As per the comments on the game page, yes, having an Adobe AIRless version of this would be enough for me to pull the trigger.

There are two ways for us to do this:

1) Provide a simple flash projector (ie, one executable file and a folder with dependent assets). This will come at the cost of removing certain features from the game - namely, your saves will be stored as (fragile) flash cookies, you won't be able to change the resolution from inside the game, and you won't be able to get auto-updates.

2) Provide a "standalone" Adobe AIR build - this gives you the features of an Adobe AIR build, but without installing the AIR framework on your computer. Instead, it packages all the Adobe AIR dependencies in .dll files and makes them available to the game that way. Everything gets packaged up in a single folder and you just run the game's executable. So, the game still gets the expanded features, but without having to install the actual AIR runtime on your machine. This also creates a "portable" installation - ie, the game is just a zip file you decompress, "installing" it doesn't even touch your registry. This would still allow us to deliver a game that has extra features, namely, saves stored as real files, in-game resolution switching, and an auto-updater that detects and fetches patches if you want them.

Which do you prefer?

> 2) Provide a "standalone" Adobe AIR build ... This also creates a "portable" installation - ie, the game is just a zip file you decompress, "installing" it doesn't even touch your registry.

Which do you prefer?

Jeeze OF COURSE I'd like that. who wouldn't?

I'm loving this game, but I would also very much prefer an AIR-less build. Option #2, preferably.

#2 please.

If an Adobe AIRless build comes, plus the game stops "phoning home" all the time I will strongly consider buying it.

Before this is happenging, I won't buy it.

EDIT: Just saw your explanation about "phoning home", doesn't sound too bad. If you let me disable the auto updater and hand out an AIRless build I'm gonna buy it :)

@DecoyAUT: Working on a patch right now. Thanks!

If its so easy to implement, why not doing it from the start??

I mean, I fully appreciate your activity here in the forum and your direct reaction to criticism, but releasing a game here *does* actually - in my view - has a certain, lets say, political statement to it as well. I would assume many people coming and actually buying games here are supporting the idea of this site to be a place far off the sometimes criminal ways of todays publishers.

I guess we can safely assume people coming here are pretty much aware of the privacy issues of modern gaming. Sure, there is the part of nostalgic flair of re-playing the games we played in our youth, but buying an independent game, even coding an independent game should very well mean to keep away from those vile practices we all learned to hate during the last years. So, no matter what kind of info a program is sending home (am I even to believe your statement to begin with?), Air or no Air, if I can avoid that program its not being installed on my machine.

And I'm really really amazed about both, you as a developer and GOG as the publisher to even try something like that in this environment. I will watch closely if its just a one-off or if this is becoming a trend here. If the latter GOG will soon get in line with steam, origin and whatever becoming just another forbidden zone to me.

@KidKhan:

I respond to player feedback - the reason I hadn't added the ability to disable the auto-updater is simply that no one had requested it before releasing on GOG. Now that people are requesting it, I'm happy to do it. I apologize for not anticipating this.

I'm well aware that data-tracking is a sensitive topic, which is why data tracking is something you can disable from the very first release of the game back in January. The game does not transmit any information when it connects to the auto-update server, it simply requests information.

Now that I know people are concerned about *any* outgoing connections, I am happy to release a patch that turns off this feature.

As for Adobe AIR, I did not discover the specific compiler flag mentioned in my above post until very recently, and again, it was not a common request. Now that I know it's important to people, and now that I know how to compile the game under alternative settings, I will make this build available from now on.

Thank you for your concerns.

Since you are aware that data tracking is a sensitive topic, why did you use it as an op-out instead of an opt-in feature?

My preference is:
2) Provide a "standalone" Adobe AIR build - this gives you the features of an Adobe AIR build, but without installing the AIR framework on your computer.

I'm a little confused by some of the other threads. Is the Airless build up and ready to go, or is it just patched to make the auto-update optional at the moment?

I have it ready on my local machine here. I'd like to make it directly available via GOG, but I'm waiting to hear back from GOG support on that.

Thought I should update this thread to indicate that the new version is out, for those that were waiting for it.