Good evening,
I have a problem. It's an important issue for a gamer... I'm lazy. I have several older games that have more than one optical disk and I hate changing them. The main games I'm currently talking about are Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights.
I love the GoG.com installers but I'm fairly sure that 1) they won't say how they make them and 2) I couldn't make one anyway.
What I'm hoping for is a way of having the contents of Baldur's Gate, TotSC, SoA and ToB with relevant patches and Baldur's Gate Trilogy on a single install DVD (or two if more space is needed). I gather I'd still need to enter the CD keys each time (which is a pain). And ditto for NWN, SoU and HotU (and possibly Infinite Dungeons)
Now I'm not sure about the legality of this though or how to begin doing this.
Does anyone have any ideas or can point me in the right direction? I have a week of leave from work and I thought this could be a good way to spend it.
Regards,
Karl

Rip the CDs into images and burn them all to one DVD. That's the way I see it.
A quick Google search [url=http://www.kirupa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=67893]many links.

Make the cd's into disc images (with nero or any copy program), some may have copy protection so it may not work. Then use a virtual drive to mount the images on your hard drive. Daemon tools supports 4 at once so it will solve your swapping problem.
Some multiple cd games can be put onto a dvd by simply copying all the files from the discs into one folder on your hard drive and then making a data dvd disc in nero (or whatever copy program you use). Doesn't always work though, easiest way is to run the installer from the folder first and see if it works. Some may have more complicated workarounds so you may find some info online.
If you make them for your own use and aren't selling them or giving them away then it's not illegal, as long as you own the original discs you are ripping, you're simply making a backup.
Or simply look for the DVD releases, i'm sure the badurs gate compilation is on DVD and it's very cheap now.

Thanks. I did google however as I didn't understand a lot of what various links said I thought I'd ask here. I gathered that you can copy the CD's onto a DVD as you said however perhaps you missed the bit about having the expansions and (in the case of BG) BG Trilogy also.
Thornton - Thank you for putting some thought into the reply. Appreciate it.
Karl

You could use a simple *.bat file that will run the expansion install after the main game, all off the one DVD. Not exactly elegant mind you.
To cut it down to just a very basic installer: It can also copy across the data and call and write the required reg keys, providing you know what they all are. It's more fussing around, but makes it more simple. Don't know about the NZ law on this issue though, and if there is any copy protection, it may not work correctly, depending on how it's integrated into the original disks.

The way I did my NWN DVD was a simple drag & drop. I kept the folders the same as the disc names and just dumped the contents in. Took more space than necessary but I didn't lose any functionality, the most inconvenient thing was during the install it bitches about needing the next file (as per usual in a multi cd install) but you just had to point it to the next folder and it was golden.
Obviously it isn't treated as a legit disc but a NoCD is part of my disc image so there's no drama there

Sometimes the game companies do this themselves. UT2004 was originally released on 6 CDs. When they did a DVD release later, the contents of the 6 discs was simply put into separate folders on the DVD. I imagine they tweaked the installer slightly, though.

I recall this as well wishbone.
The only thing they've tweaked was autolinking the installpaths so it can run the entire install process uninterupted.
so basiccly the manual work done by aliasalpha.
I loved it when they started using dvd's. I once bought medal of honor Allied assault together with the expansions. Believe me , the more discs you have for a single game , the bigger the shance something goes wrong. So now i can only play the first campaign because a scratch was made in the box. they always cramp to many discs in there.
then i discovered the world of iso's and bin files :)
rip your original game and keep it safe. I always hated having the original disk in the drive because of the copy protection.

Oh yes and how long did THAT take? The transition away from floppy was faster! Everywhere on the net there were people bitching that they didn't see why they had to buy a horribly expensive DVD drive (this was back in the days that a DVD drive would set you back au$50 rather than the current au$35) when they had a perfectly working CD drive. These were the same people who would happily upgrade their very expensive video card to play the games but object to spending extra on a storage device to make the installation more convenient.
Whenever I could be bothered, I used to mock them by agreeing and then demanding that companies cater for gamers who were happy with 3.5" floppies. As an example I'd calculate the amount of data needed for a big 5 CD game and give them a demand for that many floppies (say a game on a single 4700MB DVD should also be released on 3358 floppies).

lol , yeah and then a messages appears at floppy nr. 2569
Floppy read/write error
please format the floppy

Your presentation there was outstanding. Very sly indeed.

For installation purposes you could copy all the files from all the CDs onto one DVD. That might work. But any game that requires the CD to play won't recognise that DVD when you try and run the game. You'll still need the play disc.

If you want to avoid changing discs while playing the game - with older games, simply copying all the missing files from those CDs (or from your new install DVD) to your hard drive install directory should work, so long as the basic file system on the CDs and in the install directory appears the same. That works with Diablo 2's cinematics CD, for instance. Remember to make sure that the copied files are not read only.

Depending on how the game installer works and eventual copy protections, that may be a difficult task.
* Making disc images and running them through daemon tools or similar is probably the easiest way for many games (given that some image creators and mounters can work through various copy protections),
* Some games (the infinity engine games, for example) have no copy protection worth mentioning, and (with the exception of expansions), it's simply a matter of copying the whole folder/file structure as is from each disc into a single folder, then burning the contents of it - as for the IE games, they're pretty easy as well: here's part of the folder structure for my manually created BG1+TotSC DVD (DVD iso actually, as I'm even lazier than not wanting to swap 6 discs in and out - mounting a single iso is even easier than putting a single disc in the drive, and quicker because the HDD is much faster than an optical drive):
\cd1\
\cd2\
\cd3\
\cd4\
\cd5\
\cd6\
\setup.exe
\totsc\cd6\
\totsc\setup.exe
\totsc\<other files>
\<other files>
where the root on the disc (\) contains the contents from all 5 original discs plus the folder \cd6\ from the expansion (so that it can be read in-game), and the folder \totsc\ contains everything from the expansion disc (so that it can be correctly installed and files with the same names won't get mixed up). The first setup.exe installs the original 5-cd game, the second installs the expansion.

I found this as Spellhold Studios.
Now I just need to figure out how to use AutoPlay Media Studio 6.
But it sounds like what I want. I think.
Thank you for the assistance here. I'm going to still be posting to ask for help if people know the program or if I am successful :)
Karl