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A GOGBear from the API cleanup department please report to aisle 5.
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I've decided to (again) filter out some clearly old false positives from my offline installer vs Galaxy build discrepancies online table, since, well... the number of entries in the table seems to be growing constantly.

There were times when these discrepancies seemed to be kept under control, at around 100 or so, including some false positives, but now it's just all over the place...

See for yourselves: https://airtable.com/shrldLsErlUf3eHqS

Very few of them get fixed each week, roughly 3 or 5 usually.

Time for a song, I guess...
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WinterSnowfall: I've decided to (again) filter out some clearly old false positives from my offline installer vs Galaxy build discrepancies online table, since, well... the number of entries in the table seems to be growing constantly.

There were times when these discrepancies seemed to be kept under control, at around 100 or so, including some false positives, but now it's just all over the place...

See for yourselves: https://airtable.com/shrldLsErlUf3eHqS

Very few of them get fixed each week, roughly 3 or 5 usually.

Time for a song, I guess...
How many individual games does GOG have in total? There isn't a single site that is able to provide this basic information. My theory is that GOG has exceeded the physically possible limit of games that its staff is able to keep up to date.
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Alexim: My theory is that GOG has exceeded the physically possible limit of games that its staff is able to keep up to date.
Nothing that automation and devops can't fix, to be honest...
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Alexim: My theory is that GOG has exceeded the physically possible limit of games that its staff is able to keep up to date.
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WinterSnowfall: Nothing that automation and devops can't fix, to be honest...
The problem is that we all know how GOG works, so the question is, will this emergency revolutionise the automated procedures or will we stay in this situation for years until it's really no longer sustainable?
In other words, does GOG have to wait every time for things to get so much worse before they wake up?
To the posterity the tough sentence.
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WinterSnowfall: I've decided to (again) filter out some clearly old false positives from my offline installer vs Galaxy build discrepancies online table, since, well... the number of entries in the table seems to be growing constantly.

There were times when these discrepancies seemed to be kept under control, at around 100 or so, including some false positives, but now it's just all over the place...

See for yourselves: https://airtable.com/shrldLsErlUf3eHqS

Very few of them get fixed each week, roughly 3 or 5 usually.

Time for a song, I guess...
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Alexim: How many individual games does GOG have in total? There isn't a single site that is able to provide this basic information. My theory is that GOG has exceeded the physically possible limit of games that its staff is able to keep up to date.
Somewhere around 3200.
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Alexim: How many individual games does GOG have in total? There isn't a single site that is able to provide this basic information. My theory is that GOG has exceeded the physically possible limit of games that its staff is able to keep up to date.
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mrkgnao: Somewhere around 3200.
Interesting, thank you mrkgnao.
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WinterSnowfall: I've decided to (again) filter out some clearly old false positives from my offline installer vs Galaxy build discrepancies online table, since, well... the number of entries in the table seems to be growing constantly.

There were times when these discrepancies seemed to be kept under control, at around 100 or so, including some false positives, but now it's just all over the place...

See for yourselves: https://airtable.com/shrldLsErlUf3eHqS
What exactly are you comparing there? Only if the "version" string between offline and Galaxy version is any different, or if the offline installer actually is missing some update?

While most titles on that list do suggest the offline installer versions are lagging behind, there are also less clear or even false positives there in the list.

For instance, I'd call The Witcher 3 (GOTY) a false positive. While it is true the main offline installer is not updated to 1.32, there is still a separate offline 1.32 patch. So the offline version is up to date, you just have to update it with a separate patch.

Here are some I found which seem unclear (ie. is the offline installer really missing any actual update?):

Blasphemous windows 2.0.27c 2.0.27c RELEASE
Crookz - The Big Heist windows 1.0.0.24360(g) 1.0.0.24360
Death Road to Canada windows KIDNEY Update - Windows Music Fix KIDNEY Update
Dragon Age™: Origins - Ultimate Edition windows 1.05 (A) 1.5 (gog-4)
Kingdom: New Lands windows 1.2.8 (SKULL ISLAND) 1.2.8
Outward windows 1.3.3:mono 1.3.3
Slay the Spire windows 2020-12-15-998f514dc8492a2922f426f5432b29869b1c69eb 2020-12-15-8735c9fe3cc2280b76aa3ec47c953352a 7df1f65
Soldier of Fortune: Platinum Edition windows 1.07F 1.07F RC6

And for the rest, I'd be interested into two pieces of data, before ringing the alarm bells:

1. How long has the offline installer been lagging behind? Two days? Two weeks? Two months?

2. What is the actual update it is missing (e.g. is it something that affects only the Galaxy version, e.g. multiplayer that isn't even included in the offline version)?
Post edited February 14, 2021 by timppu
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timppu: Here are some I found which seem unclear (ie. is the offline installer really missing any actual update?):

