I'm guessing we are a ways off still, but I'm excited about the potential for achievements with Galaxy.

First off, my assumption with Steam... achievements have to be put in by the devs? I expect we will never see achievements for games without active devs like Thief 1, Deus Ex 1, etc.

If that is true, will Galaxy be any different given how GOG tends to nurture games into functionality? Will GOG be able to add achievements? Or the fans? Or will this be Dev dependent as well?

Nobody can really say for sure, most likely though this will depend on the devs of the said game. GOG seems to have more control over the games than say Steam does.... but this isn't something they would likely do.

become an alpha tester
find out for your self
crash your system
lock up games

fun for every one !

That is correct. Achievements are triggered via function calls placed within the game's code so it's not something you can just add without access to the source code or reverse engineering the whole game. Expect it only to happen in case of actual HD Editions. Going by how GOG has been handling re-releases so far I'd say that it's fully dependent on the developers.

Figured as much, but I guess I'm thinking in terms of games with heavy mod-ability, such as Thief. Since fans do have the tools (including the raw original missions) could the Galaxy launcher allow this?

Thinking way outside of the box, could we see a system that lets you download custom achievement files for various games like Thief, Unreal Tournament, Deus Ex, etc. (games that are heavily moddable).

More wishful thinking and discussion than anything else I suppose ;)

Yeah, I don't think that there's been a single case where GOG actually messed with a game's source code or have done any notable alterations to games, I think so far GOG's own work has been limited to making games work (and I think that's a good thing).

There were some signs that GOG is going to pursue reverse engineering actively themselves soon (IIRC someone spotted a job listing that hinted at this fact) but what they are going to do with these skills and resources is anybody's guess at this point. I for one think that it's still just about making games work, not creating HD editions of their own. Modding tools can only do so much. I'm no expert but I doubt that any "highly moddable" game is actually moddable enough to add this kind of functionality. I don't think you can implement such an API without altering the source code but others may correct me if I'm wrong. Even if GOG got an okay from the games' rights holders to do these kinds of alterations, as I said: GOG is so far all about making games work, not improving or extending games themselves and I doubt that's gonna change. Really expect achievements to be added the same way it happens on Steam: via HD editions developed by either the original developers or whoever got hired by the publisher for this job.

Yea that's what I was pretty much thinking, unless you count the few case were they could perhaps have gotten the source code. I don't see that happening a lot though.

The second part is interesting, didn't know that... thanks. :)

I don't think GOG wants to spend time making achievements when there are (arguably) more important things to worry about.

There is another possibility, though still on a game by game case. Files written by the game (or the mod) itself. Binding of Isaac is such a case, since the achievements it has are saved on a text file, which is then parsed by Steam to see if the player has gotten any achievements.
Sword of the Stars: The Pit also seems to work with a similar case, since any achievements you get on the GOG version can be also activated on Steam, as soon as you get another achievement (to trigger the check). Again, the achievements are game based and saved on a file, which the client then queries.

In both cases though, it depends on the game storing the achievements on a file the client can access, which I'm not sure how many mods can do.

Oh please... NO.

I hate archivements. I have this "little" problem with playing all the games I have entirely, 100%, archivements included.
On my entirely subjective opinion, archivement hunting is not funny.
I'd only accept archivements if they were singleplayer related to the game campaing.

Even if the game had no achievements. If the format of a save file was known, maybe some achievments could be created?

For example you could tell when the player had reached a certain level and give him an achievement on that.

Note: I'm not for achievements or against them. Just interested in the technical side of things. :-)

Worms 2 maybe? I haven't tried the GOG version yet but they did alter the launcher program there (or wrote one of their own) so if they slapped a GOG button on somewhere I'd think it was in this one. It hardly required altering the actual game's source code, though.

I wouldn't be too sure (depending on the game, that is). Huh, interesting. A very crude method but interesting.

It depends on what is saved and how. Example would be the campaigns in HoMM, which could be feasible by checking the saves to see if Map X is available, or parsing the Hall of Fame to look for scores over Y, or days less than Z. Other games though wouldn't be that easy to do, especially older platformers that used a password for the level selection.

God I hope not.

Just what we need... hordes of babies looking for bragging rights.