Grim Fandango Help with Hard Drive

[eyet00th]

Hi!
Stumbled upon this website and immediately signed up. Can't believe I didn't find it before...

Anyway, I'm trying to play Grim off my HDD, which doesn't seem to crash the game as much. I've finished Year One, and the game prompts me to insert Disc 'B'. Where EXACTLY am I supposed to copy the game files off Disc 'B'??

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks
P4 2.4 GHz
1 Gig Ram
SB AUDIGY

[Kurufinwe]

There are detailed instructions for that in the section "Improving game performance" in update101.rtf (which comes with the 1.01 patch).

Hope this helps.

[fov]

Welcome to the forum, eyet00th!

Here is the info from the update101.rtf file:

IMPROVING GAME PERFORMANCE
If you are encountering choppy performance and exceptionally slow room transition times, here is a suggestion to help you optimize the performance of the game on your system. There are certain files on the Grim Fandango CD that, when copied over to your hard drive, will allow the game instantaneous access to information it would normally spool from the CD during the game.

Please note that this suggestion requires you to have at least 500 MB of free space on the drive where you installed the game (400 MB for the .LAB files and 100 additional MB free for Windows to use and for your saved games). You can install just the files necessary to play one year at a time, or you can install all of the necessary files for all four years, which will require approximately 1215 MB of free hard drive space. To check the amount of free space you currently have available, right-click on the icon for the drive where you installed the game in the My Computer window, and select Properties.

BACKING UP YOUR SAVED GAMES
Before copying over the .LAB files, we recommend that you back up your saved games as a safety precaution. To do so:
• Create a new folder on your desktop by right-clicking on the desktop and choosing New, then Folder.
• Name the folder Grim Saved Games.
• Go to the folder where you installed Grim Fandango. The default location is C:\Program Files\LucasArts\Grim Fandango.
• Go to the View Menu and choose Arrange Icons, then By Type.
• Click once on the first file with the extension “.GSV” (Windows 98 users may need to de-select the “Hide File Extensions for Known File Types” checkbox so that the file extensions are displayed). Then hold down the SHIFT key and click once on the last file with the same extension so that all of the .GSV files are highlighted.
• Go to the Edit Menu and select Copy.
• Open the Grim Saved Games folder that you created on your desktop and choose Paste from the Edit Menu. This will copy all of your Grim Fandango saved games to a separate folder.

COPYING OVER LAB FILES ONE YEAR AT A TIME
After copying your saved games, follow these directions to copy over the files for the year you are currently playing (if you are just beginning the game, you should start with the Year 1 files). To copy over the .LAB files:
• Insert Grim Fandango Disc A into your CD-ROM drive. Close the launcher if it is visible.
• Double-click on the "My Computer" icon on your desktop.
• Right-click on the icon for your CD-ROM drive and choose Open.
• Double-click on the GrimData folder.
• Click on the View menu at the top of the screen, and choose Details.
• Go to the View menu again and choose Arrange Icons, then by Type.
• Hold down CTRL while clicking once on each of these files: Data001.lab, Movie01.lab, Vox0001.lab, and Year1mus.lab. As you click each file, it will be selected. Make sure that you have selected only these four files.
• Go to the Edit menu, then select Copy.

Now you will need to paste these copied files into the Grim folder on your hard drive. The following directions assume that you installed to the default installation location, which is C:\ProgramFiles\LucasArts\Grim. If you installed to a different location, these steps will need to be modified according to the new location:
• Double-click on the My Computer icon.
• Double-click on the C drive icon.
• Double-click on Program Files, then LucasArts, then Grim.
• Go to the Edit menu and choose Paste. The files will be copied to your installation folder. NOTE: This step will take a few minutes.
• Close all open windows and start Grim Fandango as you normally would.

After playing and completing Year 1 of the game, you’ll need to delete the .LAB files that you copied into the Grim Fandango installation directory. To do this, return to the Grim directory on your hard drive using the directions listed above, then hold down the CTRL key while clicking once on each of these files: Data001.lab, Movie01.lab, Vox0001.lab, and Year1mus.lab. As you click each file, it will be selected. Make sure that you have selected only these four files. After selecting these files, press your DEL key and choose yes when prompted (depending upon your system configuration you may need to empty the Recycle Bin on your system prior to copying over the files for the next year).

You will need to repeat the above steps for each of the four years. We recommend you do not remove the LAB files from your hard drive until after you have advanced to a new year during gameplay and have saved your game. When copying over each year’s files from the CD to the hard drive, be sure to select the appropriate files (Data002.lab, Movie02.lab, Vox0002.lab, and Year2mus.lab for Year 2, Data003.lab, Movie03.lab, Vox0003.lab, and Year3mus.lab for Year 3, Data004.lab, Movie04.lab, Vox0004.lab, and Year4mus.lab for Year 4). The files for Years 1 & 3 are on Disc A; the files for Years 2 & 4 are on Disc B.


COPYING OVER LAB FILES FOR ALL FOUR YEARS
If you have the hard drive space for the .LAB files from all four years (around 1215 MB), then you can copy all the needed files over at once. Follow the above instructions for copying over one year at a time, but copy over the Year 1 and Year 3 files together from Disc A (Data001.lab, Data 003.lab, Movie01.lab, Movie03.lab, Vox0001.lab, Vox0003.lab, Year1mus.lab, and Year3mus.lab). Then repeat the process for the Year 2 and Year 4 files from Disc B (Data002.lab, Data 004.lab, Movie02.lab, Movie04.lab, Vox0002.lab, Vox0004.lab, Year2mus.lab, and Year4mus.lab). Then close all windows and open windows and start Grim Fandango as you normally would.

Finally, be sure to manually delete all of the .LAB files when you uninstall the game, as the Grim Fandango uninstall utility will not remove them from your system.

[eyet00th]

Thanks very much! Back to the Adventure gaming!