Gog.com Soon On More Platforms • Hacker News Board

Re: Gog.com Soon On More Platforms

#11

Post by Yuioup » Tue, Mar 18, 2014, 12:50 PM UTC

Yes!! Been waiting for this for quite some time.

Re: Gog.com Soon On More Platforms

#12

Post by smithzvk » Tue, Mar 18, 2014, 12:50 PM UTC

misterdai wrote: post #4

It'd be nice to have improved support from GOG for linux. The PlayOnLinux project has a decent list of Gog.com games that it'll help install and run on Linux platforms. But I'd buy a lot more games from them if I didn't have to rely on that or manually trying to get games to work. Only problem will be having more games to distract me, I went with Linux to avoid needing the willpower to not play games and get on with…

I know that many "Linux gamers" scoff at the prospect of official support for running games under Wine... I don't. I think GOG in particular should jump at the chance to partner with the PlayOnLinux project and some the numerous other projects that allow older games (and some new games) to run via some emulation layer, engine rewrite, or reimplementation of Windows library/runtime support. Judging from what I have seen Wine do these days (which is by far the most fickle of methods above), I would not be surprised if a year of work or so could get %90+ of the GOG library running with near perfect quality on GNU/Linux systems. As a point of reference, running the recent Valve ports for GNU/Linux are consistently less stable than running under Wine (which works nearly perfectly) and that is without any kind of PlayOnLinux configuration script magic.

Note that there is no reason that I can see that this wouldn't simultaneously make the same software available for OS X and any other system that can run Wine.

> I went with Linux to avoid needing the willpower to not play games and get on with learning / working ;-)

heh

Re: Gog.com Soon On More Platforms

#13

Post by okasaki » Tue, Mar 18, 2014, 12:58 PM UTC

smithzvk wrote: post #12

misterdai wrote: post #4

It'd be nice to have improved support from GOG for linux. The PlayOnLinux project has a decent list of Gog.com games that it'll help install and run on Linux platforms. But I'd buy a lot more games from them if I didn't have to rely on that or manually trying to get games to work. Only problem will be having more games to distract me, I went with Linux to avoid needing the willpower to not play games and get on with…

I know that many "Linux gamers" scoff at the prospect of official support for running games under Wine... I don't. I think GOG in particular should jump at the chance to partner with the PlayOnLinux project and some the numerous other projects that allow older games (and some new games) to run via some emulation layer, engine rewrite, or reimplementation of Windows library/runtime support. Judging from what I have se…

>I know that many "Linux gamers" scoff at the prospect of official support for running games under Wine

I think that's mostly aimed at ames that are currently in development.

I prefer running games in WINE anyway. It provides a bit of extra security and it can run fullscreen-only games in a window.

Re: Gog.com Soon On More Platforms

#14

Post by throwaway2048 » Tue, Mar 18, 2014, 12:59 PM UTC

guard-of-terra wrote: post #7

Most of their games already work with either dosbox or wine. If they would provide hints and/or shellscripts this would be even nicer.

many of their games actually use dosbox to run on modern windows.

Re: Gog.com Soon On More Platforms

#15

Post by mxfh » Tue, Mar 18, 2014, 1:16 PM UTC

If they add a native version of Alpha Centauri im sold.

Loki's Alpha Centauri port was the game that didn't make me miss Windows anymore.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loki_Software#Games_published

That list is pretty much all I'll ever need.

Re: Gog.com Soon On More Platforms

#16

Post by eddiedunn » Tue, Mar 18, 2014, 1:20 PM UTC

Finally! While I like GOG, other distributors like Steam, humble bundle and desura have Linux support, so I've bought games from them instead. I'm glad GOG decided they want my business again.

Re: Gog.com Soon On More Platforms

#17

Post by snake_plissken » Tue, Mar 18, 2014, 1:30 PM UTC

If only they could get access to the Lucas Arts collections.... I've run Tie Fighter in DOSBox but there can be joystick and sound issues.

Re: Gog.com Soon On More Platforms

#18

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Mar 18, 2014, 1:42 PM UTC

mxfh wrote: post #15

If they add a native version of Alpha Centauri im sold. Loki's Alpha Centauri port was the game that didn't make me miss Windows anymore. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loki_Software#Games_published That list is pretty much all I'll ever need.

[deleted]

Re: Gog.com Soon On More Platforms

#19

Post by ekianjo » Tue, Mar 18, 2014, 1:44 PM UTC

ama729 wrote: post #5

GOG is run by pretty amazing people , for example, they recently announced that they were interested by regional pricing[1] when people made it clear they were not pleased by this change, they changed their mind[2]. Impressive. Also, it'll be interesting to see if it's a plan to bring more indie/kickstarter, since most of them have linux version planned, so GOG was not ideal. [1] You can read all their reasons here:…

Sounds like The Witcher for Linux may just happen after all (the same folks are behind GOG).

Re: Gog.com Soon On More Platforms

#20

Post by toast0 » Tue, Mar 18, 2014, 2:30 PM UTC

mxfh wrote: post #15

If they add a native version of Alpha Centauri im sold. Loki's Alpha Centauri port was the game that didn't make me miss Windows anymore. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loki_Software#Games_published That list is pretty much all I'll ever need.

This might be tougher than it seems. Several years ago, I tried to run the Alpha Centauri demo on a recent Fedora system (I think probably 6 or 7), and it wasn't able to start; it did run fine on FreeBSD in linux emulation though. (sorry no details)