I hadn't noticed that information was available. But then again: jun 15, 2011.

Well... Nope.

This is where test environments come in to play. You build something, test it, and rework what doesn't work WITHOUT REPLACING THE ORIGINAL SITE. If The Wrestling Game can figure that out (and believe me they're about as mickey mouse as it gets when it comes to developing game/web code) then there's absolutely NO excuse why GoG can't figure out how to host a test environment that facilitates downloading of dummy files, or only allows access to a restricted number of games (to preserve server space and bandwidth) to get it working right. Of course, my belief is that this is all tied to the Galaxy project, and they won't be able to move forward with the new account section until Galaxy reaches a certain stage of development to properly test the strain, bugs and functionality of the server. But they won't say that because holding up REAL problems on the main site because of an optional thing in development would be PR and career suicide at this point.

EDIT: The number of games is wrong because not all games are supported by the Galaxy client yet and that page is directly from the client. Also, the count is always off by one for some reason (likely the client counting as a game and not showing on the shelf there).

That seems to be a programming bug, where some code does start the game index by 1 and another at 0. :)

Voted.

Today I checked the library again and I bumped into the following usability issues.

1. Tedious title relocation on large libraries
The very long list of games makes it quite hard to move titles from bottom up. You have to move them in an intermediate place upwards, scroll up and repeat until you find the right place. It's somehow easier if you zoom the page so you can see more titles but if you zoom too much you might as well no longer distinguish the titles between each other.

2. No tooltips on hover
Sorting titles with the same or very similar covers requires you to click the game title, to open the game details and read the game title. But then you can't just grab the title and move it; you have to close the game details first. That's two extra useless clicks on top of issue #1. Adding the game's title as a tooltip on mouse over would solve this issue.

3. No hyperlink to the game's page on unbundled titles
From the game's details you can click its name to go to its page but this is not possible for the unbundled titles and it's really annoying to rely on the search tool to get there.

4. No grouping option
Especially for large collection with unbundled games it would be a lot easier if you could simply select multiple titles and move them as a group. Ideally, you could select more games, regardless their position in the library, then select a drop zone after scrolling to the right place - not limited to the visible shelf areas.

5. Inflexible shelf width
The shelf is fine with few games but when you get past 50-100 you will have a hard time with manual sorting. A wider shelf would make a mess out of the current design so this is a tricky one, but a full-screen/page shelf mode would make it easier to manage titles for people with large/wide screens even with the current shortcomings.

6. No chronology-sort in collections
I had to go to Wikipedia to find out the chronology of the "Incredible Machine" titles. It would be really nice if GOG would help us sort games in a chronological manner by adding a field with the original release date of each game.

This si the Reason I'm adding all my GoG titles to my launchbox. Customized sorting, name prominently displayed, filters for search. I'm using the "favorite" option to select installed titles for sorting by installed/not installed, and I'm adding all my Steam titles too. In the end I'll be able to open Launchbox, select Steam, GoG or Other, installed r uninstalled, and just click on it to play/install and play.

On a related note, I received the KS edition of Pillars of Eternity here, and rather annoyingly it doesn't show any of the three GOG versions as owned. This is in spite of it containing everything the Hero Edition has (plus more). I can understand why it's distinct in their system, since it has KS-only extras, but still it's a bit disingenuous to display all versions as unowned. Just as bad as the SotS Gold Edition nonsense.

Interesting software, Launchbox. Too bad they as for your e-mail to download it. That's such a spammish way to handle downloads... I just won't touch it. I love the idea of supporting a DRM-free software for $10, especially when it's a lifetime license valid for all future releases, but that e-mail thing just doesn't feel right.

And as a Linux user I wish they had a Linux release too.

Today is Tuesday, April 14, 2015.

As you may have already read, through BillyMaysFan59's helpful initiative, we got a more or less formal reply, which briefly stated (and I am freely rephrasing): GOG is not planning to fix the numerous unbundling-related issues in the current library subsystem; most of these will be resolved only when GOG releases the new library subsystem, at some unknown date in the future.

Since this is the case, I believe I might as well wrap up these daily summary posts. What do you think?

For posterity:
- The full, week-long, unbundling had begun on 16 March 2015.
- A blue had last posted in this thread on 18 March 2015 (post #631).
- A long, but incomplete, list of the resulting issues can be found here.
- A short, but incomplete, list of what has been fixed can be found here.
- One more of my unanswered open letters to GOG can be found here.

The recording of the Unbundling Saga (™ by King) continues, as usual, in "The Book of Unbundled Tales", currently in chapter 75, over at the "what did just update?" thread.

I guess we shall have to wait and see what the new library subsystem brings about. I believe the planned release date is still August 31, 2014.

They've been working on it for half a year.

Unless the code is being written by banging a monkey on a keyboard - which, to be fair, can't be ruled out - the account system should have been changed over long ago. Decent programmers do not take this long to do an account system upgrade. Of course, we've known for a long time that GOG's web developers are bad at their jobs. :/

Same here with Pillars of Eternity. I think my only KS game that has a proper link is Shadowgate, and only because I got a proper GOG code for the Special Edition.


Putting aside their competence, I think a major problem is that they are probably tasked to work on many projects in parallel, so progress on some falls behind based on what breaks/ isn't working properly and the priority level it gets, with those related to Galaxy being #1.
I'm only speculating, but I think that account system will be finished and out only when Galaxy is.

I can't be that harsh on them. To me, it seems they simply don't have enough man-power and if that's the case I can live with that. However, you can always hire more (skilled) developers when you make money, and I think GOG makes enuogh money to focus on these long standing issues at least with project-based development, not necessarily full-time, long-term contracted developers.

When the ball keeps rolling you can afford to do more so a certain degree of investment in development should do the trick. However, it's really easy to talk without knowing what ticks and what not on the inside. I just hope GOG will go on and improve in time. That's all I want. I prefer slowly but surely rather than quickly and badly. Because I've seen a lot worse in various other places.

So GOG, please keep a fair balance and I guess most people will be happy.

It could be the other way around, that Galaxy is waiting for the account system and not the account system waiting for Galaxy.

Dunno, but I think that GOG should move back the current public state of their web presence and the backend download system into their testing environment and for the current web page (and downloading system) do a full rollback to prior to their last revamp of the website.

After completing the GOG Galaxy client, they can switch back in their new shiny glory.

Currently, I have the feeling that the development environment is more or less identical with www.gog.com.

I can. "We broke the account system, but in fairness to us, we never had the man-power to finish what we started in a timely and competent manner" is not an excuse.

That would still mean that Galaxy sets the requirements/ specifications that need to be implement/ changed/ adjusted in the account system. I think the unbundling is a very good example.

As time passes, I'm more convinced that the decision for a site and account system revamp, and the time in particular that they were announced and started to be implemented, were dictated by their decision to introduce the Galaxy client.