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ssokolow: ...
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Elenarie: InnoSetup is not proprietary.
"proprietary format". For quite a long time, InnoSetup was the only thing that knew how to unpack InnoSetup archives. That's the definition of a proprietary format.

Hell, the author of InnoUnp accomplished it by taking the unpack code from InnoSetup and packaging it into a standalone EXE. We had to wait for InnoExtract to get a second implementation.
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ssokolow: "proprietary format". For quite a long time, InnoSetup was the only thing that knew how to unpack InnoSetup archives. That's the definition of a proprietary format.

Hell, the author of InnoUnp accomplished it by taking the unpack code from InnoSetup and packaging it into a standalone EXE. We had to wait for InnoExtract to get a second implementation.
Formally saying it's not a proprietary format, just an uncommon format. Proprietary one means that it requires reverse engineering to access or even if there are already open tools to access it it's patented or so such. Not sure about the later part with innosetup. RAR for that matter is a proprietary format.

But that's besides the point. Innosetup isn't a blocker in this case.
Post edited December 31, 2014 by shmerl
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ssokolow: "proprietary format". For quite a long time, InnoSetup was the only thing that knew how to unpack InnoSetup archives. That's the definition of a proprietary format.

Hell, the author of InnoUnp accomplished it by taking the unpack code from InnoSetup and packaging it into a standalone EXE. We had to wait for InnoExtract to get a second implementation.
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shmerl: Formally saying it's not a proprietary format, just an uncommon format. Proprietary one means that it requires reverse engineering to access or even if there are already open tools to access it it's patented or so such. Not sure about the later part with innosetup. RAR for that matter is a proprietary format.

But that's besides the point. Innosetup isn't a blocker in this case.
Ahh, point. I got sloppy with the definition of "proprietary" and let it blur into "in-house/NIH" by ignoring that obscurity rather than law or concerted effort was keeping it to a single supplier.
Post edited December 31, 2014 by ssokolow
Yo. :)

Didn't know about this thread earlier, but yeah, those are my thoughts on the matter. Appreciate the repost. :)

Glad to see this issue is sparking so much outrage. GOG better clean up their act on this one, I'm really getting tired of their excuses. The more I read into this, the more enraged I get by the ducking and weaving, nonsensical reasoning and the increasingly-trite "we greatly value your input" PR double-speak laden responses from GOG staff that really translate to "we've already made our decision, we're not changing a damn thing, but you can keep rattling your cages all you please if it makes you feel better about yourselves."

Browser compatibility? Validation and tamper-proofing? With encryption and password-locked archives?! Either someone at GOG is incredibly stupid, or they're taking us all for being incredibly stupid. I hope someone gets fired over this. What a mess.
Post edited December 31, 2014 by Eldarby
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Eldarby: Glad to see this issue is sparking so much outrage. GOG better clean up their act on this one, I'm really getting tired of their excuses. The more I read into this, the more enraged I get by the ducking and weaving, nonsensical reasoning and the increasingly-trite "we greatly value your input" PR double-speak laden responses from GOG staff that really translate to "we've already made our decision, we're not changing a damn thing, but you can keep rattling your cages all you please if it makes you feel better about yourselves."
Sorry for inflicting you such a poor welcoming post, especially seeing how interesting is your post in the wishlist, but: this is all matter for the other thread linked in the opening post.
Here we are not debating on whether or not GOG will/should change their packaging practices. Any post that is not answering one of these two simple questions would be better posted in the other thread:
_Assuming GOG is keeping the new installers, how can we work with it?
_Assuming GOG is not keeping the new installers, what could be used in their place?

You’re welcome to discuss these interrogations here, or other interrogations in the other thread. You’ll find roughly the same people on the two threads, ready to talk in any case, but I’ve a feeling that both angles (technical/political) can’t be discussed together in the same thread ;)
To be clear, I wasn't soliciting debate, I was merely venting my feelings on the matter. If I were to do that in the other thread, I'd have to repost that list of technical suggestions in the general thread for context, and then I'd be off-topic again... do you see my dilemma? At least this way all of my thoughts are contained to a single thread. However, I do respect your desire to keep this discussion appropriately moderated, so I'll refrain from opining and stick to contributing only technical suggestions in this thread from now on, if any more come to mind.

