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General discussionWhy are the standalone/offline Installers forgotten lately when there are updates?(44 posts)(44 posts)
(44 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted October 09, 2019
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skeletonbow: And if we're being TOTALLY honest here, even if they did create an entirely new installer build process to do what is being asked here, 50% of people would hate it and complain about it and demand that GOG provide the original standalone installers *PLUS* the new autogenereated standalone installers *PLUS* installers for floppy disks *PLUS* Galaxy separate *PLUS* a partridge in a pear tree.
I didn't know you could predict the future. That's quite the supernatural power. No wonder the love potion spammer has been so quiet, looks like he got cut out of the market.

All I am personally asking for at this point is to not be treated like a second-class citizen for using the classic standalone installers.

The special treatment Galaxy gets, including ads on every page and GIANT amount of page real estate when going to download the games, is very distasteful.

If Galaxy and offline installers were ever treated with the same visibility, even users like me who don't like any clients, would be much happier.
Posted October 09, 2019
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skeletonbow: Even then it is all based on a premise that we would actually get some actual benefit to it which is probably unlikely, and all at the expense of the engineers working on it - not working on some feature(s) for the platform that might be used by 70-90% of people. Hard to justify assigning even a single engineer of a small team to work on a feature only a small percentage of people benefit from marginally if at all, at the expense of a feature that could actually grow the business in this highly competitive market.
Law of big business: bow to the big money stream, show your ass to to the small guy. No worries, the small guys with their small wallets can't vote against big business and their hopeless whining can be safely ignored :)

Thanks to copyright & licensing, it is impossible to run a game store with extensive selection without having big money (i.e. being a big business).

From these two facts it follows that it is not legally possible to run a good service. They're all destined to be shit.

Only pirates could do a good job (and they did a damn good job with e.g. what.cd), too bad governments are hell bent on making people eat shit.

If a few competent enthusiasts had access to this infra, they'd automate installer creation in a weekend or three. We can't build good things for ourselves when data is locked behind bars, sigh.
Post edited October 09, 2019 by clarry
Posted October 09, 2019
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skeletonbow: Update: Even if we say it is technically possible for GOG to pay their engineers to make Galaxy and standalone installers share the same back end files, there is no justification for them to assign their limited finite resources for many many months to develop this type of a solution for a very small percentage of their customer base while more and more people are using Galaxy every single day. They would not really gain any amazing new feature out of it that people are desperately craving in masses. The majority of people who do actually download standalone installers aren't even asking for it. I'd suspect on the best most vocal day of any given month, maybe 20-30 people out of millions of users would ever even speak up to say they'd want this.


And if we're being TOTALLY honest here, even if they did create an entirely new installer build process to do what is being asked here, 50% of people would hate it and complain about it and demand that GOG provide the original standalone installers *PLUS* the new autogenereated standalone installers *PLUS* installers for floppy disks *PLUS* Galaxy separate *PLUS* a partridge in a pear tree.

It's so LOLNOTHAPPENING it isn't funny TBH. :)

</doseofreality>
1st bit above: They would be able to(if implemented) offer installers/updates with parity to one another, for starters....also, I think many more want them(well more than 20-30 people) but some just don't feel like complaining will get any result so they stay quiet.

2nd bit above: I would be happy as long as the installers worked, tbh.....so no griping or wanting more from me :)
Posted October 09, 2019
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ryuken3k: Why is it so hard for GOG to have a central repository for all game installers that both GOG Galaxy and the website can both sync to? That way, there would be no need for the website to "catch up" to new updates. Both GOG Galaxy and the website would have access to all versions and patches available for a game at the same time.

With a central repository, GOG only needs to maintain one source of game installers and patches. You would no longer have the excuse of having to do extra work to maintain the offline backup installers.
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skeletonbow: Because they're 2 very different pieces of technology being used. The installers are old school static files built into an Inno archive with custom installer front end, which have to be installed by the installer, dependencies installed, and any post install preparations done.

</doseofreality>
I'm not salty or demanding change, I just wanted to discuss possible solutions, no dose of reality necessary. The offline installer feature may be deprecated one day, but I can still try to understand and learn something out of the situation.

Just curious, how do you know what GOG's server structure/operations are without working for them?


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ryuken3k: I understand that. I'm proposing a system where the game's core files are revisioned and stored in a git-like repository and then the process of creating the standalone installer and Galaxy installer are automated.
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timppu: Yep, everything is easy in theory.

That's like when I thought how easy it is for me to automate all our Linux machine system updates at work with Ansible, easy peasy. Oh shit, why is gitlab-ce update so complicated, you can't skip major versions when updating them (you have to always update first to the newest minor version of the current major version, and then to the next major version, etc.) and then there are always some version-dependent extra commands to run here and there? And so on and so forth.

