clarry: Client A is called firefox or chrome or whatever. Client B is called galaxy. Both download files from the internet. Why can't A get the same files at the same time as B does?
Gersen: Well from what Gog told us and what I understood (Thiev can probably give is more information on that), with Galaxy they basically have an "installed" (actually more than one as they keep multiple version) reference version of the game on their servers; when the devs want to patch the game they simply update this installed version.
Then Galaxy compare between the installed version on your computer and the reference installed version on Gog server and download the differences. You don't have to create any installer / patcher it's all handled by Galaxy and if you want to rollback you simply tell Galaxy to do the comparison to a specific older version instead of the latest one.
If Galaxy can compare and update files, it must have access to those files and the relevant metadata about them. Why don't we have access to the same files via the browser?
With the offline patches they have to get the changes, create installers, test them, upload them, etc... even if most of this process is probably automatized it's still more work than the Galaxy route and probably requires more involvement from Gog team too.
> get the changes
If galaxy can do it automatically, so can anything else
> create installers
If galaxy can install files automatically, installers can be created automatically
> test them
If galaxy can download untested updates, so can a browser
> upload them
If galaxy can access these files, they are already uploaded, why can't we have them?
I guess I'm more after the files and metadata that are relevant to installing and updating the game, and not so much after the installers that bundle these files up.
But Thiev suggested the process is automated, and honestly I didn't expect anything less?
So I'm curious about the technical side of things.