I don't know why I'm making a thread about this, but I figured this out quite a while back and I guess I figured other people would like it.

Okay now to explain:
Don't you get tired of going through all of those folders to get to your steamapps and/or sourcemods folder every single time?! to go through [drive]:\program files\valve\steam\steamapps\source mods or email can take FOREVER sometimes!! At least if you are someone lazy like me.

So believe it or not, I'm going to teach you how to open up your regular old windows explorer, and type something simple such as "%steam%" in and BAM you are straight to your steamapps directory! Sound exciting? oh well I'll write this tutorial anyways.


Commense!!!

Go to your desktop or start menu, and find My Computer. Right click and select properties


NOTE: This can also be achieved by pushing winkey (the key with the flag on it btw ctrol and alt) + pause|break

In the window that comes up, select the adanced tab. At the bottom of the window select Environment Variables.



Now you'll find another window. This will list various variables already stored on your computer. In fact, steam has already put some information here you may not even be aware of! (look for a variable called sourcesdk in the list)

Anyways, find the button labeled new, and click that...



This is the part where you can get personal if you are one of those "freeflowing" people like myself.

A dialog window will come up with two options, name and value. Under name enter what you want this variable to be called; in other words, remember when I said imagine that you could enter something simple into windows explorer to send you straight to steam? Put what you want to type in under name. I suggest you make it something short like .. oh, I dunno "steam".

Under value, put the path to your steam directory. You can also customize this. I put mine directly into my account folder. If you are frequently going to your sourcemods or sf folder (or gmod you bastard) you can put this instead. Or you can create yourself another varaible for them after we are done. But that is for extra credit!

Anyways, I have my name as steam and value as D:\Program Files\Valve\Steam\Steamapps\[my email]\
so it takes me right into my account. Note that if you have steam on your c drive or any other drive you will have to use that as well.

So here is mine:


Congratulations if you have made it this far, you are almost done!!!

Now push ok to all the open windows and open up my computer (or any folder for that matter). Now this is the fun part, go up to the address bar where it says "My Computer". Erase that and replace it with, and now listen closely: replace it with the name of your variable within 2 percent (%) signs.

If you recall I named mine "steam", so just pretend I am using percent signs insteadof quotes.

And I get %steam%. Type this in to the address bar and hit the little "go" button that you never use. If you have decided to remove that go button (it is possible my friends) than just hit enter when you are done typing your variable in.



And joy of all joys, look what comes up!!!



WOO HOO!!!

If you have made it this far and actually read everything above this, congratulations. Your life just got about .00001 % easier!

I hope this does actually come in some handy to some of you. It is definately a way to reduce one of the very common annoyances of those of us who access our steam files very often. And hey I took the time to type it!!



Alright I'm going to bed.

Nice idea. Take note people, even if you don't set it up for your steam people, environment variables are very useful.

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I just have shortcuts to the folders on my taskbar...

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"If they rape and kill me, I hope they kill me first. That way, I sort of win."

that's a pretty cool trick, but I just created a shortcut on my desktop

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http://sourceforts.brainfreezegames.com

Yea i jsut created shortcuts, no typing at all .

Because when using something like WinRAR to extract a mod to the source folder, it's so much easier to open up the link, copy and paste the URL than to type %steam%

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Or go to the shortcut on your desktop thru the program. :lol:

may i suggest the variable %sourcesdk% which is already there?

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Im back (ish)

I mentioned that in my post. But the problem is that it is deeper into the steam directory so it would be pretty useless for going to your steamapps directory unless you just didn't mind backing up a few levels.

Sorry guys I should have gone into more detail on how this can be used. For any of you that like to run batches to do things, or use the command prompt just for the hell of it, environemnt variables can be used for both of these purposes. i.e. if you wanted to run a command line prog at your steam app directory, instead of c: | cd "program files" | cd vavle | cd steam |etc. etc. etc. you could just type in %steam%. Or when writing a batch instead of writing out the entire address you can just use %steam% or %steam%/half-life 2/hl2.exe (this works as well).

Even more usages, for those of you who like to make your own shortcuts, this can be used as the target. ie if you manually go to properties and defined target, yo ucan type %steam% as your target, or if you use the wizard you can use the above as your destination.

OK and for those of you staring at me in virtual disgust, here's the benefit to this. Let's say you decide to update your entire steam for some farfetchd reason, and in the move to the newere version, you find that they have changed where they locate steams directories. And if you are thnking what the hell, it has changed several tiems, originally it was C:\valve then it was c:\program files\steam and I think at one point it was c:\steam and now it is c:\program files\valve\steam. ANyways, my point is lets say this happens and now you have to go in and change all of your shortcuts. If they are all pointing to the environtment variable (stressing the word variable) you can simply go and change the var and now all your shortcuts will be updated with barely any work. This is pretty universal as well, especially in programming. When you ahve something depending on a certain value, and several other things are also depending on the same value, if you store it to a var and have all of those things point to the var intsead, it's a lot easier.