because game devs are mongs and some gog users were whining they didn't get updates as soon as steam did without taking into account the claims that steam was letting them upload any old shit.

I don't think Galaxy uses .exe installers.

Because they use two different "formats", so to speak. Galaxy downloads and installs the game differently to your system than when you download and install using the standalone installer.

They need to adopt a new stand alone format that has the installer as a separate chunk with the game data being a compressed archived copy of the galaxy data then the dev uploads the data to the galaxy depot the system auto compresses the data and uploads the installers. This would be combined with a auto installer test and verification of the final upload to the cdn using a hash to ensure that every stage has been tested.

Obviously I have no idea of the difficulty of doing that and its impact on GOGs existing setup but given the way things are they need to update their systems. That includes depreciating the old way of uploading games to ensure that game updates don't get uploaded and subsequently ignored by GOG. Devs shouldn't have to harass GOG to update their games.

They already did that: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/adamhms_linux_wine_wrappers_news_faq_discussion/post147

Ah yeah though thats just for windows mac(?) installers but it needs to be for linux as well. They added the ability to upload linux games via the same galaxy type interface as windows/mac, in case anyone is wondering why I'm talking galaxy and linux. Of course the real benefit for us would be the automating it.

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.

For example, suppose we have a game X, where the main game folder contains a sub-folder "folder 1" and game files, "file 1" and "file 2". Game X's main game folder is revisioned based on its patch version. Because we are using a file repository, GOG can "branch" the core game files into either the "offline installer version" or the "GOG Galaxy version".

When a user downloads game X from the website, the backend system reverts the game files to a specific patch version of the offline installer branch and packs them into a GOG executable which is then sent to an FTP server triggering the file download process.

Likewise, if the user is trying to install the game through GOG Galaxy, the backend system reverts the game files to a version of the GOG Galaxy branch, sends the files to an FTP server, and triggers the download and installation process.

I don't think GOG is necessarily ignoring the update uploads. To my knowledge, the updates have to be manually tested by QA to ensure the game still boots and plays properly and then the update is then propagated to the file servers. Even then, that only means the update is available on GOG Galaxy, not the website because they are maintaining two different ways of distributing their games.

Someone give this guy a job at GOG and a bonus

Not an exact percentage, but official word is "way more than half of GOG customers right now use GOG Galaxy".

Video at 3:35: https://www.gamestar.de/videos/exklusive-doku-hinter-den-kulissen-von-gogcom-teil-3-good-new-games-wie-gog-gegen-steam-epic-store-co-bestehen-will,98366.html

Well of course most will use it, as it is easier for some(tracking games played/downloaded/etc) & gives some who like such aspects of Steam(client/achievements/etc) what they want as well....many are just used to the Steam/client way of gaming.

(Also some can't be arsed to DL and run an installer and possibly change the install directory and other "intensive & complex tasks")

Of course, it does all that while promoting more to use it and throwing those of us who don't want to use such by the wayside(even if partially unintentionally).

But I thought Galaxy fanboys insisted it was identical to download a Galaxy installer versus an "offline backup installer." You mean to say that's incorrect and that the offline backup installers are the more complete/"no additional internet connections" required option?

I wonder if the Galaxy users account for a majority of GOG's revenue though...

It is possible that non-Galaxy users spend more on games since GOG's primary appeal is DRM-free and they perceive Galaxy as another layer of DRM.

I wasn't talking generally I was talking of at least one known instance and multiple suspected instances where patches were uploaded and only after the users/devs inquired did the files get updated. I'm talking weeks of it sitting on GOGs servers with nothing happening. Could just be the case of someone going for coffee forgetting to push the send button and never checking again but who knows.
With Galaxy I'm pretty sure the files are direct from the devs untested by GOG maybe the first update is verified or something but after that its straight from the devs system.

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.


What is a "Galaxy installer"?

If you are talking about downloading the standalone offline installers using the Galaxy client (instead of using a web browser), my understanding is that those installers are 100% the same installers as the ones you can download with a web browser. They apparently come from separate servers though, but that's beyond the point.

If you are talking about downloading and installing the game through the Galaxy client... that is a whole different thing.

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.

The set of files that get installed when Galaxy installs them are not downloaded in one mononlithic archive, decompressed and installed like that. Galaxy basically has a directory hierarchy for the game in its already installed state on GOG's servers more or less, and the files just get copied as-is over from GOG's server using modern software distribution methodology, compressing on the fly and in the case of updates using deltas. This is an entirely different software distribution model for both installation and for patch management.

Even though the actual game installation is more or less the same when either process is used to install, the mechanics of how it is done are completely different, and the way the files are packaged and stored on the GOG CDN servers are completely different by design. They're not even hosted on the same servers IIRC. The process for producing deltas of patches for Galaxy would be a completely different process than the process of old fashioned patch management and manual installer creation.

We will most likely never see these two methods in 100% synchronization, and it's likely not easily possible to automate it either for a variety of technical reasons.

All this has been discussed on the forums a multitude of times over the last several years mind you so this isn't news. :)

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.

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.

I don't expect GOG to ever change the way the standalone installers are created to be honest, there is just no business justification for something that is arguably a dying thing (meaning less and less people even care about it over time).

I'd be more than thrilled pink for them to just release updated installers/patches for the existing game library within 24 hours to a week from the Galaxy builds showing up and do so on a regular basis. If they can't afford to assign the manpower to do that, then they're definitely not going to assign one or more engineers to work full time on completely redesigning a whole new way that old legacy installers are put together.

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. :)

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