I am a little annoyed at the moment and wanted to vent someplace where i hope somebody from GOG sees this so they can fix yet another problem of their own creation. I wasted hours yesterday trying to get a game working properly on a laptop I just setup but the problem was actually the new 2.x installer not properly installing the game in its entirety!

The game in question is Heroes of Might and Magic. I downloaded the most recent installer (the only one available now for download) and installed it on my newly setup HP laptop. I knew I had a problem right away when the opening part of the game with the New World Computing logo and little intro sequence did not play. Instead, it dumped me directly to the first screen with the menu buttons to begin playing. The next thing I noticed was no music in the game.

Immediately I presumed that on this particular computer there might be some issue with DOSBox and sound and I might need to edit the .conf file to get it working. I checked the HoMM forum on GOG but couldn't find any helpful info. So I turned to Google and started doing searches on Conexant High Definition audio which is the sound chip this PC has in it and found a fair number of hits but nothing useful. Then I wasted a good amount of time trying changes to the midi and soundblaster sections of the .conf file one at a time, saving the file and then testing the game. Still no joy. The game works perfectly on my Mac running in a XP virtual machine but it won't play music at all on this HP laptop. Frustrated, I post about it in the HoMM forum and give up for the night.

Today someone there posted a helpful reply indicating the new installer may be at fault where it is roughly 1/3 the size of the 1.x installer. Great. Another 2.x installer issue.

Fortunately on a USB drive I used to use before I got a larger one, which was tucked away in my closet, I knew I had about half of my GOGs preserved with the older installers. So I set this up and install with the 1.x installer....

The game now works perfectly on this same system with complete intro and music.

Old installer version: 1.0.1.28 61.7 MB (works great but no longer available on GOG)
New Installer version: 2.0.0.32 22.5 MB (screwed up, missing intro and music)

Nice work GOG. Sorry but I am a little pissed about wasting my time on this needlessly. Please fix it so others can enjoy a properly working Heroes of Might and Magic.

Stuff like screwed up forums, uninstallers that reset all compatibility settings across the system, removal of titles from the shelf in complete silence and new installers that are broken versus the old ones make me feel a little unhappy when I see focus currently on getting feedback for future grand plans. It feels like amateur hour around here sometimes and I really think GOG needs to get it together around here more before adding any more irons to the fire.

Pardon the rant. I love this place. I really do and I guess that is why it frustrates me when they fail at basic stuff.

Moral of this story: keep your 1.x installers until you are certain the new ones work right. I wouldn't get rid of one until completely playing through a game at this point.

Have you logged a support ticket?

I would also add, if you are going to bother releasing an updated installer why did you not add the simple fix:

prebuffer=100 (instead of prebuffer=10) in the DOSBox .conf file for the game and head off sound issues at the pass for many users? Fixes don't get any easier than this and it should have been in there. Yes I did and I included a link to this thread as well.

Perhaps their new job position will be QA?

I agree, this transition to 2.0 installers hasn't gone down smoothly and I am glad that the majority of my games have been downloaded safely on an external HD before the transition to the new installers. I agree that perhaps a shorter period of consolidation and ironing out the bugs instead of pushing forward would give them the foundations for the next major push.

In any case, thank you dirtyharry50 for the heads up.

Seems that I will also have to check through my GOG archives.

Fallout 2 also has to be tweaked for its music to work out of the box. Do we have a thread consolidating games with problematic installers? Else I, or someone else with enough time on hand, can volunteer to start one.

So it has. So it has...

Yeah, it sometimes looks like testing and quality control aren't their best qualities...

and why deleting the intro....

At the time before i realized the music was gone and even after, I was thinking to myself that maybe the opening part didn't work with Windows 8 so they took it out. It didn't dawn on me that the installer itself could be at fault. Silly me! You learn something new every day!

Sorry my tone above was kind of negative. Apparently I needed a nap. I laid down after posting that and just got up four hours later! I feel much more happy and pleasant now. Still, I do stand by the idea that GOG should focus on what it is presently working on and fixing before biting off more this year. Assuming they work to add everything they can for OS X (all the DOSBox games, etc.) that is quite a bit of work they took on recently as it is, on top of everything else that needs doing.

So, GOG, you're gonna fix this, right?

Good to know, thanks! :)

Have HoMM 3 & 4 finally been patched to run on only one core yet? There has been MANY threads in the HoMM section for YEARS about the game crashing on multi-core CPU's and GOG even has the solution on it's support section [url= http://www.gog.com/support/heroes_of_might_and_magic_3_complete_edition/frequent_crashes ] http://www.gog.com/support/heroes_of_might_and_magic_3_complete_edition/frequent_crashes [/url]

Battle Isle Platinum. Has Incubation been patched yet? [url= http://www.gog.com/forum/battle_isle/bug_report/post5 ] http://www.gog.com/forum/battle_isle/bug_report/post5 [/url]

Has Dragonsphere been fixed yet? It crashes because the core setting in the config isn't correctly set [url= http://www.gog.com/forum/dragonsphere/freezing_when_leaving_screens/post2 ] http://www.gog.com/forum/dragonsphere/freezing_when_leaving_screens/post2 [/url]

"Panzer General 2", "Panzer General 3D Assault" and "Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader" have Multiplayer. It's not on their game cards.

All I can think of right now.