Cometborne wrote:Deal wrote:Cometborne wrote:
Actually, you can. I have two accounts, each installed into a different directory from the same windows user, and I can wing up with myself.
All you need to do is to close the launcher for account #1 before you start the launcher for account #2.
What sorcery is this?
I tried running the launcher anew and when I clicked to start the game (different directory, account), it just focused the existing game.
No idea why it just works here. I am not using Steam for E:D at all, just the FD launcher, and neither of the two installs is in the default location of c:\program files.... One is in D:\EDLaunch, the other in D:\AltElite
Just works, only problem is that the journals land in the same appdata directory. Captain's Log will happily mix them together, and EDDI goes absolutely nuts when both accounts are in-game at the same time.
Small price to pay
PEBCAK error on my part. Must have launched from the same folder by mistake when testing with the same windows account.
I'm going to stick with running as a different windows user because I have different settings and logs.
What I've done is delete my steam installation folder, since I'm not going to launch from steam, then copied everything
except Win64 from my main folder (EDLaunch) into a new folder (Named ED-Likewise since that's my second CMDR name), then created a directory link at Products\elite-dangerous-64\Win64 that points to the Win64 directory in my main installation (Win64 holds the lions share of the installation data).
It might be less annoying to copy everything and then simply delete Win64 in the new folder tbh.
Running cmd.exe as admin, I ran something like "mklink /D Win64 ..\..\..\EDLaunch\Products\elite-dangerous-64\Win64" from within the elite-dangerous-64 parent dir inside the second installation folder to make the link.
(which assumes both installation folders are in the same parent directory)
This means I can run 2 game accounts simultaneously with entirely separate settings and logs, but my second installation folder is only 500MB in size because the data dir is a link to the original folder. Apart from gfx stuff, I can also disable music and or audio on the secondary game account so they don't clash.
Technically, you could probably make links to much of the stuff in the second folder too, but it's already a bit of a faff and I can live with a 500MB disk space penalty for running two clients.
I also created a shortcut for my second account which adds runas /user:Agent /savecred before the EDlaunch path in the new folder.
This pops a command prompt when I run it which asks for the windows user password (Agent is the username). By doing it this way, I don't need to shift right click and fill out the full username and password. I just put in the windows account password (once, since /savecred saves it for next time) and then EDlaunch is ready to play as it remembered my game login and password from last time. One click access to both launchers from shortcuts now.
There's also this:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthrea ... t-SwitcherBut I'm not sure that works with different windows users.
If bookmarks are in someway isolated, I might link that file between users so I can share my bookmarks.
Part of the reason I wanted to have separate appdata folders is because my GPU only has 6 gigs of VRAM. Since E:D seems to use around 4 gigs of that for my main account, I wanted to drop the settings on the other account to run both at once more comfortably. I also run one in a smaller window and the other fullscreen borderless when playing both at once. (I'm not entirely sure that playing two accounts at once will prove to be very useful for me, but it's there).
I guess you can use this method to add a new windows user accounts for every separate config loadout you want to use.
In my case I'd probably only add one more for playing my second account as the main client, granting it fullscreen and max gfx settings.
I'll investigate creating a batch file to run ED-market-connecter then E:D from the shortcut, then maybe kill it when I close elite.
Should be able to have separate accounts for the API stuff too. (probably not worth the trouble to go that far though).