transfering steam game files from one account to the other

[EEngi]

Yo,

I live in a dorm where my bandwidth is limited to 4GB/week.
I only have 500 megs left (bandwith resets in 4 days).
I want Episode 2/Portal now. (I bought orange box).
I can't download it because I don't have bandwidth
My friend pre-loaded episode 2 and portal.
Is there a way to just copy the relevant game files from my friend's
PC to my PC and make steam think that I've downloaded the game?

Thanks! Sorry for the craptastic post but I think it makes it clear.

 

[Dekstar]

yeah there's the GCF (Game content Files) that are located in your friend's "steamapps" folder - by default: c:\program files\VALVe\Steam\Steamapps. You'll need to copy pretty much everything to do with source over. After that, it's just a case of loading up steam and logging in.

 

[EEngi]

Thanks for the reply.

So it's not enough just to copy the "episode 2" folder inside "steamapps/username"?

 

[Hectic Glenn]

That episode 2 folder is one that is created when you launch the game for the first time, so it can record your screenshots, custom config etc. Nothing which involves the core game files. Those are the .gcf files dekstar mentioned which hold all the information to play the game.

If you go into the steamapps folder and look at the file names you should be able to work out which .gcf files to copy. If you go to your friends computer, start the Episode 2 download, then stop it. Check the steamapps folder for the "part" files which Steam has downloaded for Episode 2. These are the specific .GCF files you need to copy from your computer. Just replace them with the full versions you downloaded already. Is that clear? Let me know if it isn't.

 

[Ridge]

FYI, you are looking at about 10gigs of files, based on what I see in my folder...