User Folder and Migration Changes

Greetings everyone,

With the release of version 0.37 we started the process of revamping how the User Folder is stored and upgraded after each major update. These improvements are split, with half of the changes coming in v0.37, and the remaining half planned for v0.38 later this year.

It’ll take some getting used to, but other than the key points outlined above, you don’t really need to know or care about the rest of changes described below. That said, if you’re interested in the details, continue reading:

The motivation behind these changes is to reduce the issues that users experience during major updates.

Up until v0.37, we had a process called User Folder Migration, which would move your files from the old version’s folder to the new, and intentionally deactivate all mods.

Migrations have greatly helped reduce compatibility issues (by intentionally leaving conflicting files behind), but they aren’t perfect, and have their own set of issues. The plan is to get rid of these “migrations” for v0.38 entirely, and transition to a simpler approach.

The most notable changes in v0.37 include:

• The User Folder location will no longer change upon each update: instead of folders named x.y (e.g. 0.36), a single folder named current will now be used
• The User Folder will be cleaned up after a major update, and mods will be intentionally deactivated. That cleanup step is what most of you know as a “Clear Cache” - basically deleting some temporary cache files, and moving the unknown files to a backup folder. This reduces the chances that you have old leftovers that are not designed to work with the new version
• The default User Folder is now relocated from BeamNG.drive/ to BeamNG/BeamNG.drive/ (note the double folder nesting). This allows us to split the BeamNG.tech files from BeamNG.drive files, as some of them may not be cross-compatible, and might lead to issues

In other words, in this update, the default User Folder location you would traditionally expect at appdata/local/BeamNG.drive/0.36/ is no longer used, and instead it will be placed into appdata/local/BeamNG/BeamNG.drive/current/

Aside from these obvious changes, there are several other subtle changes that some users might notice:

• For Windows users, there’s no longer any information stored in the Windows registry. Now, the Windows port uses plain text files, just like the native Linux port does. The old (now deprecated) registry entries will be left untouched, in case any of you have to go and run some old unsupported version
• For Linux users, the User Folder is now inside of BeamNG/BeamNG.drive (instead of BeamNG.drive alone). The standalone configuration files have also moved, from ~/.config/BeamNG.drive to ~/.local/share/BeamNG. The format has changed from raw plain text files, to .ini text files

These changes will result in smoother game updates, and will pave the way for further improvements.