Cool, the introduction of a new feature that pleases everyone.
Very well done, gog! :)
Ancient-Red-Dragon: These new web installers do not allow the users to
choose which version number of the game they want to download right? I just checked, and they didn't seem to offer that option.
[...]
IMO what GOG needs to do to solve this problem is to let the customer download the original release version of the game, and then subsequently choose for themselves which patches they want to apply, or not. This needs to be an option that is built directly into GUIs of the website and the Galaxy client.
Clearly, the assumption that the latest version of a game is the best one isn't always correct. So GOG ought not to force that faulty assumption onto its customers by denying them access to earlier versions.
Absolutely agreed! I'd love it if you could have an option to download all previous installers. And not just the post-Galaxy installers either. In some cases, a game I love has become an altogether different game over time. One such example would be Thief. I love what they did with the NewDark patch, but it turned Thief into a different game. They turned it into Thief 2 with Thief 1 levels. The visuals look somewhat different, some subtle yet drastic gameplay changes take effect (you can now climb obstacles that were previously inaccessible) and the AI in particular reacts in ways it wasn't meant to. Case in point: Thief 2 introduced an AI upgrade that would make NPCs run for the nearest archer if you pointed at them with a bow and arrow when you were in a spot they couldn't reach, whereas in Thief 1 they would just stand there and wait for you to come down. There's one problem with this in Thief 1: The levels weren't designed with that AI behaviour in mind, so NPCs that would be perfectly capable of taking you down go straight into panic mode and start running in search for an archer, and since some of these levels simply don't have archers, they're stuck in panic mode for the rest of the game.
And not just because of bugs either. Every once in a while, a game will offer some exclusive content in one particular version (for example, certain in-game items to celebrate a particular holiday season). For instance, Among The Sleep released a Halloween themed patch around October '14. Unfortunately, my backup copy died years ago along with my hard drive. And it was only a few months ago that I decided to ask gog whether they still had a copy of that patch.They initially referred me to the rollback function, but since rollback only works for post-Galaxy versions, that particular wasn't there. I have to give a special shout out to gog support in this case, they really went above and beyond for me: They actually went ahead and dug out this old, obscure patch and made it available for me. I appreciate the grade A service, yet I think it would be best if this process could be automated, by allowing users to download every and all builds.