devs are hobbyists, side gig wage earners, and amateurs so they aren't going to do any adjustments. As an example, Taffy Tales still uses player prefs stored in Registry.

 

[Insomnimaniac Games]

It's the only legit answer since games made with engines like Unity or Unreal will possibly save in the game directory, but they'll also add entries in Windows Registry.

But then OP has sandboxie installed, which I assumed they wanted to avoid? I thought they were going for an "absolutely no traces" kind of thing.

 

[anne O'nymous]

But then OP has sandboxie installed, which I assumed they wanted to avoid? I thought they were going for an "absolutely no traces" kind of thing.

It's the portable edition. I haven't tried it, using the normal edition since a really long time, but I assume that everything, including the sandboxie directory can be installed on the removable storage device.
I mean, it would make no sense to have a portable edition, and for it to not be portable because relying on the main drive.

 

[Insomnimaniac Games]

It's the portable edition. I haven't tried it, using the normal edition since a really long time, but I assume that everything, including the sandboxie directory can be installed on the removable storage device.
I mean, it would make no sense to have a portable edition, and for it to not be portable because relying on the main drive.

Ah, I see. Never used it before, so I didn't know.

 

[whowhawhy]

sandboxie the program itself isn't portable afaict; the sandbox it creates is.
the existence of the former is easier to shrug off when your family asks about it as taking security regarding modern malware attack vectors seriously or that you're using it for testing software and anything you download from the internet in a way that's not a mess to clean up after, than when they start giving you concerned looks after finding your zombie gilfs 3 - still warm edition.

you can set the current container folder for all sandboxes with sandboxie control interface (it can be changed at any time and i think it shouldn't mess anything if you switch to and fro between a normal drive and an external one); if it's put on a portable device, then it can be opened on any computer that has sandboxie installed and that path set as the container.

if you have spare drives or usb sticks, you could make a decoy one that's plugged in when not used for porn (the same container path, what's inside depends on which drive is connected).

or you could create a second box, and then set a different container path for it manually (putting it on the external drive) by editing a text file:

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(might require running notepad as an administrator)

or if you don't mind a bit of repetitive manual work, have a separate container folder for each box on the normal drive, and move the porn box folder to a portable device after use (so suspicious homedwellers would see both boxes working, with the porn one missing a folder or having it empty because it's officially the one you delete contents of after each use)

and then there's the layer of restricting boxes by user but i've never needed it so idk how invisible or locked up it is from prying eyes

 

[Hiayaya]

It's looking like Windows Sandbox/SandieBox is the way to go. Feels a bit bad to go this heavy just to play some porn games, lol, can't help but feel like a criminal going this hard into the privacy rabbit hole, but such as it is.

Thanks for the help, guys!

But, mainly, to make sure: OP, You do have a multi-account/-users setup? So that everyone who uses the shared computer has an account of their own, with their own "home" folder, their own settings, browsers, bookmarks, savegames, etc.-yadda-yadda ?

I am not aware how multi-user-friendly windows 11 "home" edition is, maybe one needs a "professional" version for good results?

We do have separate accounts, but the other accounts also have Admin privileges, so it's basically just a way to keep user preferences separated.

 

[Hiayaya]

Necropost, but I just wanted to say thank a lot, I've been using Sandboxie and it worked perfectly for what I wanted. It has a portable version I installed directly onto my Portalable Storage, and running my games through it keeps my any trace of the games running on my PC non-existent, and I've even been able to use it between different PCs.

So anyone who's been thinking of doing the same thing, or more topically, running games with out concern of malware ripping and tearing through your PC, I highly recommend Sandboxie, its very user friendly as long as you have some basic computing knowledge and works with out a a bunch of setup. Nice little instance to keep the all the games files in one spot, keep Malware from getting to the rest of the PC, and leaving no trace of the program ever running on your PC.

Only thing to note, is you might lose your saves if you aren't careful, but because of how Sandboxie works, its usually not too hard to hunt down the games save files and where it needs to be to use them, and just saving them manually on portable storage or even just on the main PC (depending on the name of the save, the file is basically meaningless nonesense if you dont know what its for and where it goes).

Big ups the peep that recommended Sandboxie to me, fantastic program!

 

[anne O'nymous]

Necropost, but I just wanted to say thank a lot, I've been using Sandboxie and it worked perfectly for what I wanted. [...]

In the name of readers that in the future will find your post while searching for something similar, thanks a lot. It's rare to have feedback regarding a solution proposed, while it's really useful since it permit to know if it solved the issue or if OP just gave up.