Modded WWE 2K19 Portability? (Porting to New System)

[CyberOcelot]

I'm about to build a new gaming rig. I should be excited, but I'm crippled with fear of losing my WWE 2K19 build. 

I'm relatively new to modding WWE 2K19 (approx 1 year) and I've since spent over 1500+ hours building a pretty elaborate game with several Universe Modes running with several brands each. It gives me the jitters just thinking about starting all over. I'll never have the time to get it back to how it is now if all of my work is lost. So, I'd like to be as thorough as possible. It's literally the most important item in my rig to me. So, I'm very nervous.

Can we please have a discussion here about best practices to port a modded WWE 2K19 to a new system?

Let's start with your general advisements, and I'll get into more specific concerns as we go. 

The obvious first step is to back up the modded and vanilla game directories and save game.

Would the modded game directory and save game work in the new system?

Here are the new specs (In case it matters)...

Windows 10 Pro
i9 12900K
32GB DDR5 5200 RAM 
Nvidia RTX 3090 Founders Edition

Edited May 16, 2022 by CyberOcelot
Typo

[Cave Waverider]

Follow these steps:

1. Fully Install the game on the new PC via Steam.
2. Run it once.
3. Completely Exit Steam.
4. Rename/Delete the folder of the new install.
5. Copy the game folder that includes all the mods from the old PC so it's in the same place as you installed the (now renamed/deleted) game to on the new PC.
(6. If you don't have cloud saves enabled in Steam, copy your old save folder to the new PC's save folder location as well.)

You'll be able to play your fully modded game on your new computer now.

More information on how to copy and replace files and saves can be found at the create backups wiki entry.

Note for Linux users: If your new PC is running Linux (SteamOS on the SteamDeck, for example - WWE 2k19 runs great on it, by the way), you may have to rename all your game files/folders (including modded and unmodded files) to lower case for mods to work properly (because CCT's Regenerate Chunk0.def feature saves all file/folder names as lower case in the chunk0.def even if they are upper/mixed case which isn't a problem when running Windows, but Linux is sensitive to that - perhaps @TheVisitorX can find the time some time to patch CCT's Regenerate Chunk0.def feature to use the actual case for file and folder names instead so this step won't be necessary in the future).

[CyberOcelot]

16 hours ago, Cave Waverider said:

Follow these steps:

Thanks, Cave!

This is excellent news! Sounds like we are basically just restoring a backup game directory and save file, so it's fully portable!

Let's talk about (possibly) more complex issues...

CCT:

I have the recent mod for CCT that allows us to use CAW slots in CCT. I also have all slots labeled under "replaced name" to help me stay organized. 

I also see in my post history that, when I had issues assigning trons to someone associated with a team/faction, something else needed to be installed or copy/pasted, but that was so long ago, I don't even know what it was that I downloaded from here in this forum and what it was called. 

All that said, how about the portability of CCT? I'm assuming we have to go through the install process again and that its not portable? So we will have to reinstall the CAW mod, redo all the "replaced name" labels and redownload that patch (or whatever it was) for the individuals with tag team trons? Is that right? Is there an easier method? And, if not, could redoing this with an already modded WWE 2K19 installed cause issues with CCT later in the new system??

[Cave Waverider]

16 hours ago, CyberOcelot said:

Thanks, Cave!

This is excellent news! Sounds like we are basically just restoring a backup game directory and save file, so it's fully portable!

Let's talk about (possibly) more complex issues...

CCT:

I have the recent mod for CCT that allows us to use CAW slots in CCT. I also have all slots labeled under "replaced name" to help me stay organized. 

I also see in my post history that, when I had issues assigning trons to someone associated with a team/faction, something else needed to be installed or copy/pasted, but that was so long ago, I don't even know what it was that I downloaded from here in this forum and what it was called. 

All that said, how about the portability of CCT? I'm assuming we have to go through the install process again and that its not portable? So we will have to reinstall the CAW mod, redo all the "replaced name" labels and redownload that patch (or whatever it was) for the individuals with tag team trons? Is that right? Is there an easier method? And, if not, could redoing this with an already modded WWE 2K19 installed cause issues with CCT later in the new system??

Yeah, as long as you install the game first before replacing the directory with the old one, it should be fine.

As for CCT, I think you should be able to just install CCT, exit it, rename the folder, copy the old CCT folder from your old PC over in place of where the new one was and it should work. Perhaps you'll have to set the directories again in settings. Probably the same with Sound Editor, although you may have to also copy the WWise folder and set it.

Data Editor you should be able to just copy the whole folder from the old PC to the new one and use (if your new system uses Windows Scaling, you may have to adjust the .exe's scaling options, too, the Data Editor Tutorials should have instructions on that.

[CyberOcelot]

9 hours ago, Cave Waverider said:

Probably the same with Sound Editor, although you may have to also copy the WWise folder and set it.

I completely forgot about Wwise.

Now I'm starting to recall the many steps it took to make the game mod ready. 

Looks like the best course of action now is to build that system, transfer the game over, and then see what hardships I face as I try to make it mod ready on the new system. 

I'll bump the thread in a few weeks when I'm at that stage. Probably a good idea to log all of my steps too, so we can use this as a guide for others who migrate to new systems.

Thank you for all the help, Cave!