I've noticed that patches aren't being released as standalone downloads for Linux. It seems that WL2 can only be updated by downloading the entire game archive over again, and more than 10 GB a pop. This is a bit excessive.

Is there any explanation for this? Is inXile just not submitting Linux patches to GOG? Is anyone posting binary diffs of the game's directory tree somewhere? That'd be a lot more convenient then having to download everything from scratch.

The issue, from what I understand, is that the game is mostly one big file for each zone. So as soon there is a single change in a zone, the file changes. And with the current "early" patches, nearly all zones are changed. So you can't make a simple .tar.gz with only modified files, it would be almost as big as the whole game.

The solution would be to use some binary diff tool, like xdelta, but that would require GOG to make a patch installation software (or script at least, but gamers will likely desire a GUI). I guess they'll eventually come to it, but their Linux support is new, for now they just provided .deb or .tar.gz, they didn't make any linux-specific installer/patcher tool.

That would greatly save in download size, I tried on one file (the "AZ01_KillingFields.unity3d") and the "diff" generated by xdelta is 360Kb instead of 230Mb for the whole file.

Well, that's what I'm saying: a tarball consisting of delta patches for each modified file, and maybe a script to apply the patches safely, verifying checksums before overwriting files, would be pretty trivial to prepare. I'd expect that any seasoned Linux user could write a shell script to automate the creation of delta patch archives within a couple of hours. That's why I'm surprised that after two patches, no one's bothered, and we still have to download the entire game again if so much as a single bit changes somewhere in the Unity resources.

Hell, I bet I could write a quick-and-dirty script that gets the job done well enough in less time than it would take to download the latest version of the game. I hardly think a fancy GUI is necessary, given that the game itself is distributed as a tarball with a non-graphical shell script to set things up.

I really want to support GOG, and I value their DRM-free commitment, but I suspect that I wouldn't be dealing with this issue if I'd opted to redeem WL2 through Steam. I'm fairly certain that delta patching is built into the Steam client, even on Linux.

Not all users are seasoned. And your shell script, to be able to work on all systems, would have to embed the xdelta executable too, or explain to the user how to install it, it would need to "know" (command line arguments or whatever) where the game is installed, and in both cases it would lead to plenty of time-consuming support requests and frustrated users.

I'm hoping GOG is working on a solution, but there is a huge difference between a quick-and-dirty script you make for yourself in a few hours, and something you can release to variety of users with different setups, skills, will to fiddle, ... and have to provide commercial support for afterward.

I'm not really happy with the current state of things, I've a slow bandwidth at home, so I'm forced to download the game at work, put it on USB key, and then install it at home... but that's the kind of things I can do at least, thanks to GOG being "normal" download, not steam-like ;) And I'm ready to let GOG time to work out a proper solution, they are new to Linux support, let's be patient ;)

Last week I wrote such a script just for kicks. Yeah, it only took a few hours. What lame kind of show are GOG running here?

For Wasteland 2 the script creates a 1.85GB patch archive of 102 files between versions 1.0.0.4 and 1.2.0.6. That's an 83% bandwidth savings.

I believe this is the case for all Linux games on GOG currently. We deliver Linux the same way we do Mac and Windows but the GOG patching process is just not the same. I believe they are working on improving this process though, but you would have to ask them directly, we can't really speak to it as devs because we're not involved in the patching process.

Elitist linux user detected.

I can tie my own shoes but that doesn't mean someone who just moved up from wearing velcros need to hear my crap.

oh look... a hotfix that's 1.3MB is another 10.3GB on linux... GOOD JOB! you know that you are actively destroying the environment here?

I'd expect that the typical Linux user is far more technically skilled than the typical Windows or Mac user. Regardless, I'm not suggesting that users write their own patch scripts -- what I was suggesting a "seasoned" user would be capable of -- and doing so would defeat the purpose entirely, anyway, since you'd need to download the entire new version of the game in order to make the delta files.

The existing Linux distribution of the game itself contains an entire directory full of binary libraries, and the existing launcher -- again, also a bash script -- "knows" where they are, and has no problem overriding the system libraries and using the bundled ones instead. Including a statically-linked copy of xdelta along with a diff patch is along the same lines. Users already have to run bash scripts to use GOG's config tools, so distributing patches this way would require no more skill than is already required to install the game in the first place.

