VASSAL portable?

Technical Support & Bugs
20

Hello gentlemen,

Sorry for coming into this discussion so late, but I just stumbled across it completely by chance a few moments ago and felt I should chime in.

I asked more or less the exact same question almost 10 years ago here on this very site, and I’ve been merrily running Vassal off a flash drive ever since.

The link to the conversation is [url]https://forum.vassalengine.org/t/vassal-with-java-from-flashdrive/474/1] but to save you the time and trouble, here’s what someone suggested in that thread, pretty much verbatim:

  1. You must grab the JRE from a computer already installed with v1.6 at least

  2. Copy all from directory C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.6.0_03 from the computer to your USB KEY: k:\VassalUSB

  3. Then you have k:\VassalUSB\jre1.6.0_03 an exact mirror of the computer source installation.

  4. Copy and unzip Vassal installation zip file into your USB Key: k:\VassalUSB\VASSAL-3.0

  5. Edit the file Vassal.bat located in k:\VassalUSB\VASSAL-3.0

  6. Type this line after REM line and before Start: set path=.;%1%\VassalUSB\jre1.6.0_03\bin

  7. Launch now Vassal.bat directly from the USB KEY to play VASSAL

Note that “USB KEY” above appears to have been the original author’s term for a flash drive; I also modified the command line quoted in step 6 to match my version of the JRE.

I’m totally unschooled in the art of programming anything, but the above procedure results in Vassal running from a flash drive on any computer I’ve tested thus far over the course of the past decade or so… in particular those not equipped with Java (at least as far as I know) and especially those for which the user does not have admin rights. If the user does not have admin rights, right-clicking on the Vassal.bat file and selecting “Run as administrator” (or sometimes just “Open”) from the drop-down menu appears to do the trick. Don’t ask me why.

The entire VassalUSB directory can simply be copied to another flash drive if needed, and I use multiple flash drives in this manner, defying the laws of man and nature into the bargain.

Hopefully this is helpful. :slight_smile: