Sounds good!

I think your solution is acceptable. I own the Steam version of DQ as well and the installation script for DQ that installed the Air dependencies worked just fine. On Steam I have played many hours of DQ for Linux and have had no real issues running the game.

Okay, here's a quick mockup of the launcher I'm working on for this.

I'm trying to answer as many questions the user might have as I can in a straightforward but easy to understand way without overloading.

1) What's the difference between "fancy" and "simple" ?
2) Do I have to install Adobe AIR to run this game?
3) Is the gameplay content in each version identical?
4) What features are missing from the "simple" version?
5) Are my save files in one automatically carried over to the other?
6) How do I install Adobe AIR? Do I have to do that myself?

Feedback on the image?

I understood the options portrayed in the image. Seems like a good option for Linux users. As I said before the Steam installer for the Linux port of DQ worked great for me.

I'm making good progress on this, I already have a "first draft" if anyone wants to help me test it. If so, PM me and I'll give you a download link + access credentials.

@Judas:
In my second draft, I'll include an option to remove adobe air easily.

UPDATE:
Okay, I've got this working now.

The launcher now looks like the attached. It auto-detects whether Adobe AIR is installed.

If YES, it adds the option to uninstall it with one click. I'm still working on the script for this but the interface is there (currently does nothing).

If NOT, it informs you that running the game in "Fancy" mode will prompt you to install Adobe AIR with our custom "easy install" script.

I've tested on kubuntu and both "fancy" and "simple" mode work. Would love if others could help me test this. PM me for a download link.

SO, once I plug the uninstaller scripts in, deploying this is really simple:

1) Create and post some useful instructions/warnings for the store page RE: Linux
2) I provide the package to GOG, with instructions for the user to run the "launcher" executable which provides the choice/instructions

I caught sight of this from the general thread, so i'll make a comment...


One of my favorite tiny distros is Slax. Slax is based on making packages loop-back mountable, and then using the software as though it was always installed.

So with that mindset in mind, does the Adobe Air need to be installed? Or could it be silently mounted and then used, then unmount afterwards without leaving a trace? In theory it could run in a ramdrive or mount to a temporary directory as (read-only). Depending on the system supporting compressed filesystems, it could be as a Squashfs filesystem (Which has been in the linux kernel since 2.4.20 i think)

Usually: sudo apt-get remove adobeair

:-)

I'm holding back tears of joy to see a GOG.com Team member ask that question!

niniendowarrior, you do that, go on, we'll wait

I have to admit I have no idea, this is all rather advanced for me; I'll be satisfied if I can get it to run with the most common flavors of Linux (debian/ubuntu/steamOS, fedora, etc). That said the whole thing is driven by scripts, so if you knew how to do the black magic you describe and could tinker with the scripts to pull it off, I'd be more than happy to roll those changes into the official package.

Already did that some time back when I had to remove the old hipchat that was using adobe air. :-)
Of course, I knew I installed the Ubuntu adobe-air package.

I am not too familiar with all the background scripting done in the installers and with linux. But I do know how to prepare and work with ramdrives and squashfs drives.

If you want as much backwards compatibility as possible, then you probably would want to use a crom drive (Compressed rom) where it uses zlib compression, the same setup used for the longest time for emergency rescue disks and for installers (usually including the minimum needed to get the OS running).

A word of caution and that is to mount a drive you need admin permission; Of course if the script has sudo permissions temporarily that problem goes away.


You can send me what you're working with and I can see if I can get it working on my side, I can use a VM to do testing, probably Ubuntu (if it doesn't look too complex)

As long as the root-privileged mounting and unmounting is accomplished using scripts only (no compiled code that didn't come with my system), I'd be OK with that too. (As you may remember, I'm the guy who's more likely to turn to Wine than allow Adobe's installer to meddle in my system.)

With trustworthy root-privileged scripts, a compressed filesystem containing AIR would be equivalent to the Windows/OSX approach of bundling AIR with the game.