Data directory

VDrift must be able to access its game data to run. This data is stored in the data directory.

Location

VDrift looks in several places to find its game data at startup. This is the order in which the different locations are checked.

1. The directory specified in the environment variable VDRIFT_DATA_DIRECTORY
2. The subdirectory "data" of the current working directory (the location from which VDrift was run)
3. A directory named at compile-time via the environment variable DATA_DIR (usually set by the SCons build setup)

Note: On Windows, only locations 1 and 2 are checked.

Validation

To ensure that it has the correct location, VDrift checks for the file data/settings/options.config. If this file can't be found in any of the above locations, VDrift exits immediately.