If it weren't for all those meddlesome bugs, it would have been over by now. :P

FTFY

Thanks for the reply. I've looked at MaGog (fine work, mate) but I'm not sure it can tell me what I need to know. I do not need to know when something changes. I need to know if something has changed since I last downloaded it. I don't think MaGog can do that? Or am I not looking hard enough?

Mini-rant, questions for everyone:

I own pretty much every game that has been unbundled. My desperate (and losing) battle to keep up to date local versions of all my stuff has now seemingly taken a turn towards impossible. Starting from scratch with all those games.. oh god. I'll never be able to do it.

..but I'm still going to try.

I just don't want to use GOG Downloader to do it. If I'm starting over, I'm doing it properly. Proper directory structures. Consistent naming. The whole nine yards.

Any other Anal retentive OCD hoarders out there? How on earth do you plan to update your local stashes now? Both in general, and specifically. What about the multiple instances of the extras? How are people planning to manage those?

Wow, I must be blind. I saw the Blitzkrieg 2 but not the first one. Thank you.
My Blitzkrieg (#1) has not been unbundled yet as you mentioned above.
Damn. I missed that :-)

You are right. MaGog is good, but it really has no way of knowing when you last downloaded a given game.

But it doesn't really have to. Here is what I did:
1) When MaGog began monitoring file changes I donwloaded my entire library (took a couple of weeks and I own ~90% of the GOG catalogue, but I have a pretty fast connection).
2) Since then, every time MaGog notifies me of a change (I always post this to the "What did just update?" thread) I download the relevant files.
3) This way I know I am always up-to-date and I don't need to remember when I downloaded anything.

If you don't want to follow the "What did just update?" thread (and who can blame you), there's another option.
You can go to MaGog's search engine every so often, say once a week, and check what has changed in the last week, then download all the relevant files.
This way the only thing you need to remember is when you last ran this kind of search in MaGog.

If you get your library contents from GOG into MaGog, so MaGog knows which games you own, you can further limit the search to only the games you own (and also to specific operating systems and/or languages).

I know of at least one user who wrote an automatic script that checks MaGog once an hour to identify changes in the files of the games he/she owns.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: MaGog monitors file changes only for games I own, so don't expect anything from it for games I do not own (but as I said, I own ~90% of the catalogue --- for now).
Still it's better than many other alternatives.

This may not be an option for you, but I'm a Linux user and it's right in the middle of my comfort zone.

For a while now I've used lgogdownloader to get me all the extras and the English language installers for games for both windows and linux. I skip the mac versions and the languages that I don't care about due to space considerations. Afterwards I dealt with the duplicated extras using a development version of fdupes, automatically replacing any dupes found with hard links (think of them as multiple names for the same file).

Stashing away the old bundles was still manual work. I'm going to burn them on discs or something once it seems that everything is unbundled.

Castle Defense is a stand alone minigame and all NWN expansion require the base game so they won't get unbundled. Notice that Pirates expansion for TW2 didn't get kicked out of the bundle.

Yes [For JMich, OCPD].

Already described my method in my preceding post.

I have my own directory structure with my own directory names (some of them happen to be the same as GOG's). I keep DLCs in the same directory as their games, and obviously I keep all unbundled sub-games in the same directory.

I do not keep multiple copies of extra. What for?

MaGog automatically combines multiple instances of the same bonus (and multiple instances of the same installer -- yes, we have that too) into one entry (even if they have different titles, e.g. avatars and product_xxxx), so I know there's no need to download more than once.

Not entirely unbundling-related, but I notice that they've taken the opportunity to fix up the faulty naming on some star wars games:

gm21 -> star_wars_xwing_1993
gm22 -> star_wars_xwing_1998
gm31 -> star_wars_tie_fighter_1994
gm32 -> star_wars_tie_fighter_1998

jedi knight remains star_wars_republic_commando_copy3.

In case you're interested, the title of QfG 1 changed from:
QUEST FOR GLORY (VGA REMAKE)
to:
QUEST FOR GLORY (INCLUDES VGA REMAKE)

Yeah, I didn't think so. I thought maybe I'd missed an input field or something. Thanks for confirming. I've only been using computers for about 40 years, so I'm still a bit of a noob.

I can't do this. Because Australia. I'm not sure how many 90% ends up being, but I've over 700 titles so far last I checked. Whatever % that is, its always going to be too much content to ever be able to grab all of it again from scratch. I haven't downloaded all of them yet, and I download as many as my internet allows each month, and I have been at it for years. This is why I was both really pleased, but just ever so slightly heartbroken about this Unbundling situation. Having more eventual control over individual items? Frikkin awesome. The Setback in my never ending war to keep up to date? not so much.

So you get notified of an update by MaGog, and download it straight away? How do you do this? Work from home or something? or do you just do it each night or something? I'd never be disciplined enough for this, and therefor worry I'd missed something.

I've been following it since the start :) I knew you were the MaGog creator, which is why I took the chance to ask for your help when I saw you mention you didn't use the downloader.

This is very close to how I do it now with the downloader, but I have to do it with every game individually. If MaGog can offer me a history of changes, limited to only the games I own, between the dates X (last time I grabbed what I could) and y (when I am able to grab another batch) that may well trump the downloader! And it would mean I could download and manage them "properly".

... at least in many months from now, after I've downloaded all the games that have been unbundled and can finally start getting back on track with monitoring updates.

I'll poke around in there a little more and see if I can't wrap my head around how to drive the thing.

Straight up mate, you are a true asset here. Respect.

I mean each night.

That it certainly can (under the disclaimer mentioned before).

All you need to do is:
1) Use MaGog's "Get From GOG" feature to port your library (and wishlist) to MaGog. You will need to repeat this every time you buy a new game (or simply manually mark the game as "owned" in MaGog, which is what I do).
2) Use MaGog's search to perform the search [use "Filters" => "Downloadable Files" => "any file has changed since..." to select the date; use "Filters" => "My Tags" => "is any of..." => "owned" to select owned games (there is also an optional checkbox as an alternative for selecting "owned" games)].

C'est tout. You should be set up within minutes.

If you plan to use MaGog often, I recommend the tutorial (which I haven't updated in months, so don't hesitate to notify me of outdated information, if any). MaGog is not a trivial tool.

Ta.

If they do anything like that then they'll just prove themselves as big liars, because they said that our experience won't change if we choose to not use the optional client.

There have been issues with missing notifications for game updates, and support replied to related tickets.

I'm concerned about this part in particular (emphasis mine): What is considered as such only GOG knows. There's also the question - what about the issues not considered as the most troublesome ones? And I don't even want to think about all the issues that will be introduced.

Sorry, but who´s bright idea was this?

All it does it clutters your game shelve, I don´t really see a point to this, especially with the old games like Ishar Trilogy? Really? It had like 50 Mb file to download, even I with my funky internet connection was able to download that.

I don´t even want to see what it will do with episodic games.

I really don´t understand what was the point of all this... >:|

Smashing!

Way to go GOG. Keep unbundling.

What else:

* Link to game page from each title

* Consistant naming / ensure correct names are used (ex. 2 x versions of Ultima IV..)

* Ignore haters.