Now let's get 'em... with SCIENCE!
Has anyone noticed any patterns which games are affected?

I mean, it can't be all of the new setup.exe's because the new freebie Akalabeth can be extracted with Innoextract just like before. The installer does not work in Wine though (runtime errors).

Is it just new, multipart setups or what?

Edit. King's Bounty - Warriors of the North seems to be affected (two part installer) but the DLC pack (one part) is not affected.
Post edited December 31, 2014 by Daliz
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Elenarie: InnoSetup is not proprietary.
But RAR is... and it currently uses RAR...
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Niggles: is there a reason why its the linux guys who are the ones concerned about this change?
With RAR being proprietary it means it might not be able to be implemented properly in free software (software patents and all that jazz).

Although GoG provides games in a tar format for Linux users, that doesn't mean you can't use the games in WINE or another emulator (assuming a linux version isn't an option); Regardless you still have to extract the game somehow.
Post edited December 31, 2014 by rtcvb32
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Daliz: Has anyone noticed any patterns which games are affected?
New multi-parts installers (4Gb+ installers), from roughly six months ago.

-----

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Elenarie: InnoSetup is not proprietary.
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rtcvb32: But RAR is... and it currently uses RAR...
The RAR compression is not done by InnoSetup, it is a custom GOG method.
Post edited December 31, 2014 by vv221
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vv221: The RAR compression is not done by InnoSetup, it is a custom GOG method.
Then.... What's going on??

Although i'm confused i don't really need an answer. I'll just go back to... something else...
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vv221: The RAR compression is not done by InnoSetup, it is a custom GOG method.
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rtcvb32: Then.... What's going on??
The InnoSetup installer unpacks a custom GOG unrar.dll and then the custom unrar.dll unpacks the password-protected RAR files with .bin extensions.

(In case you meant it in a technical sense)
A new version of Innoextract with some "GOG" features :)

https://github.com/dscharrer/innoextract/issues/37

http://constexpr.org/innoextract/files/tmp/innoextract-1.5-rc1/
Post edited January 01, 2015 by Daliz
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ssokolow: 2. Customize (but don't change the length on) the 7-byte constant header prefix in your RAR files so WinRAR won't recognize them.
If they change the rar archive to be unrecognizable by the standard unpacker, someone has to take out a hex editor, examine the file, figure out that it is just a mutated rar archive and then post these results here publicly. Then we can come up with a method/script which repairs the file to a standard rar archive, so that we can unpack it.

How is that any different from what we currently do with the password protected installers?

Imho there are two alternatives here:

Either GOG decides to stick to standard rar archives together with an installer exe which sets up registry keys, compatibility settings, etc. To unexperienced users is has to be explained that for a proper installation the installer has to be executed, just unraring the file is not enough. Users who want to fool around with the game data without using the installer can do so with standard unpack utilities.

- or -

They try to make it impossible to just unrar the archive. Then it doesn't really matter if they do it with password protection, malformed archives or any other clever tricks. Those who want to bypass the installer have to create and maintain their own tool/script to unpack these gog installers. And be prepared that the script will most likely break whenever GOG changes something.

I personally belief throwing explanations at the user is the better alternative in the long run, rather then limiting the user's options so much that they can't do anything stupid. But since this is supposed to be a "tech"-thread, I will refrain from any long philosophical ramblings :p
All this making it impossible to unpack idea is chasing the wrong kind of problem with a wrong solution. It's enough just to use another extension and prevent content sniffing in the browser using server side configuration. Then they can use whatever archive format they want without mangling (as long as it's unpackable of course using some existing tools and without any hidden passwords).
Post edited January 01, 2015 by shmerl
I'd like to sum everything up, please correct me if anything I say is wrong:

1) The new, problematic installers are the ones marked as 2.1.0 in the download page. Newly released games are all being bundled with these installers, and a number of previously released games have also been upgraded to use these installers.

2) At the moment, it is impossible to run any of these installers using Wine.

3) In the case of multi-file installers, it is also impossible to extract them using Innoextract.

4) Single-file installers (the ones that consist only of an .exe file), however, can be extracted with Innoextract, just like the previous installers.

Is everything correct?