How to launch a symlinked Source 2 addon in the tools & commands to improve the SFM
I like to store a lot of my 3D work in Dropbox, for many reasons. I get an instant backup, synchronization to my laptop if my desktop computer were to suddenly die, and most importantly, a simple 30-day rollback “revision” system. It’s not source control, but it’s the closest convenience to it, with zero effort involved.
This also includes, for example, my Dota SFM addon. I have copied over the /content and /game folder hierarchies inside my Dropbox. On top of the benefits mentioned above, this allows me to launch renders of different shots in the same session easily! With some of my recent work needing to be rendered in resolutions close to 4K, it definitely isn’t a luxury.
So now, of course, I can’t just launch my addon from my Dropbox. I have to create two symbolic links first — basically, “ghost folders” that pretend to be the real ones, but are pointing to where I moved them! Using these commands:
mklink /J "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\dota 2 beta\content\dota_addons\usermod" "D:\path\to\new\location\content"
and
mklink /J "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\dota 2 beta\game\dota_addons\usermod" "D:\ path\to\new\location\game"
Now, there’s a problem though; somehow, symlinked addons don’t show up in the tools startup manager (dota2cfg.exe, steamtourscfg.exe, etc)
It’s my understanding that symbolic links are supposed to be transparent to these apps, so maybe they actually aren’t, or Source 2 is doing something weird... I wouldn’t know! But it’s not actually a problem.
Make a .bat file wherever you’d like, and drop this in there:
start "" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\dota 2 beta\game\bin\win64\dota2.exe" -addon usermod -vconsole -tools -steam -windowed -noborder -width 1920 -height 1080 -novid -d3d11 -high +r_dashboard_render_quality 0 +snd_musicvolume 0.0 +r_texturefilteringquality 5 +engine_no_focus_sleep 0 +dota_use_heightmap 0 -tools_sun_shadow_size 8192 EXIT
Of course, you’ll have replace the paths in these lines (and the previous ones) by the paths that match what you have on your own machine.
Let me go through what each of these commands do. These tend to be very relevant to Dota 2 and may not be useful for SteamVR Home or Half-Life: Alyx.
-addon usermod is what solves our core issue. We’re not going through the launcher (dota2cfg.exe, etc.) anymore. We’re directly telling the engine to look for this addon and load it. In this case, “usermod” is my addon’s name... most people who have used the original Source 1 SFM have probably created their addon under this name 😉
-vconsole enables the nice separate console right away.
-windowed -noborder makes the game window “not a window”.
-width 1920 -height 1080 for its resolution. (I recommend half or 2/3rds.)
-novid disables any startup videos (the Dota 2 trailer, etc.)
-d3d11 is a requirement of the tools (no other APIs are supported AFAIK)
-high ensures that the process gets upgraded to high priority!
+r_dashboard_render_quality 0 disables the fancier Dota dashboard, which could theoretically by a bit of a background drain on resources.
+snd_musicvolume 0.0 disables any music coming from the Dota menu, which would otherwise come back on at random while you click thru tools.
+r_texturefilteringquality 5 forces x16 Anisotropic Filtering.
+engine_no_focus_sleep 0 prevents the engine from “artificially sleeping” for X milliseconds every frame, which would lower framerate, saving power, but also potentially hindering rendering in the SFM. I’m not sure if it still can, but better safe than sorry.
+dota_use_heightmap 0 is a particle bugfix that prevents certain particles from only using the heightmap baked at compile time, instead falling back on full collision. You may wish to experiment with both 0 and 1 when investigating particle behaviours.
-tools_sun_shadow_size 8192 sets the Global Light Shadow res to 8192 instead of 1024 (on High) or 2048 (on Ultra). This is AFAIK the maximum.
And don’t forget that “EXIT” on a new line! It will make sure the batch file automatically closes itself after executing, so it’ll work like a real shortcut.
Speaking of, how about we make it even nicer, and like an actual shortcut? Right-click on your .bat and select Create Shortcut. Unfortunately, it won’t work as-is. We need to make a few changes in its properties.
Make sure that Target is set to:
C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C "D:\Path\To\Your\BatchFile\Goes\Here\launch_tools.bat"
And for bonus points, you can click Change Icon and browse to dota2cfg.exe (in \SteamApps\common\dota 2 beta\game\bin\win64) to steal its nice icon! And now you’ve got a shortcut that will launch the tools in just one click, and that you can pin directly to your task bar!
Enjoy! 🙂
