Okay, I’ve been fiddling with this and I’m onto something.
Here’s my method:
– Find the Steam ID of the game you want to install, for this example we’ll choose Quake with id 2310
– Copy any appmanifest_{appid}.acf in the SteamApps directory and name it appmanifest_2310.acf
– Edit the file and change the appID line on top, and the “installdir” line, you can put anything as installdir but keep in mind that the game will be installed in a matching directory in SteamApps/common/
– I also chose to edit “name” and “GameID” in the UserConfig section, not sure that’s needed.
– Close Steam if it’s running
– Open Steam with the following command:
steam [url=steam://preload/2310]steam://preload/2310[/url]
– The game should download and then become available in SteamApps/common/{whatever you put as installdir}
Now this is cool and all, but it would be even better if Steam didn’t need to be restarted. Of course, this is a pain in the ass to do manually, but the good thing is that it’s fully scriptable.
