GOG.com

[PowerGod]

by the way, the lgogdownloader project is the awesomeness made program !! it can search, filter and download everything you want, even the amatorial covers and bonus contents, and in my case, just the tarball instead of the deb, giving preference to my first language, etc...

maybe one day i'll do a graphic launcher for it.

 

[_jr_]

dosbox and wine are compiled as standalone programs

They're including dosbox and wine executables in the install package? I just don't even...

Well, they do that on windows, too. Humble does the same with their linux packages, though in their case it's usually a spare copy of mono or air that is included. And I guess, steam is no exception. But what should they do? They are targeting gamers, not admins. And I guess it is easier to just put together a package that runs ootb on most installations of whatever the latest Ubuntu version is.


Fortunately that is not a problem for the older DOS based games (you simply get the interesting files along with a superfluous and possibly broken dosbox), but considering that the windows versions typically get better support, using wine often gives more satisfying results than the native builds for the newer titles from humble and gog. A good example is dungeon defenders: the native version crashes on all systems I tried while the windows version - that is also the only one receiving updates, it seems - runs without problems in wine on all these systems (even on the nouveau based one).

 

[WizardStan]

Well, they do that on windows, too.

Windows doesn't have a convenient way to install existing packages.Packaging everything into a single container means that you really have to package everything or risk incompatibility with the very next update, a race that some people are already complaining that gog is losing.

The correct way is to use the package manager as it's intended and install what is needed and let the system keep itself up to date. It doesn't require anyone to be an admin, it's all backend work the user doesn't care about (so long as they're on a supported platform), they just need to enter their password at some point (but only if there's something missing).

It's the difference between "We support Ubuntu" and "we support Ubuntu 12.04 as it existed on September 17th, 2014"

At the very least they should be including just the binaries, either entirely statically linked or without including any dependent libraries that may change or have other dependencies which change.

Humble does the same with their linux packages

Which games include something like this? I don't remember seeing anything other than just the game, but I don't really pay much attention.

 

[_jr_]

All the humble tarballs of C# games I've tried (except Wizorb) include mono. The one Java game I've tried (forgot the name) from humble includes a JRE (funnily it comes in 32/64 bit flavors whose only difference AFAICT is the included JRE). Obviously these often do not work ootb when the host system is either too old (e.g. debian stable), too new, or just too different. But I don't agree that not packaging these would make it easier. E.g. libc and libstdc++ mismatches between game executable and host system are quite common.

 

[Klumpen]

Oh dear, I really hope there'll be one unified gaming Linux soon, odds are good if you look at those Debian branches and the whole systemd discussion (doesn't matter if it was actually a good decision).

That and proper nvidia and ati drivers are really all that is needed for making Windoze really obsolete.

 

[WizardStan]

All the humble tarballs of C# games I've tried

Just need one so I can go have a look and understand what's being talked about. I don't know which are C# or not.

 

[PowerGod]

Oh dear, I really hope there'll be one unified gaming Linux soon, odds are good if you look at those Debian branches and the whole systemd discussion (doesn't matter if it was actually a good decision).

That and proper nvidia and ati drivers are really all that is needed for making Windoze really obsolete.

For now the only OS that can achieve that should be SteamBox...

NVidia anyway stated many times that it will not release open source drivers for their videocards, so even if one day they will make a linux driver with "full functionality", they will release it as binary for just an arbitrary platform...

So for those type of videocards Windows will still have the best performances...

 

[Granitehead]

NVidia anyway stated many times that it will not release open source drivers for their videocards, so even if one day they will make a linux driver with "full functionality", they will release it as binary for just an arbitrary platform...

They are blocking features which cards possess in their drivers to only unlock them on more expensive cards. Of course they don't want to make the driver free...

 

[_jr_]

List of games containing mono or java (yeah there actually is more than one):


$ find . -iname mscorlib.dll | cut -d / -f 2 | sort -u
140
AaaaaAwesome
AIWar
aVirusNamedTom
Beatbuddy
BridgConstructorPlayground
Capsized
CardCityNights
CubeAndStar
Cubemen
DungeonHearts
DungeonOfElements
Dust
Element4l
EnglishCountryTune
EscapeGoat
FEZ
Gateways
GoneHome
Influent
IroncladTactics
IttleDew
KingdomRush
LegendofDungeon
LuxuriaSuperbia
MouseCraft
Nihilumbra
NotTheRobots
PaperSorcerer
ParanauticalActivity
Proteus
RaceTheSun
Ravensword
RehearsalReturns
ReignMaker
Reus
RogueLegacy
SkullsOfTheShogun
TetrobotAndCo
TheBridge
TheSwapper
ThomasWasAlone
TypeRider
$ find . -iname rt.jar | cut -d / -f 2 | sort -u
BlocksThatMatter
DroidAssault
Ultratron

These are approximately 45% of the linux builds provided by humble (or gog; some of these may be the gog package, but the majority is from Humble because the bundles allow me to get them cheaper - which is nice, because most of these games actually aren't very good I use them mainly as tests for the quality of nouveau (and with very few exceptions recent mesa runs all of them).