I'm not asking for something "you can release to variety of users with different setups, skills, will to fiddle, ... and have to provide commercial support for afterward", but for something equivalent to the scripts already used to install the game in the first place. GOG isn't targeting the "big tent" of Linux users with their scripts: they're limiting themselves to the current supported releases of Ubuntu. Users of other distros are already on their own: the GOG install script and launcher didn't work at all on my system, nor did the bundled libraries. I'd be happy with an archive of delta files, regardless of whether the patch scripts work for me.

The current situation is one in which *no one* -- skilled and unskilled alike, on any distro -- has access to differential patches. Even if a tentative solution might be beyond a few user's skill level, something is still better than nothing. Any chance you could host your diffs somewhere?

You're misunderstanding. The script that he wrote is a tool to generate patches -- the proper comparison isn't between krobillard and the average user, it's between krobillard and the GOG developers who could spend perhaps a single day doing the same work to automate differential patch creation on their side. Whomever wrote the start.sh, gog_system_report.sh, and gog_com.shlib scripts included with the game itself should be more than capable of putting together such a tool.

I'd wager that the bandwidth costs incurred by GOG from users downloading the entire game over and over again well exceed the cost of developing this solution. Thanks for the info. Makes me miss the days when developers would release standalone patches on their own websites, but I suppose doing things this way is more efficient for you. If GOG doesn't fix this situation, though, I'll probably end up redeeming Torment through Steam.

Of course not asterus0, it's proprietary data of InXile.

Sufyan, GOG has been selling Linux games for a few months now. They should have had installation and update tools available on day ONE. That is their JOB. Is it really too much to ask for some basic competency? Heh... developers seem quite lazy these days. Game engines - outsourced. Artwork - outsourced. Packaging and distribution - outsourced.

Your delta files are unique blocks of data that you created on your own computer, which means that the copyright belongs to you, not inXile. Binary diffs wouldn't even likely qualify as derivative works, since the delta files themselves don't contain any intelligible reproduction of the original work, and can't be transformed into anything that would reproduce the original work unless you've already got the original fileset.

I'm okay with this -- even in the old days, when the engine developers and the game designers worked under the same roof, they were still usually separate teams. Look at the old Sierra adventures, for example: they had programmers who developed the AGI and SCI engines, they had different programmers who coded the game logic within those engines, and then they had game designers who developed the gameplay mechanics, wrote the dialogue, etc. I think the latter two functions commonly overlapped, but I don't recall often seeing the same names in the "Development System" and "Programmer" credits of those old games.

Writing engines and writing game logic are on opposite ends of the high-level/low-level spectrum, and I wouldn't expect there to be a large number of people who are very good at both. Having versatile, commoditized engines like Unity allows game developers to focus on implementing their own vision without having to construct their entire toolchain from scratch, and small teams can make games without having to have skilled low-level programmers on hand. By the same reasoning, I wouldn't expect even the engine developers to implement e.g. their own C compilers.

Artwork, on the other hand, is something that should never be outsourced. The artists and musicians ought to be integral members of the development team.

The patching situation is unbelievable. I cannot download a 10GB+ file on GOG without a checksum error. I have to use workarounds like lgogdownloader, which stopped working when I upgraded to Ubuntu 14.04.1; of course I am greatful to lgogdownloader creators just for trying to give us an option for better downloading. But I believe one of the GOG employees said a week or two ago the 2nd patch would be delivered properly, and it still isn't the case... I think Steam will be my choice from now on.

I'm 100% certain they're working to fix this somehow. Things take time. I don't know how many Linux guys they have working there on game patches/packages but I think not many and right now it can't be any other way: the return of investment is not certain as Linux is still a marginal OS.

If I'm not mistaken they have supported Linux 2-3 months now. I'm quite happy that GOG launched the Linux support early, most GOG games are much smaller than 12Gb anyway. This is a much better situation than to still be waiting for the "Linux support soon".

The upcoming Galaxy client won't exactly solve this problem by itself - it is confirmed to be able to download standalone installers (and patches I assume), so they need the patching system anyway.

That was my point. GOG's venture into linux is still relatively new, I think calling their effort "lame" is elitist.

I'm just a dumb windows user so I'll get out of the thread now.

(btw I'm also a huge hypocrite who goes nuts over present day windows computer illiteracy that is spread even among people who claim to have been gaming for 15-25 years)