How to Install on a school network (Windows)

bnnorman

  • Posts: 40
I have seen many posts in the forums regarding installation on school networks but no clear instructions/solutions. Often the requests for help have no replies at all.

 In my school the registry is reloaded by the policies we have each time a student logs in. Students cannot see the C: drive hence the use of %APPDATA% fails. Changing the workspace in preferences works for the current session only.

In one post the expert mentions the prefs are in the home folder - but I cannot find anything. I have tried to find a prefs file which has anything in it on my desktop at home - but they are all empty (Program files  and work folder.)  So, exactly where does Stencyl record the Workspace path normally? I cannot find anything in the registry for it. I've tried to use SysInternals to see whats going on when the program runs but it beats me.

Installation in school can lead to thousands of kids wanting to create games - you can see the potential for your future revenue but only if schools can get this to work in their restrictive environments so the kids can learn it. and want to carry on with it.

Thanks for any help anyone can give me on this.

Hectate

  • *
  • Posts: 4643
My preferences are in:
Code: [Select]
C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Stencyl\stencylworks\prefs\boot.txt

There appears to be a similar version of this file in my installation at
Code: [Select]
C:\Program Files (x86)\Stencyl\prefs\boot.txt

Perhaps that will help?
:
:
Patience is a Virtue,
But Haste is my Life.
Proud member of the League of Idiotic Stencylers; doing things in Stencyl that probably shouldn't be done.

bnnorman

  • Posts: 40
Many thanks for the prompt reply - I'll take a look.

bnnorman

  • Posts: 40
Actually I found  C:\Users\brian\AppData\Roaming\Stencyl\stencylworks.prefs which contains

global.workdir.style=true
global.extension.style=true
global.engine.extension.style=true
global.workdir=C:\Users\brian\Documents\Stencyl Resources\

The global.workdir is what I was looking for so maybe my IT Support people can factor this in.  If they can force this to H:\ it would put the stencylworks folder in the users home directory - which is where we want it to be so they can save their games etc.

Many thanks for opening this up for us. I'll mark this Solved when my IT department say they got it to work etc.


Hectate

  • *
  • Posts: 4643
Cool. I looked at my prefs files but notepad++ opened them empty. System differences I suppose.
:
:
Patience is a Virtue,
But Haste is my Life.
Proud member of the League of Idiotic Stencylers; doing things in Stencyl that probably shouldn't be done.

kdebruine

  • Posts: 3
I am facing similar challenges in my school district environment.

I've tried having students move their Workspace every time they login to begin work for the day.  They go to File > Preferences > Workspace tab in Stencyl.  They change the Workspace folder to their I: drive (student network drive).  Then when prompted, they move all files/games to the new workspace location.

However, quite a few students lost all of the files from their previous work session with this method.

I'm wondering if anyone has found a more reliable solution to working in a Windows network environment with mapped student network drives.

Thanks,

Kris

mikewhodges

  • Posts: 3
Hi,
I'm trying to use Stencyl on a school network and I'm finding some similar issues.  As well as the work directory issue, non-privileged users can't compile unless they are allowed full access to c:/ProgramData and are allowed to issue commands at Command Line level.  (By default neither of these is true in our network.)  I'm negotiating with our System Manager about this, but any suggestions would be welcome.
On the subject of the working directory, I notice that in the C:\ProgramFiles\Stencyl\prefs folder there is an empty file called default.prefs.  Does anyone know what this does?  I was hoping that you could put a default commands in there, such as global.workdir=N:\Stencyl and this might then work as the default for all users, but it doesn't seem to do anything.
Love to hear if anyone makes any progress.