Help remembering old config from secondary drive? [ZDL]

[Morter]

Hey gang, I'd like some help with a slightly weird issue.

I have a rig where my primary drive is an SSD with my OS (Windows 10) and a few programs I use often, whereas most of my content (pictures, music, steam games, etc) are on my secondary drive. This includes DooM and all its .wads.

I use ZDL stable 3.2.2.2, and usually it's been good about saving the list of last wads I was using when I was playing it, but a few days ago my OS died on me, forcing me to reinstall Windows 10. This left my secondary drive alone entirely, thankfully, but after I recovered everything, and tried to play doom again, for some reason ZDL has been trying to default stuff to my C: drive (which is odd, since it only ever used E: content), and every .ini I load crashes.

So unless there's an easier way that I don't know, I'll directly ask two things

1) What/where is the file where ZDL knows to save/load PWADs list automatically? Maybe I can use that?

2) If the above doesn't work, I imagine I can somehow read/interpret what wads I was using via a save file (Of which there are a couple since all of my recent autosaves used the same list of mods). Is there a way to read through save files to see what was last used/required?

Thanks in advance. c:

[PlayerLin]

Normally, it won't auto change as its stored paths are Absolute Path(s), as if your old HDD's drive is not at C anymore(and IWADs and other PWAD, mods may also changed or not existed), all of old paths stored in ZDL's config file (ZDL.ini) will fails if their absolute paths are not the same on your current system.
(Correct me if I'm wrong please.)

But you can manual change them, check your ZDL.ini with your favorite Text editor.
And then replace the paths in the ini with your new correct paths.

Like your ZDL and DooM stuff was stored on C:\DooMthings\ on your old computer, if you opened your ZDL.ini you can see a lot of paths are set on "C:/DooMthings/<Port EXE/IWAD/PWAD file name>", then if your current directory of recovered DooM stuff are in E:\DooMs\ (when the directory structure still the same as the old one) , and you can replace those "C:/DooMthings/" strings to "E:/DooMs/" but still keeps the original file names or sub-directory paths.

After that, save the ZDL.ini(make sure it won't save to ZDL.ini.txt or something like that stupid ), and then start the ZDL again, now it should be working again.

If not, you may needed to check where your DooM stuffs are stores, and re-setup them with the path of your current system.

I did the same thing as my old computer dead on some years ago, and my stuffs of DooM were stored on F:\GAME\GLZDooM\ , and D:\GAME\GLZDooM\ on new computer, I just replace all "F:/GAME/GLZDooM/" to "D:/GAME/GLZDooM/" and save the ini, problem solved.

Don't ask me why I named the directory please...

[Morter]

That's the weird thing, though: My old doom stuff was on E:, and now that I reinstalled it's still on E: (since I just had to wipe my primary drive's OS, but nothing on the secondary drive changed) but for some reason I'm still getting things pointing to C:.

That aside, what I need in particular is a list of what pwads i used in my most recent savefiles. They're all there, but ZDL failed to keep a list of them (and it was a bunch, like 12ish) so I have to remember from scratch and I'd rather not play trial and error. Is there anyway to read that? Like via slade or something? I tried opening a savefile in a text editor and that got me nothing.

[PlayerLin]

Do you check the ZDL.ini and find what thing still try to load from C:? Also if your ZDL is not stored with your DooM stuffs(i.e. your ZDL is at C: ), and some of your Port EXE/WAD path(s) was/were relative path(s) stored in ZDL.ini and caused ZDL try to find the Port EXE/WAD file but not exist on its directory at C: I guess.

About the savefiles, if they're ZDooM/GZDooM savegames, you can try rename the .zds file to .zip and open it with 7zip/WinRar etc, then try to check those json files but maybe not worth since no file path data in them, at least current IWAD/PWAD name and level name only, but if the savegame was from a gameplay mod then you may can't found the info of the gameplay mod's filename.

[Morter]

No. Everything was in my E:, at least it was recently. But what I did find out is that there are still some old zdl.ini's mainly because (I think) I have some extra gzdoom distributions sitting in different folders (all within my main 'doom' folder) and for some reason it randomly referred to an old zld.ini. Even though I played doom as recently as last week, the newest zdl I have is from May of 2016...huh.

Alright, so that's all a moot point, and now I'll try to figure out what mods I had on my save file. If anyone has any more definitive answers it'd be greatly appreciated

Edit: Changing my save files to a .zip or 7z didn't work either. 7zip couldn't open it as an archive. Could you elaborate on that method?

[PlayerLin]

Okay, I see but multiple copies of ZDL.exe & ZDL.ini always a bad idea I think...using only one copy of ZDL with ZDL's Source port setup section for setting extra source port distributions would be better idea.

And good luck for finding your mod files.


EDIT: My 7zip 16.02 64bits can open my GZDooM(g2.4pre-174) savegames...I'm not sure if your savegame/7zip's version is too old or something...

[Morter]

Mine is GZDoom g2.2pre-2207-g9423330

And yeah I just had them around because I'd have to get new copies of GZdoom for mod updates but I still wasn't done with my old mods' playthroughs. They're not all in the same folder, mind you

And I just tried and failed with a "level loaded with a different order". Is there seriously no way to see what order it was so I can try to figure this out?

[PlayerLin]

And I just tried and failed with a "level loaded with a different order". Is there seriously no way to see what order it was so I can try to figure this out?

Since there was a savegame format upgrade on recently(not sure, but g2.2-2207 was old) so I'm afraid you have to using that old verison of GZDooM if you still want the savegame...and I hope you still have that EXE file...

[Morter]

Oh of course I do. The issue is just figuring out what order the save game wants my wads.