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Saturday, 24 December 2016

Running out of space on your system SSD? Meet Junction.

My PC is getting on a bit these days; I got it back when SSDs had got to the point of being reliable, but only just, so it only has a 120GB SSD for a system drive, and a 1TB HDD for storage. After a year or so I found out that 120GB is very barely enough to run Windows from. In fact, the only stuff I have on it is Windows and Dota (because Dota had performance issues when run from the HDD). This wasn't always the case: I had previously installed a few applications on it. To make space by moving them I could have uninstalled them then reinstalled them on the HDD; that's an annoying amount of work. Worse however; some developers have taken to make their installers totally foolproof, by which I mean they remove any options for the user to make: they install to C: and don't give you another choice (Office 365 does this, as does Oculus). When you don't have enough space on C: to install them this is problematic. Happily, there's a Windows command that comes to the rescue: Junction.

Junction is used to make a "junction point" on a drive. A junction point is sort of like a Shortcut to a folder, except it is handled at a much lower level. To Windows, it's as if the folder it points to is actually at the location it sits in. With it you can make Windows think a program is installed in C: when it is actually held on D: (or any other drive).

Moving software to HDD

Let's say you have Photoshop installed on your SSD, but it takes up a ton of space that you want to reclaim (because the SSD is full and Windows is starting to choke on not having any free MB). Photoshop will typically be installed in c:\program files\adobe. To free up the space you could uninstall photoshop entirely, then run the installer again and put it on D:, but that's a lot of time wasted (and potentially a lot of bandwidth if it has to re-download a bunch of stuff). Instead you can move the adobe folder to D: and use a junction point to make Windows think it's still happily running from C:. To do this you need to:

Make sure the application in question is not running. Close all open windows, and make sure it hasn't left any icon in the system tray.

Move the folder from its location on C: (your SSD) to a location on D: (your HDD). Make a D:\program files folder and then using the right mouse button drag the adobe folder over. By using the right mouse button, when you release it a menu will pop up allowing you to select Move.

Now you need to make the junction point. Open the Start menu and type cmd but don't push enter. When it displays the cmd icon, right-click it and Run As Administrator. In the cmd window type:

Windows 7

cd "\program files"
junction adobe "d:\program files\adobe"

Windows 10 (Junction command was removed from Windows 10; use mklink instead)

cd "\program files"
mklink /j adobe "d:\program files\adobe"

Close the cmd window. You should now be able to run Photoshop as normal.

Installing to HDD

For a program that only lets you install on C: you either need to make enough room by moving other folders first, or set up the junction before running the installer. For example, Oculus installs in c:\program files\oculus so before installing you can make an oculus folder on D: and then make a junction to it as above; when you run the installer it should see that the oculus folder already exists and install into it.

Make sure there is no folder at c:\program files\oculus. If you have tried to install and failed it may have left one.
Make folder d:\program files\oculus

In a cmd window:

Windows 7

cd "\program files"
junction oculus "d:\program files\oculus"

Windows 10

cd "\program files"
mklink /j oculus "d:\program files\oculus"

Making Space

If you want to go on a space-saving spree a good program to use is treesize. This will scan your SSD and display all the folders on it sorted by how much space they are taking up, allowing you to quickly see which ones are worth moving over to the HDD. You can use this technique on most programs you find in c:\program files and c:\program files (x86), though you should avoid any Windows folders as they can be a bit temperamental.

Thursday, 23 April 2015

Dota 2 - Common Support Laning Mistakes

Supporting in Dota is hard. You need good game knowledge, good map awareness, a fundamentally team-play driven mindset and the ability to eek by with the bare minimum of items. Learning to play support well takes a lot of time and effort, as you have to grow your capabilities in multiple directions: you need to learn how to support your teammate in lane, how to gank, how to counter-gank, how to ward, how to find whatever farm you can... it's easy to get caught going down one track (warding for instance) and neglecting others.

Which is to say; it's fairly easy to sink a ton of hours into learning support and still miss out on some things which are actually pretty fundamental. This post will cover some of the basics supports should, or, more accurately, should not be doing in the laning stage; the kind of things that you see all the time in public matchmaking, and that can drive carry teammates up the wall. An unhappy carry is a distracted carry, and no-one want them making mistakes late-game because they've had their morale upset early. Carries are delicate creatures!

1. Ineffectual Leeching

This is the #1 thing a support does that incenses their lane-mate: standing behind the carry, possibly attempting to deny creeps. It's hard to emphasize how terrible this actually is. Hiding behind the carry, the support contributes nothing to the lane: they do not harass the enemy hero(es), and are not in a position to act if a potential kill situation occurs. Crucially, they also take half the XP from the lane. They are literally making the lane worse for the carry than if they weren't there at all. A support who spends the first few minutes roaming around accomplishing nothing is actually better for the lane than one who sits in it, actively having a negative impact (by stealing experience from the core). The normal outcome to a two-vs-one lane where the support does this is that the enemy hero gains a level advantage, then kills one or both of the dual lane.

Grand Theft Auto 5's bullying is a problem its creators must finally address

The doctrine of "if you don't like it, just don't buy it" is a useful defense for cynical purveyors of shoddy products. They would prefer that you move along and keep your opinions to yourself.

When used in video games, this cheap line usefully reduces the relationship between products and humans to a base financial transaction. The product has no meaning for those who do not consume it, or so we are supposed to believe.

Dota 2 - Quick'n'Dirty Support Primer

This is a rough outline of things I do most games as support. If you are clueless about how to play support then following this will set you on the right path. After you do it a few times you'll start to work out what is going on, and should diverge off it as you see fit. This is for hard support, i.e. farm position 5.

Farm priority is a system to designate who gets farm when more than one player is in the same place. Each player has a number: the lowest number gets the farm. So 1 is the hard carry in the safe lane, 2 is mid, 3 is the offlane or jungle, 4 and 5 are typically supports. The 4 saves up and gets Mek, while the 5 buys wards.

Start items I buy for practically every support hero is: Courier, Wards, Tango, Salve, Clarity.

Dota 2 - OCD Item Slots (or How To Stop Forgetting Where Your Dust Is)

Following a discussion on reddit, and a missed kill last night, this is just a short post on how I arrange my inventory. The exact positions are set based on where the hotkey for that slot is; some keys are easier/faster to push than others, so which slot is used for each thing can vary by player based on their fingers and preference, but the point of the post is not which individual slots are used; rather, it is to advocate keeping things consistent so that when you need to use something in a hurry you can do so instinctively, rather than having to think about it and possibly losing your opportunity.

Progenitor revision 2013.11.03 changelog

Progenitor changelog 2013.11.03

Nerfs/buffs:

Adaptive Shielding	Decreased Energy from +0 to -1.
Atom Reclaimer	Decreased Energy Requirement from 3 to 2.
Charibdis	Now only lets you destroy cards owned by the player with the most Energy.