This would be for older DOS games only then and maybe DOSBox comes with support?

IIRC, even under Windows 98 you had to manually add the protocol to the network stack. So people would need to have support in their OS as well. Since Windows Vista there is no support for the protocol any more.

//edit: http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Connectivity

I don't know if it's been asked/answered or suggested yet in the 34 pages, but one thing I'd love to see GoG do with Galaxy, is team up with the Humble Store to be able to access and download/update games we've purchased there as well.

Humble has a downloader for the Android games, but so far for PC/Mac/Linux there is only direct downloads through the website or torrents. Galaxy seems like it could be the perfect marriage of these two proponents of DRM free gaming.

That would make Humble the place to buy games, rather than GOG, considering I'd get a Steam key there as well as a 'GOG' version. That seems unlikely. Not offering Steam keys with a DRM-free version of the game when other retailers do do that is already a downside to GOG. This client could at least give them a leg up on stores doing that.

Not sure what you mean, do you mean for Humble bundles that contain GOG game keys that Humble should provide links to redeem the games on GOG.com like they do for Steam right now, so that you click redeem then go in Steam client and install the game, only you would click redeem then go in Galaxy and install the game (or to the GOG website to download it of course)?

If so, that would be something for Humble themselves to consider once there is a mechanism in place which would permit them to add such features to their website via a GOG Galaxy API and if it is available they probably will for the same reasons they do it with Steam I imagine.

Or are you suggesting that GOG add support to their Galaxy client to download games you have bought from other retailers like Humble that have nothing at all to do with GOG? Surely that's not what you are suggesting I'm guessing as that would make about as much sense as Valve adding support to the Steam client to log into your Desura account and buy/download/install Desura games, or into your GOG account to do the same. :)

If you are referring to the function of steam that can link and play .exe games from other services (Not download / install) then it is possible

Due to steam DRM, Galaxy would not be able to do so with steam games, but it may be possible to create a library pointer to DRM free games .exe files.

It will benefit you to get DRM free games as you can have all the games from all DRM free service provider neat and tidy in one library.

Still kind of unclear what you're asking for though. I wasn't refering to Steam client's ability to add shortcuts to run non-Steam games BTW. GOG could add the ability to launch non-GOG games just as easily as all it has to do is probe Steam configuration or common directories where games might be found (just like Steam does), and locate the executables or launchers. Invoking a Steam game without Steam client running will simply cause Steam client to get started up automatically so GOG doesn't need to know anything at all about a game's DRM or interact with it. In both cases they are just executable launchers. Not sure what that has to do with your Humble Bundle comments though. I got the impression you wanted GOG Galaxy client to be able to download and install games you bought on Humble Bundle that are not GOG games which wouldn't really make much sense, but your wording is unclear to know exactly so I'm just guessing.

But if you just want to launch games within the client then that is trivial regardless of what gaming platform they are from for the most part as I mentioned above. No way to know if such functionality would be included in the first release but it would be something I'm sure people want and dead simple to implement. Might be a few corner cases with older games in a similar way that Steam has some issues with them, but it should be doable on-par with whatever Steam does, as well as being able to launch games from Origin, Uplay, Desura, CD/DVD, floppy disk or 8 track cassette tape for that matter (with the appropriate hardware of course) :oP

The first day that GOG Galaxy is officially launched, the first game I'd love to download with it is Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance. It just seems like the perfect natural chocie to launch something named "Galaxy".

The pre-release announcement could read:

"A short time from now...
In a GOG Galaxy close close nearby..."

Mind you, it wasn't until X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter that multiplayer was added IIRC. Say high to George Lucas for me!

Yes, this. I worded it terribly, but that was my intention, that GOG and Humble work together and be able to unlock on GOG like you can unlock them on Steam/Origin/etc. Although I don't think it's up to either Humble or GOG, but the developer/publisher to provide the keys to other, non-Humble stores. So I guess technically the hope is that they might work together to convince developers/publishers to do so.

And of course this would also be limited to games that are on both services. I wouldn't expect a game on Humble that's not on GOG to be unlockable on GOG.

It would also be great if GOG provides an API for other stores to "hook" into Galaxy. So maybe they don't get unlocked on GOG, but using the Galaxy client I could link it to my Humble account, my Desura account, etc, and be able to download/install the games from within the Galaxy client.

If GOG has an official public API available for 3rd party applications/websites to use to redeem games and perform other queries and actions within the Galaxy service then it's certainly possible that 3rd party sites might be able to directly redeem games through it, and I wouldn't be surprised if GOG provides such an API in the future.


