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General discussionWhy are some of the offline setups so slow?(12 posts)(12 posts)
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Posted October 11, 2024
Hi all,

I'm trying to install Bioshock remastered but it takes an insane amount of time to run the setup. If I install the game through Steam it takes about 5 minutes. With GOG the download is quick enough but the setup takes about 40 minutes to complete, without verifying. This isn't the case for all my setups, some games (with similar sized installs) are much quicker. I know InnoSetup is used for the setups, maybe the compression is set to super high? That would make the install very slow. Anyone else has this problem? Anything I can do to speed this up?
FYI, it's not a virusscanner thing, or anything like that. Tested on a clean setup versus my current setup and there was no difference.

Thanks for any help on this.

T.
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Posted October 11, 2024
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TomKuurstra: Hi all,

I'm trying to install Bioshock remastered but it takes an insane amount of time to run the setup. If I install the game through Steam it takes about 5 minutes. With GOG the download is quick enough but the setup takes about 40 minutes to complete, without verifying. This isn't the case for all my setups, some games (with similar sized installs) are much quicker. I know InnoSetup is used for the setups, maybe the compression is set to super high? That would make the install very slow. Anyone else has this problem? Anything I can do to speed this up?
FYI, it's not a virusscanner thing, or anything like that. Tested on a clean setup versus my current setup and there was no difference.

Thanks for any help on this.

T.
As a workaround:

* Inno-Extract - Downloads

* Inno-Extract - Man Page

* Youtube Video - How to Use Inno-Extract
Posted October 11, 2024
It depends on the installer, but it probably boils down to these factors:
A) Some installers were assimilated and turned into Galaxy Streams. This worthless cause has the unfortunate side effect of requiring an on the fly repackaging then extracting of files.
B) Older installers, of which I'm sure there are a few kicking around, were probably made under the assumption of a single thread, 32-bit installer. This has the unfortunate effect of having but one core for I/O. Not good.
3) Some installers (most) will attempt to check and/or install extras such as DirectX or whatever Microsoft .net redistribution flavor it feels like. This has the unfortunate knock on effect of appearing to be done but not actually being done.

In short, I second ignoring the actual execution of the installers in favor of ripping them open and dumping their contents into an arbitrary folder of your choosing.
Posted October 11, 2024
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dnovraD: A) Some installers were assimilated and turned into Galaxy Streams. This worthless cause has the unfortunate side effect of requiring an on the fly repackaging then extracting of files.
A very unexpected side effect is that these installers based on Galaxy chunks are much quicker to extract than the previous ones. At least when using innoextract on Linux, I have no idea how the behave on Windows.
Posted October 11, 2024
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dnovraD: It depends on the installer, but it probably boils down to these factors:
A) Some installers were assimilated and turned into Galaxy Streams. This worthless cause has the unfortunate side effect of requiring an on the fly repackaging then extracting of files.
B) Older installers, of which I'm sure there are a few kicking around, were probably made under the assumption of a single thread, 32-bit installer. This has the unfortunate effect of having but one core for I/O. Not good.
3) Some installers (most) will attempt to check and/or install extras such as DirectX or whatever Microsoft .net redistribution flavor it feels like. This has the unfortunate knock on effect of appearing to be done but not actually being done.

In short, I second ignoring the actual execution of the installers in favor of ripping them open and dumping their contents into an arbitrary folder of your choosing.
You mean a basic archive ala zip?(any other common archive)

edit....helps sound less insane when i add words to complete a coherent sentence >_>
Post edited October 11, 2024 by Shmacky-McNuts
Posted October 11, 2024
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TomKuurstra: Thanks for any help on this.
They're unnecessarily artificially slower than they need to be due to the "Galaxification" of them (files are stored as "Galaxy streams" that need an intermediate reconstruction stage), and single-threaded decompression:-
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/gog_standalone_installer_is_single_threaded_and_so_slow/post29
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/dosbox_linux_support_dropped/post27
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/offline_game_installers_why_use_ctemp/post17
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vv221: A very unexpected side effect is that these installers based on Galaxy chunks are much quicker to extract than the previous ones. At least when using innoextract on Linux, I have no idea how the behave on Windows.
Some of us benchmarked old vs new installers vs repackaging the same files back into InnoSetup / unzipping a zip of the game folder (see above links), and the newest "Galaxy chunks" installers on Windows were consistently the slowest and largest of all, sometimes taking +4x longer (eg, 216s vs 49s to install the same version of the same game).
Post edited October 11, 2024 by AB2012
Posted October 11, 2024
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Shmacky-McNuts: You mean a basic archive ala zip?(any other common archive)

edit....helps sound less insane when i add words to complete a coherent sentence >_>
Tar.zst, but same idea, extra cheek.
Posted October 12, 2024
Thanks, I've learned something today. Doesn't make me happy but that's life.

I've used innoextract and that seems to work, so that's the workaround for now.
I quickly scanned the other posts mentioned and it's depressing, GOG is not doing a good job here. Here's hoping things get better.

Thanks again.

Edit: do I understand correctly that after unpacking I have to manually place the files and get the registry settings done based on the scripts? That wouldn't be an improvement...
Post edited October 12, 2024 by TomKuurstra
Posted October 12, 2024
All installers used to be really slow for me back on Windows 10 on an HDD. After I switched to Debian 12 on a SSD, most GOG installers are blazing fast, and maybe only Skyrim took its merry time.
Posted October 12, 2024
Yeah, the offline installers are in a dire state. Most of the old guard closes their eyes from it, and use 3rd party tools to mitigate some of the deficiencies, but for someone with a fresh pair of eyes not used to sadomasochism, it's pretty dire.

What is even the compression ratio for these archives, that are extracted utilising a single-thread to waste your time and aggravate you? I would guess it's pretty negligible, begging the question, why bother with compression? Someone ELI5 it to me. Is it just convenience to have a few files to download? Or is the compression ratio actually significant? Why do they punish you for spending money here.
Posted October 13, 2024
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TomKuurstra: Thanks, I've learned something today. Doesn't make me happy but that's life.

I've used innoextract and that seems to work, so that's the workaround for now.
I quickly scanned the other posts mentioned and it's depressing, GOG is not doing a good job here. Here's hoping things get better.

Thanks again.

Edit: do I understand correctly that after unpacking I have to manually place the files and get the registry settings done based on the scripts? That wouldn't be an improvement...
For innoextract, make sure you use the -d switch to specify a destination extraction directory or inno-extract will extract the files to the current directory from which the command is run.

For example:

innoextract -d c:\games\hrot c:\gog_installers\setup_hrot_1.1b_(65752).exe

The above command extracts the files in the HROT offline installer into the c:\games\hrot directory.
Post edited October 13, 2024 by TheBigCore
Posted October 13, 2024
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AB2012: Some of us benchmarked old vs new installers vs repackaging the same files back into InnoSetup / unzipping a zip of the game folder (see above links)
I only compared real GOG installers, I did not try any repacking (it would be trivial to be only limited by the storage read/write speed).

When only looking at installers actually distributed by GOG, and assuming an extraction through innoextract on Linux, new ones are easily 2~4 times quicker to extract. Cf. my answers in the threads you linked to ;)
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General discussionWhy are some of the offline setups so slow?(12 posts)(12 posts)
(12 posts)