There are a number of benefits to having multiple copies of OMSI:
It's simple!
When you launch OMSI, Steam tries to start "OMSI 2\Omsi.exe" so, if you rename your "OMSI 2" directory to anything but that, Steam can't see your OMSI install.
If you then right-click on OMSI 2 in Steam, you can use go to the Properties menu and either uninstall the game (which will delete the "OMSI 2" directory, which no longer exists anyway because you renamed it) and install it again, or you can "Verify integrity of game cache", which will re-download any files that don't match what Steam have on their servers, which will be the entire game because the "OMSI 2" directory doesn't exist any more.
Once you have a clean install, rename it something sensible like "OMSI 2 - Clean" and then you can make as many new clean copies of OMSI as you want without re-downloading it simply by copying and pasting that install.
Whichever is currently named just "OMSI 2" will be run when you launch OMSI.
If you're feeling particularly snazzy, you can also leverage symlinks to make it easier to switch installs or to reduce the overall size of the collective installs, but this requires advanced knowledge of the Windows directory system, so won't be included in this tutorial.
- If installing new content to a clean copy of OMSI, that content can't break any other installed content because there isn't any.
- If packaging up content for release, you can install it onto a clean copy of OMSI and immediately be able to tell whether it works with the requirements you've listed.
- An OMSI install with 1 or 2 maps installed starts much faster than one with 10 maps.
- An OMSI install with 1 or 2 buses installed loads the bus selection window much faster than one with 10 buses installed.
- If your OMSI install is broken, you can keep a backup of all of the maps and buses you had installed while installing OMSI a-fresh.
- If you want to uninstall a map with a dedicated OMSI install, you can just delete the whole OMSI install and not worry about what you might be breaking.
- If you're testing alpha or beta content you can install it somewhere where you're not going to accidentally reveal it on a stream and you can ascertain if the author has included all that they needed to.
It's simple!
When you launch OMSI, Steam tries to start "OMSI 2\Omsi.exe" so, if you rename your "OMSI 2" directory to anything but that, Steam can't see your OMSI install.
If you then right-click on OMSI 2 in Steam, you can use go to the Properties menu and either uninstall the game (which will delete the "OMSI 2" directory, which no longer exists anyway because you renamed it) and install it again, or you can "Verify integrity of game cache", which will re-download any files that don't match what Steam have on their servers, which will be the entire game because the "OMSI 2" directory doesn't exist any more.
Whichever is currently named just "OMSI 2" will be run when you launch OMSI.
If you're feeling particularly snazzy, you can also leverage symlinks to make it easier to switch installs or to reduce the overall size of the collective installs, but this requires advanced knowledge of the Windows directory system, so won't be included in this tutorial.
Last edited: