Dear GOG,
Under the assumption that the unbundling is irreversible, I have attempted to collect in one place all the bugs and deficiencies identified by your (more or less) loyal customers (and MaGog) in this and others threads. I am aware that the unbundling is still in progress. Hopefully this list will help you fix some issues in time for your Tuesday deadline.
Missing or mislabelled files
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- The "Wizardry 6+7" Mac OS X tab previously had English and German options. Now both "Wizardry 6" and "Wizardry 7" only have English.
- The "Ultima 3" Mac OS X installer link actually points to the "Ultima 1" Mac OS X installer (ultima_1_2.0.0.32.dmg).
- The "Two World 2" Spanish installer is missing (yes, I am sure it was there before).
- The "Robinson's Requiem" Windows tab previously had English and French and German and Spanish options. Now it only has English.
- The "Ishar 1" Windows tab previously had English and French and German options. Now it only has English.
- The "Cultures 1+2" German installers are missing (yes, I am sure they were there before).
- Several games now have bonuses obscurely labelled as "product_bonus_xxx" either instead of the previously named bonuses (Zork Anthology, Tomb Raider 1+2+3, Incoming + Incoming Forces, Duke Nukem 1+2), or alongside them (Cognition, Dracula 4+5). Additionally, the Cognition product_bonus links are all broken. While you're at it, you might want to also fix the regular (not unbundled) games that also suffer from this (a list has previously been sent to you by Grargar; ssokolow can help you write an SQL query to find the games affected (see
http://www.gog.com/forum/general/the_what_did_just_update_thread/post6606)).
- For several games, the Linux installer and the tarball archive are confusingly (and inconsistently) labelled as "Linux installer (part 1 of 2)" and "Linux installer (part 2 of 2)" in some order. The games in question are: Silent Service 1+2, Pinball Gold Pack, DROD 1+2+3, BloodNet.
- Several games have their Mac OS X installer left (as yet?) ununbundled, rather confusingly residing in the sub-games without any indication that this is actually an installer for all the sub-games rather than just one. The games affected are: Ultima 7, Geneforge Saga, Avernum. (Thank you, Loenas, for testing Geneforge Saga).
Mislabelled sub-games
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- Quite a few games are named in a way that has them, rather non-intuitively, landing far away from one another when sorting by title. The affected games are: Avernum (under A and B), Blackwell Bundle (under B and T), Zork Anthology (under B, P, Z), The Incredible Machine (under R, T), Battle Isle (under B, H, I), Battle Chess (under B, C). Perhaps you could prepend the bundle name so that this does not happen (e.g. Avernum: Blades of Avernum) While you're at it, you might also want to fix regular games that suffer from the same issue (e.g. Black Mirror (under B, T), Sid Meier's games (under C, S)).
- Even when they are closely located, sub-games have an annoying tendency to be improperly sorted within a series when ordered by title. The affected series are: Ultima, Tomb Raider, Wing Commander, Police Quest, Might and Magic, Heroes of Might and Magic, DROD. While you're at it, you might also want to fix regular series that suffer from the same issue (e.g. Gabriel Knight).
- Several sub-games are labelled in such a way that it is no longer possible to know which bundle they belong to or in what order the sub-games should be played. The affected games are: Wing Commander 5, Realms of Arkania 1+2, Lands of Lore 1+2, Blackwell Bundle. You might want to add some numbers (e.g. Lands of Lore 1, Episode 1, etc.) to these to help your users.
- Unbundled Ultima, Might and Magic, and Wing Commander sub-games are missing their trademark/registered labels.
- While I understand why you couldn't use "Alien Breed: Tower Assault" as a sub-game title (the data-title field would clash with the bundle's), deciding to append a visible " (Game)" to it is not a great (or professional-looking) solution by any means.
- You might want to add some consistency to your use of demarcating punctuation (e.g. the use of dash vs. colon in the Dracula series).
- Not much work has been done yet by the community on examining the directory names of downloaded games, but apparently there too improvements could be made (see
http://www.gog.com/forum/general/the_what_did_just_update_thread/post6582 for an example).
Missing or malfunctioning links
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- The game card links are missing for unbundled games.
- The game forum links are for the most part just pointing to the general forum (notable exception, Cognition, so it is possible to have it done right).
Box Covers
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- There seems to be quite a bit of consensus that "the new box art is very nice", however...
- Many sub-games have the same box art with different titling, which is seen as a correctable deficiency. Affected games are: Cognition, Duke Nukem 1+2, Incoming + Incoming Forces, Leisure Suit Larry VGA Remakes, MegaRace, Police Quest, Police Quest SWAT, Quest for Glory, Starflight, The Incredible Machine.
- The box cover for Cognition episode 3 carries the text "episode 4".
- All the Cossacks sub-games carry the subtitle "Art of War".
- The text on the box covers of the 'Commandos Ammo Pack' games is tiny and red, making it rather illegible (if I may rephrase the charming original post).
- The digit 2 seems to be missing from the box cover of Tropico 2.
Size Matters
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- Some game installers now take a lot more space to backup than when there was a single installer. The two most obvious examples are Heroes Chronicles (+ 2.8 GB) and Disciples 2 (+ 480 MB). Since many of us backup all our files, this raises a problem. Perhaps you could reconsider the unbundling in these cases and return to the single installer and single box.
- The matter is much worse for bonuses, which are duplicated across all sub-games and which are therefore downloaded and (unless some clean up is carried out by each and every user) backed up. I expect it would be time consuming to split the bonuses by sub-game (as you did for example in X-Wing and TIE Fighter, so it is possible), so perhaps instead you could (for now) just have all the bonuses listed in one sub-game (preferably the oldest chronologically), rather than in all.
- The size of the Dracula 1 installer is listed as 10.8 GB in the library, which is quite incorrect.
- The size field on the game pages is no longer correct for many bundles. As far as I know, you have updated one (Heroes Chronicles, 657 MB to 3.5 GB) and deleted one (Incoming + Incoming Forces, was 357 MB). What do you plan to do with the rest? While you're at it, note that several previously unbundled games also lack the size field (e.g. Mortal Kombat 1+2+3, TIE Fighter, X-Wing, Supreme League of Patriots, Ys I+II).
Inconsistencies
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- It is not at all clear why some games were unbundled and some games not. Could you please tell us what was the driving decision behind adding a game to the list or not adding it.
- The handling of EGA/VGA editions of the same game is inconsistent (see Leisure Suit Larry vs. Quest for Glory and Police Quest). Perhaps you could come up with a consistent solution, for example bundle them into one box and label it (EGA+VGA).
- Perhaps you would like to consider making the order of languages in the drop-down menu of all the games and sub-games the same (it is not).
General
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- Many people have suggested to make the bundling/unbundling optional (you know, like Galaxy).
- The overall feeling is that there could have been a bit more quality control before releasing this upon the populace (I am being very charitable in my phrasing).
- The overall feeling is that there could have been more communication with the community in view of the many complaints. That said, I believe we all appreciate the early warning.
Ta,
mrkgnao
P.S. If people would like to add to this list, please post in this thread.
Ciris, please pass this to whomever.