Crookz - The Big Heist windows 1.0.0.24360(g) 1.0.0.24360
The attachement shows that 1.0.0.23460(g), available on Galaxy only, the offline installer is without (g) so the old revision, doesn't do very much and is rather old. You obviously can't tell what it does and whether it fixes some bugs in a game or whether the installer has been updated or changed. An update one really doesn't need. In case of some I mentioned in the other topic, comparing the lists with Galaxy (which I don't use but downloaded to check), this list seems accurate. Sadly not even the patch-logs in Galaxy seems to be up-to-date in some cases. No mention of some of the rather more recent updates and what they contain. The only difference you notice is when you actually click the Update button in that it shows a different version number. In one case with an updated patch-log. In either case, the offline installers, accessible from within Galaxy (or offline backup-files as they are called there) have a lower verson number.
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timppu: And for the rest, I'd be interested into two pieces of data, before ringing the alarm bells:
[...]
2. What is the actual update it is missing (e.g. is it something that affects only the Galaxy version, e.g. multiplayer that isn't even included in the offline version)?
there is just no good way to reliable collect that information. Unless you want to invest like a week of your time and go through all titles by hand. (and own all of the titles of course)

and the current way the changelogs are stored by GOG is just horribly insufficient.
imo, they really missed an opportunity by not sticking the changelog into the version record of the galaxy repository.
even better, make it mandatory to be non-empty, so that the developers have to fill it out every time when committing a new version to the repository.

the current changelog is basically one big pile of text for all updates, and still seems to be manually written by GOG staff, depending on the update notes sent by the dev, if they sent any. Or if the staff feels like searching for it themselves.
at least that's my impression.
There are some games where this works ok-ish, but for others you better go directly to the developer's website (or steam) to find out what has changed.
Post edited February 15, 2021 by immi101
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timppu: What exactly are you comparing there? Only if the "version" string between offline and Galaxy version is any different, or if the offline installer actually is missing some update?
Only the version string differences, as reported by the API. I don't even own most of these games and certainly don't have the time to look in the details of what those differences actually are.

Yes, I know there are some false positives in terms of what is actually missing, The Witcher 3 among them (I only look at base installer versions, not patches as well), Dragon Age is not missing anything, just the versioning is wrong - I've covered why this is the case in my original post and why I am not excluding the false positives from the list. I have tried in the past, it led to unmaintainable code.

It certainly doesn't help when GOG's versioning scheme is inconsistent and erratic.

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timppu: And for the rest, I'd be interested into two pieces of data, before ringing the alarm bells:

1. How long has the offline installer been lagging behind? Two days? Two weeks? Two months?

2. What is the actual update it is missing (e.g. is it something that affects only the Galaxy version, e.g. multiplayer that isn't even included in the offline version)?
Regarding 1), the list only contains active differences I picked up during the most recent weekend. Some of them may be resolved until I get to run my scripts again and refresh the list - expect up to 7 days of lag. This is a free service I put up out of my time after all... I do have a day job.

If you see something that was added on 11/11/2020, for example, then the discrepancy has been in place since then. If a discrepancy is fixed, it will automatically get removed from the list and added back with a fresh date, should it resurface.

Regarding 2), as I said before, I neither have the time needed to perform such detective work nor was that ever the original intention of the list. I just look at the data my scripts collect, raise eyebrows, rub my beard and sometimes doubt what I'm seeing, much like you are.

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Mori_Yuki: this list seems accurate.
Since I don't use any voodoo magic, the list will always be as accurate or inaccurate as the data reported by the APIs is. All I do are some wildcard exclusions for punctuation marks and outright ignore entries GOG has unofficially admitted are broken/legacy false positives. The list is 100% machine generated now, based on the data I collect each weekend.
Post edited February 15, 2021 by WinterSnowfall
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So, it seems the disappointment song I shared last week was only partially warranted. GOG did indeed seem to have a problem with the offline installer build system that got fixed some time earlier this week.

We are down from 180+ items on my discrepancy list to 134. Yes, some of them are still false positives (see previous posts why), but I try to keep that percentage below 10%.

I've taken steps to filter out some of the old entries that have not been updated for ages and still employ the old(er) versioning scheme for offline installers (there's a high probability those are in sync). But sometimes I just don't/can't know if a detection signifies any actual differences, because GOG does not make that clear in any way, in which case they stay on the list.

Even with the fixed build system, a fair bit of games are still inexplicably lagging behind their Galaxy builds...

*Insert half-dissapointment song*
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... and this week, in another unprecedented turn of events, we're back to around 100 discrepancies, with yet another big wave of fixes, including updates to some installers that have been neglected for a while now (we're talking last year timelines).

That's really nice to see - are the sands finally starting to shift?

Well, there are still discrepancies to be addressed so...

*Insert quarter-dissapointment song* :P
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Inspired by the technical mastery and precision of the ancient Greeks, I have devised a mechanism through which I can flag very likely and known false positives in my discrepancy table and thus exclude them from the list I'm sharing publicly, until they are (if ever) updated.

If updates to galaxy/installer versions affect any of the exclusions I've manually flagged, they will come back to haunt us all - unless the updates actually fix the discrepancy, of course. This solves the problem introduced by needing to use an explicit list of excluded game ids, namely losing visibility over what happens to them entirely.

As always, you can find the latest discrepancy data here: https://airtable.com/shrldLsErlUf3eHqS

Should anyone feel there are any false positives left on that list, do let me know, but they should now be as accurate as the movement of the heavenly bodies.
Post edited March 13, 2021 by WinterSnowfall
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WinterSnowfall: Should anyone feel there are any false positives left on that list, do let me know, but they should now be as accurate as the movement of the heavenly bodies.
You might want to remove Trine Enchanted Edition, as long as the galaxy edition is 2.12, since there is a 2.11-to-2.12 patch available offline (has been there for years).