From a completely gamer-centric viewpoint strictly speaking, a single gaming client/launcher application which is capable of connecting to every available gaming platform out there (Steam, GOG Galaxy, Desura, Origin, Uplay, Capsule, any others I am missing) would be a potentially convenient thing to have and use. The likelihood of any one actual distributor above including GOG developing such a client that can not only connect to their own service, but also connect to all of their competitor's services to download/install/track games and interact in any other rich manner with competing service platforms is extremely incredibly unlikely however as it would be dedicating financial resources to actually making it easier to use the competition's products, not to mention having to support that code, field bug reports and problems and it would all be a pure expense with no real financial payoff to justify spending the resources to do it. Adding the ability to launch games already installed on the system is rather easy and so Steam has that option available and I imagine GOG might do that too, but to connect into the Steam APIs and interact directly with Steam to download and install games from GOG Galaxy client is quite unlikely from the perspective of GOG justifying the business gain angle to spend money on the development.

The only really viable way I think that any gamers can expect a single gaming client to exist which is compatible with multiple platforms is for a 3rd party company or an open source project to write one that connects via the official published APIs of the various services or reverse engineers how to communicate with them legally if possible. I can see the potential for an open source initiative to do this (and there might even be one for all I know) as the incentive to do it is self-driven. I can't see any incentive for GOG, Valve, EA, Ubisoft, Desura or others to develop a client that makes it easy to access all of the competition's platforms however when they could devote all of the engineering resources of that to making their own software work better with their own platform and adding and improving their own services to compete with the others. Just being realistic.

Having said that, an open source client to do this would definitely be cool, although it would probably be affected by NIH syndrome also (not invented here) where it is constantly trying to play catch up with each platform's evolution and work bugs out in an ever changing API etc. We'll see what the future holds I guess.. :)

I'm not sure what to say about this: http://ffn.nodwick.com/?p=1289

*LOL*

Thanks for the link, too funny! :D

Anything about mods been mentioned, to be more precise anything about tools or archives to easily find and maneges mod in Galaxy?

Not that I've seen. People have asked before if they would consider offering various mods available out there on the GOG website though and they said that they probably could not do that because they wouldn't have the legal rights to the content, and also there would be time lag issues between whatever they might host locally and what the official site that creates a mod might provide which would be a disservice to customers or something like that. It's not clear how the legal and other issues might affect doing something with mods inside Galaxy directly. Perhaps however they could create something akin to Steam Workshop where customers themselves can create and provide mods/content, and mod authors out there could publish their mods themselves through the Galaxy platform. Something like that might be cool to have and probably doable since Steam pretty much does that already. :) Guess we'll have to wait and see on that one though. :)

Yeah, it's a purely pie-in-the-sky/wishful thinking. If anyone would do it, I could see GOG toying with the idea, but I don't expect anything more than GOG games, and adding non-GOG games manually (similar to non-Steam games in Steam)

Probably the best thing would be working with Nexus Mods, though it would be highly dependent on convincing mod makers to host their mods on Nexus instead of being scattershot all over the internet (or including, no reason they couldn't continue the scattershot approach if they want). Nexus already has a mod manager client that could be used for managing/installing/removing mods to GOG games, though it would have to be updated to do so if such a thing were to happen. Even if the mods are only patches for widescreen aspect or HD resolutions from the older games, it'd be nice to have a centralized repository to get them, some place that's moderated and you know the chances of getting rogue malware from a patch would be minimal.

Yeah, launching non-GOG games would be a rather trivial thing to add for the most part. They'd just have to scan the Start menu to poke around inside shortcuts, scan Program Files* and Steam/Uplay/Origin/etc. common directory paths, possibly probe the registry to find other paths, and a list of static common paths where game executables might reside, then throw up a "here's what we found" list like Steam does. For DOSbox launched games and similar it would require some special sauce (that Steam doesn't do), but that's potentially automateable too. Someone wrote an addon app you can use with Steam to automate adding DOSbox games to Steam IIRC. Not sure that would be a mission critical feature for 1.0, but something easy to add based on customer feedback/demand later on once the big fish features are all sorted.

For mods, a GOG version of Steam Workshop would be the best thing to do I think, nice and integrated, one stop shopping with some quality control of sorts for the overall experience etc.

These aren't features I'd expect for the version 1 client though, but community wishlist items that could get possibly added based on popularity and feasibility at a later time I'm guessing. They leave us a lot of anticipating, speculating and fantasizing room don't they? hehehe