Steam related technical question

[Sarkus]

So I'm looking at this Steam sale for the Oblvion super pack and it looks appealing since I never got any of the expansions or DLC for the game. But I don't really want to download the whole 4.6gb when I already have the main game.

Is there a way to buy that package and then make Steam aware that I already have the main game installed so that it only downloads the rest of the package? Would putting the game files in with the other Steam game files solve that? Or would I be forced to do the download?

[Lorini]

You can use your CD key from this list of games to transfer the installs. Otherwise AFAIK you are hosed. Remember to uninstall the original game first so that you have less chance of issues.

[Fugitive]

Theoretically, you might be able to move the files you already have into the appropriate place under 'steamapps' and then do a verify of its integrity (an option under the Steam game properties), and it might go and just download the bits that are missing or different.

I haven't actually tried it that way though, and it might wind up deciding that something like differing timestamps are reason enough to go and redownload everything anyway.

[Sarkus]

I'm giving it a try by putting the files installed off the disk into the Steam folder under steamapps/common/oblivion. That was the suggestion I got when I asked about the idea in the Steam forums for the game. Then I told Steam to install the game and it appears to be recognizing that some files are already installed. Hopefully it will work, but if not I'll probably run the integrity thing and see what happens. I can always do the full install thing if that doesn't work either.

[Qmanol]

I've done what Fugitive and Sarkus suggested for Mass Effect, and it worked fine there.

[Sarkus]

Yeah, it seems to have worked on its own with no need to run the integrity utility. Steam told me it was at 80% after about an hour, which is way way faster then it would have taken to get to that point going download only with my connection speed.