"Little" hiccups to my perfect automation plan. Sometimes the theory and the reality don't meet.
But I already wrote the solution down on a napkin and mailed it to GOG HQ via encrypted carrier pigeon...
Post edited October 09, 2019 by ryuken3k
Posted October 09, 2019
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skeletonbow: Because they're 2 very different pieces of technology being used. The installers are old school static files built into an Inno archive with custom installer front end, which have to be installed by the installer, dependencies installed, and any post install preparations done.

</doseofreality>
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ryuken3k: I'm not salty or demanding change, I just wanted to discuss possible solutions, no dose of reality necessary. The offline installer feature may be deprecated one day, but I can still try to understand and learn something out of the situation.
For clarity, the forum merges consecutive posts if they're close enough together into one message. The Update part was more directed at the thread in general and not direct response to you. :)

I hope GOG doesn't ever deprecate the standalone installers any day because doing so would violate their promise that Galaxy would always be optional. They could just neglect them enough that they're technically there but never actually updated though and it'd be a shame to see that legacy die off.

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ryuken3k: Just curious, how do you know what GOG's server structure/operations are without working for them?
Had my account since 2009, but have been an actual customer since 2012 and have closely followed and participated here in the GOG forums for a large part of that. A lot has been discussed in the forums and shared by GOG employees over time about how Galaxy works, and how their server infrastructure is. These things aren't secret knowledge by any stretch. Also, one can simply monitor the outbound HTTP/HTTPS connections from a computer and map out GOG's entire domain and CDNs with little effort, and I've done that also.

Lots to be discovered in the forum archives here for the curious. Best to use Google "site:gog.com" than the integrated search to really find anything though.

HTH
Posted October 09, 2019
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ryuken3k: I'm not salty or demanding change, I just wanted to discuss possible solutions, no dose of reality necessary. The offline installer feature may be deprecated one day, but I can still try to understand and learn something out of the situation.
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skeletonbow: For clarity, the forum merges consecutive posts if they're close enough together into one message. The Update part was more directed at the thread in general and not direct response to you. :)
Yeah, I noticed that... Is there any way to post consecutively without merging?
Posted October 09, 2019
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ryuken3k: Just curious, how do you know what GOG's server structure/operations are without working for them?

===============

But I already wrote the solution down on a napkin and mailed it to GOG HQ via encrypted carrier pigeon...
1st bit above: He IS gog, and gog is him, naturally......mwahahahah--*coughs*--hahaha.

2nd bit above: Now you have me thinking of cybernetically enhanced pigeons. o.0
================================
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ryuken3k: Yeah, I noticed that... Is there any way to post consecutively without merging?
You simply wait at least 12 minutes between posts, or wait for someone else to post first. :)
Post edited October 09, 2019 by GameRager
Posted October 10, 2019
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ryuken3k: But I already wrote the solution down on a napkin and mailed it to GOG HQ via encrypted carrier pigeon...
I've always wanted to know how to encrypt a pigeon.
Posted October 10, 2019
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ryuken3k: But I already wrote the solution down on a napkin and mailed it to GOG HQ via encrypted carrier pigeon...
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clarry: I've always wanted to know how to encrypt a pigeon.
The trouble comes when you try to decrypt it again in order to be able to use it as anything but cat food.
Posted October 10, 2019
Assimilation into Galaxy will happen slowly.........
Posted October 10, 2019
So..... just out of curiosity. Have they updated any of the offline installers mentioned in this topic? Because they sure as hell haven't updated the one i mentioned back in post 4.

This is ridiculous.
Posted October 10, 2019
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clarry: I've always wanted to know how to encrypt a pigeon.
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Maighstir: The trouble comes when you try to decrypt it again in order to be able to use it as anything but cat food.
So I guess it works like typical crypto that chops the input into tiny little pieces and stirs it around and substitutes pieces for different kind of pieces in a loop while mixing it with key material...

I can see why it would be difficult to decrypt a pigeon.
Posted October 10, 2019
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skeletonbow: For clarity, the forum merges consecutive posts if they're close enough together into one message. The Update part was more directed at the thread in general and not direct response to you. :)
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ryuken3k: Yeah, I noticed that... Is there any way to post consecutively without merging?
Yeah, by either waiting for someone else to post first, or 10-15m to pass, not sure the exact timing. Would be nice to be able to disable post merging manually when posting though.
Posted October 10, 2019
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Maighstir: The trouble comes when you try to decrypt it again in order to be able to use it as anything but cat food.
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clarry: So I guess it works like typical crypto that chops the input into tiny little pieces and stirs it around and substitutes pieces for different kind of pieces in a loop while mixing it with key material...

I can see why it would be difficult to decrypt a pigeon.
Unless said pigeon is merely a carrier for the data via an implant of some sort. ;)
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionWhy are the standalone/offline Installers forgotten lately when there are updates?(44 posts)(44 posts)
(44 posts)