Switching Branches quickly in H3VR

Feeling left out? Want to try some cool new feature in the experimental branch but want to be able to quickly switch back to Alpha and use your mods? This guide will show you how!

Overview

H3VR will often times switch between the base, alpha, and experimental branches for developing new features. If you're someone who likes to play around with the newest stuff, you might want to try switching to Alpha or Experimental, but often times you'll want to switch back for better mod compatibility. In this guide, we will go over a relatively simple method to enable quick branch switching!

Prerequisites

To start with, you will need at least enough storage for each version of the game you want to have installed. I'd recommend at least 20 GB for each branch.

Beyond that, all you need is a text editor and some patience.

Downloading Your Branches

To get started, you'll need to download each branch you want to use. For the purposes of this guide I'll be showcasing Alpha and Experimental since that's what I'm personally using, but the process still applies if you want to download all three, or just Public and Alpha/Experimental.

To do this, select the first branch you want to download in the Steam beta branch picker. Then, once that has completed downloading, navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common and make a copy of the H3VR folder, and then rename that copy to H3VR.(Branch Name). Replace (Branch Name) with the name of your branch, of course. I started out with the Alpha branch, so this is what mine looks like:



Next, you'll want to navigate back one folder, to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\, and look for the appmanifest_450540.acf file. make a copy of this file and rename it to b]appmanifest_450540.acf.(Branch Name)[/b], once again replacing Branch Name with your branch. I started out with the Alpha branch, so this is what mine looks like:

disregard the filetype and icon here. Yours should have a blank icon and be an ACF File.

Now, go ahead and repeat this process for each branch you want to download. When you get to the last branch, the process slightly changes. Instead of making a copy of the folder and file, close Steam and Rename the H3VR folder and appmanifest file themselves.

When all is said and done, your filepaths should look something similar to this:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common

H3VR.public
H3VR.alpha
H3VR.experimental

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps

appmanifest_450540.acf.public
appmanifest_450540.acf.alpha
appmanifest_450540.acf.experimental

If your filepaths look something like this, you're ready to move onto the next step.

Downloading the Batch Scripts

To enable us to switch between branches quickly we will be using a set of Batch scripts.

They may be downloaded via the following link:

https://pastebin.com/Z3dTjpwk (h3vr-public.bat)
https://pastebin.com/48wWwPbB (h3vr-alpha.bat)
https://pastebin.com/YN6Chv9N (h3vr-experimental.bat)

Download each file, rename them accordingly, and copy them to your C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\ folder.

Feel free to open them up in a text editor of your choice and examine them before running. Each script will set it's corresponding branch as active in steam (i.e h3vr-alpha.bat will enable the Alpha branch within steam.) You'll know it's working if Steam closes and then starts when you run the script.