If available, these have been extracted from the tar ball, none haven been installed using a deb package. So the packages - if available - may be smarter.


And I agree that there is very little reason to include java or mono (because adequate versions of java and mono are pretty much available everywhere). But this (providing standalone packages) is there modus operandi that works just fine on Windows and it really would be more difficult for them to adopt a different approach. Especially for the remaining 55% of games that are C/C++ based and do have real compatibility issues. I actually think it would be more effective in the long run for both humble and gog to stop supporting linux by obscure unmaintained binary packages (that aren't provided and maintained by the developers; the latter are a good thing, because they can help increase overall design quality) and instead paying developers to work on dosbox, uae, wine, nouveau, etc.

 

[thatgui]

Outcast 1.1 was silently (I wonder why) released on gog.com - for free if you have already bought it - btw, the old version is still available in the bonus section.

At a first glance, It looks like gog.com was rather surprised by this: no anouncement, not even an update notice in the library view, and the old version has the rather "cryptic" name "product_bonus_38603".

 

[PowerGod]

What is 1.1 adding to the game ?

I succefully extracted "setup_teenagent_2.0.0.12.exe" with innoextract (compiled by myself because the Debian repo version is old and is not able to deal with that file)

Look at what I found in the DOSBOX directory inside the WINDOWS installer:

dosbox-0.74.tar.gz
DOSBox.exe
GOGDOSConfig.exe
SDL.dll
SDL_net.dll
LOL

EDIT: WTF !! NORDIC IS BACK ON GOG ?!

 

[thatgui]

What is 1.1 adding to the game ?

Outcast 1.1 has been recompiled from the original source code and improved to run smoothly on today's computers.The main improvements compared to the original version are: multithreaded voxel renderer for higher performances, software bilinear filtering on polygonal meshes, part of the HUD redesigned to match higher resolutions, new high-resolution sky paintings, new launcher, native support of xbox gamepad, user-friendly controller configuration, a lot of bugs fixed and improved stability.

 

[PowerGod]

Awesome, and it was already a masterpiece, now I'm really looking to get it even from there

 

[thatgui]

Forgot to mention, they introduced a lot of new bugs too - at least thats what I get from the post in the gog.com forum and the reviews on steam, did not have time to try this myself (hope I'll find between holidays).

Small shift out of reality: with the newly added controller support, this would be great on the Pyra.

 

[PowerGod]

Is the new setup still containing the old version ? (like they did with "Trine / Trine: Enchanted Edition")

 

[thatgui]

Is the new setup still containing the old version ? (like they did with "Trine / Trine: Enchanted Edition")

 

and the old version has the rather "cryptic" name "product_bonus_38603".

Or is your question directed at something else ?

 

[PowerGod]

oh, sorry, I had read "had" instead of "has", so I thought they removed it

EDIT: just found out there are repos for lgogdownloader and innoextract -_- well compiling them was interesting anyway

 

[Klumpen]

GOG.com introduces DRM to the blight of Linux users

Password protected installers will further hinder us on getting the content out of the installers via Linux:

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/on_gnulinux_has_anyone_be_able_to_extract_the_rar_innosetup_installers/post116

Wishlist entry:

https://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/dont_slip_into_drm_swamp_stop_using_password_protection_on_installer_packages

When I entered GoG, the installers could be run under Wine and/or unpacked with Innoextract.

The next version of the installers didn't work with Wine but could still be unpacked with Innoextract to run the game in Wine/Dosbox/ScummVM/game engine recreation of your choice.

The current version deliberately doesn't work with Innoextract or other unpackers.

Great job slapping thousands of customers in the face furthermore!

 

[WizardStan]

They really are clueless, aren't they? Like, I literally have zero faith in their ability to do pretty much anything anymore. Either they are incompetent and proud, or terrible liars, because everything they claim these password protected RARs do can be achieved in much simpler, less intrusive, and in many cases more powerful ways than. I can only hope they have actually sold out on DRM in the same way that they sold out on the fair price thing but they don't know how to break it to people so they come up with these terrible excuses.

 

[Klumpen]

GoG.com is testing DRM-waters in different ways for some time now,

like when gog staff members asked to vote and discuss about region locks for getting more movies in the Twitch livestream on October 14, 2014

and like watching if people mind, when crucial game-patches are only available via GoGs future client "Galaxy".

The password protected installers are just one of those tests, maybe watermarking will be next.