Would it be possible to play the game off a USB Flash Drive?

[Jacien]

Recently got my hands on this:
http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f2.../huehuehue.png

And the idea dawned on me: With all that space, what if I could throw the files of FFXIV onto the flash drive, and play it off it while at college or something?

I'm too lazy to try. Instead I'll watch some gameplay vids of SSX right now.

[Fiosha_Maureiba]

There's a handful of scattered files, most are in that Square-Enix FF14 folder. Some are in the Documents folder.

When I tried to do this, I couldn't move at all with the keyboard and found the key bindings were locked in at blank. When adjusting them, these settings would not take.

I ended up re-installing the game to fix all this.

This is not to say that you won't have your own experiences with it. But this is what happened when I tried to just do a copy of the files over.

[Jacien]

From what I can tell, the stuff inside the Documents folder are either screenshots or the .patch files when downloaded from the client (but once they get applied the data is brought over to where the program is).

Still watching SSX vids.

[Fiosha_Maureiba]

From what I can tell, the stuff inside the Documents folder are either screenshots or the .patch files when downloaded from the client (but once they get applied the data is brought over to where the program is).

Still watching SSX vids.

I thought this was the case, but I when I did a whole folder transfer of the FFXIV folder from a working copy, it was enough to boot the game, but it was unplayable for some odd reason. Still worth a shot though.

[Catapult]

Half the game's files are stored where you choose. The other half are stored in the "My Games" section of "My Documents", which must be in a location bound to your computer and not a removable hard drive - otherwise you get overarching PC issues.

Kinda sucks. I remember having to reformat my drives when I originally installed this game because of space/location of my My Documents folder.

[zed32]

I reformat my C: quite a bit with FFXIV in the D: drive. Like others have said, preferences and stuff are stored in My Documents, but nothing major (to me at least). After every reformat I'm able to just load up FFXIV just fine.

[Lienn]

Well, i believe that if you get a flash drive big enough to install a windows there with the game, you can boot directly from the flash card and play using this windows. It would be like having multiples OS installed in multiples drives.

If you feel like the space isn't enough, you can do it with an external USB HDD too.

[Spuffin]

lol... i'm not trolling but I lawled when I read the title for some reason XD but to answer your question... I have no idea. It would be epic thoe

[Coldfire]

The game should run fine if you use eSATA or Thunderbolt... but I don't think it will run well with USB(since the DMA is missing). Simply copying the files from one drive to another is no issue, but if it's a magnetic disk you should probably defragment it afterwards. The files in your user-directory should not be copied. Instead just run the config program again. You can copy the macro files afterwards but nothing else.

[Skies]

I thought this was the case, but I when I did a whole folder transfer of the FFXIV folder from a working copy, it was enough to boot the game, but it was unplayable for some odd reason. Still worth a shot though.

That is most likely because the game installs also into the computer registry, as with a lot of different applications. Stuff like the drivers that make the keyboard work, locations wherein to save your data (for example, the dynamic "My Games" location folder) and other similar vital options are all written in the computer registry. That is why the game is not portable. Or at least that is what your problem leads me to understand.

It might be fully okay to install it on a portable drive and run it only in the same computer but it will not run on a different computer at all. Although if Coldfire is correct, the setup program might fix that for you.