Needing twice the space to install is the only real reason I use Galaxy for big modern games. I only have a 500GB SSD, which is fine for playing games but it can be tough to have a 40GB installer or whatever. Anything older though, it doesn't really matter.

Ideally one day I'll download all my GOG games to a couple backup drives and install from them, but that hasn't happened yet.

Well be glad you didn't have only 6Gb in 2000 between two drives like i did... I could have one game installed, either Diablo 2 (With expansions) or Morrowind (with both expansions).

Though honestly, games shouldn't be so damn huge. They don't really seem to offer that much for the space either.

I get the size complaints, but I do have to say it looks pretty nice when a game uses uncompressed textures. Fallout 4 for example has a 50GB uncompressed texture pack you can download, and man it makes a real difference. SSDs are getting cheaper so hopefully it's not a concern much longer.

Uncompressed? Or losslessly stored? I would prefer compressed but is lossless vs uncompressed. (Though i suppose you could just find the textures folder and compress it only or do a compressed mounted FS, though that's a lot of workaround)

Assuming the world doesn't end soon, in another 5-10 years the space limitations will likely be a thing of the past, and drives and storage media will be a bit cheaper than it is now.

Though i remember several years ago where i think like 4-8Gb for $12 was good for a thumbdrive.

I'm not techy enough to know the difference, sorry. I know without it the textures have compression artifacts like macroblocking, and with it they do not.

Which would come down to the particular method that compressed it. A PNG file for example is lossless, though saves space though several methods of options on how to store it (filters, interlacing, how hard you put into compressing it, memory model, etc). GIF is also lossless (if your file is 256 colors or less). But comparing to BMP which is lossless, but empliments no compression at all.

Even a lossy algorithm can give lossless results, the explaination of how JPEG works is quite a interesting feat, though the reduction method being where it becomes more and more lossy and certain content (Text/huge changes) is obvious while otherwise it's not nearly so bad.

Although in the case of DDS's it does appear to be rather lossy rather than doing say libz'ing the data. Which is not what i expected to find out just now. The image shows the same dds (uncompressed vs compressed, AAP.dds from Starpoint Gemini 2)

Curiously Transparent filesystem compression yeilds the same size results of compression, while zipping it gives you twice the compression with no loss. Very interesting...

To me that sounds like making the current installers more confusing to casual users. So after you have uncompressed the game files to a subdirectory of your choice (be it a self-extracting compressed .exe or having to use e.g. 7-zip for the task), which in itself would go over the head of many users, they'd have to locate a separate executable within the uncompressed files that needs to be run in order to add needed registry entries, maybe creating shortcuts and start menu objects, maybe running needed dependencies just in case (would their installers be included with the compressed GOG installation?) etc.

Naturally there would still have to be some kind of uninstaller included too, in case extra shortcuts and registry entries were made.

The current installers are still pretty easy to comprehend and work coherently, as long as the user knows how to download them and run them. The rest is easy.

The suggested system would possibly also cause more support emails to GOG when people don't fully understand how to use those "zipped installations".

You're imagining things that don't need to be. The offline installers can look and behave exactly like they currently do. But the thing that does the final part of the installation (registry etc.) is also included among the game's files, and run automatically for the user by the installer. So there's no difference in how it works for the casual user. But someone who's installed the game (or just extracted the installer) once can run the final stage again if the installation isn't portable. Yeah? I think GOG games include uninstallers.

I agree that having the games zipped up would get confusing for most users. Its not really needed as you can just extract the installs from them anyway.

What would be good though is if they did what they did with Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, as it contains a batch file which re-adds the registry entries if you run it. So all you need to do with that game is extract it or install it copy it. Uninstall if you installed then run the batch file in the game's directory to re-add needed registry entries.

The batch file uses the %locpath% command which basically will create entries for wherever the file is located. So you don't need to change anything, just make sure that its kept in the game's directory.

It's the only GOG game that I know of that has it.

The GOG installers for the most part shrink the full install size

Witcher 3 goes from 36GB to 33GB
Plagues Tale goes from 41.5GB to 35.4GB

Ive checked about 20 others and the installers are smaller by a considerable amount... that said I download and offline archive all my GOG games to the tune of over 700 (lots have been removed from catalog , Witcher 3 has 3 versions as an example and I version save EG No Man's Sky) and they are all in offline installers from GOG.

What you are saying makes no sense to me and I have a 4TB drive filled up next to my game install drive to prove it :)

Well, you don't have to do anything you want to of course, but you did make a claim about me, and for that to be a fact, you need to prove it.

I know what portable means, and I wasn't really addressing that aspect, other than in the context of size.
Portable like I have said, will always be much larger than installer, and a claim was made about being double, which would only be the case if the installer wasn't compressed at all, just packaged only ... which I don't believe is ever the case with GOG installers.

Anyway, the ultimate portable state is the compressed one of just a few files (EXE, BIN, ZIP, RAR). They are much better for archiving and for copying. Copying or Moving a folder of files and sub-folders takes way longer than the zipped up (packaged) version. You also don't get some of the other occasional issues you mentioned.

The only issues are extraction time and space to contain source and destination extraction content, if on the same drive. Typically, a smart person has the source file(s) on another drive, which should be the case if you are doing proper backing up.

Anyway, how do you suggest GOG provide an expanded portable version? And why should they, when clearly the majority would prefer the better archive type? To me it makes no sense to provide what is almost the same package of files.

Would you keep the downloaded package and an extracted copy as well? At some point you would have the package version and the extracted version, so you cannot avoid the space issue in the first instance ... only for maybe subsequent installs .... just a waste of time to my mind.

GOG plead they are too busy as things are, so why would they do this extra work, when it doesn't make much sense to do so?

Yes, I get it would be nice to have a package without dependencies outside, but for some games that is just not realistic, and in most cases would be down to how the developer has things set up, so not a GOG issue.

Developers seem to struggle as it is in many cases, to provide a GOG centric version of their game. You really don't want to give them another hurdle or deterrent. Getting bug fixes and updates is bad enough much of the time.