GOG Galaxy

[Vincentdante]

GOG Galaxy

This post is acting sort of as a PSA right now, GOG have opened a public beta for the GOG Galaxy client. Eager as I am to try it out I've signed up and waiting for my email. Anyone else going to give it a go or going to wait for release (or not at all - optional)?

http://www.gog.com/news/gog_galaxy_beta_starts_now

 

[Phinnway]

Cool. I signed up for the beta.

I hoped GOG Galaxy would come out by the time TW3 released, but I guess not. At least the beta is out.

 

[ReptilePZ]

Yeah, I have the alpha client installed already, but apparently it won't update to the beta build until tomorrow at the earliest. Seems like a pretty solid client from what I've seen of it so far, though.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

I'm not going to use it until community client will come out. Closed clients for managing installations? No, thanks.

 

[Garrison72]

I thought we could manage installations how we wished? I'll try it out because I'm curious how it works, lots of fuzzy details so far. And a client for MP games could be a big thing for GOG.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

I thought we could manage installations how we wished?

Now you don't manage it. You just download the package and then install it. Downloading can be done using GOG downloader protocol using for example lgogdownloader (to simplify recovery and so on) or from the site. With Galaxy out, GOG downloader protocol will be disabled. The main benefit of Galaxy will be providing a protocol for incremental updates. I.e. pulling patches incrementally for existing installations. In addition it will also save full packages for backup purposes as before.

I personally don't use any closed clients. So when GOG will publish the protocol, hopefully community will create an open client to provide such option.

 

[Vincentdante]

So initial impressions are pretty good. I like how the store page just shows you the website itself, simple enough. The library is easy to navigate with options to change the layout, if I had to criticise anything in this area it's that I wish it had the option to manually organise the library like how the website allows. Instead we choose between "by date" or "by title." The general layout is simple and easy to understand as well.

It would be a nice feature if it could automatically detect games you already have installed through the website instead of asking if you want to download it assuming you haven't (I have a couple of GOG games installed on my drives already). You can manually check for other folders I have discovered though by clicking on the game and choosing "more" > "Manage" > "import folders" however it seems to download something anyway so I'm not sure what the point of it is.

I'm going to try downloading something now and see how it goes.

EDIT: I took a Gamble in the name of science and discovered that importing folders to Galaxy as I described above will eat your mods. To be fair there was a warning screen saying that additional downloads and overwrites may happen and I took the chance to find out what would happen. Well now I need to reinstall my Baldurs Gate 2 mods