Support NeoGAF

[Deanobro]

I had the same problem, this was the solution:

I had the same problem, this was the solution:

Cheers, I'll give that a try.

 

[JHorbach]

jshackles I have another problem that I don't know how to solve, games of different systems but with the same name, like Castlevania for NES and N64 (they both are Castlevania in GOG database), when I add the N64 version it chooses the metadata for the NES version, is there a way to GOG search the metadata by platform?

 

[jshackles]

jshackles I have another problem that I don't know how to solve, games of different systems but with the same name, like Castlevania for NES and N64 (they both are Castlevania in GOG database), when I add the N64 version it chooses the metadata for the NES version, is there a way to GOG search the metadata by platform?

This is an issue on the gog database side. The platform name is sent when it pulls metadata, so for whatever reason their database is matching "N64_Castlevania" to "NES_Castlevania" erroneously.

Unfortunately there isn't anything that can be done from the client side to fix this (that I'm aware of).

 

[jshackles]

So I'm pretty deep in trying to get the GOG client to recognize local achievement data.

These guys aren't making things easy with the way they coded their client. Maybe that's a good thing?

 

[jshackles]

I am doing an AMA on Reddit this morning about RetroGOG (or really, anything!)

Come join in

 

[Ouren]

I tend to get a lot of "Plugin has crashed", and these things just generally crashing GOG Galaxy

 

[elmaslejanodeloeste]

I've installed retrogog but gog galaxy 2.0 doesn't track time of any of my retroarch games.

Is there any way to do it?

 

[jshackles]

I've installed retrogog but gog galaxy 2.0 doesn't track time of any of my retroarch games.

Is there any way to do it?

Make sure RetroArch is set to save play time in aggregate, like so from the Settings -> Saving menu:

 

[elmaslejanodeloeste]

Make sure RetroArch is set to save play time in aggregate, like so from the Settings -> Saving menu:

It's working now! Thanks!

 

[Milldor]

I have a completely empty library after connecting any of the retroarch playlists.

I have followed the instructions but they never seem to import.
Is this perhaps a limitation with having my ROMs on a mapped network drive or are other people having this issue too?

 

[petey212]

hmmm it looks like your app doesn't check the registry for the two applications and their install paths. Both of mine are not in the default location and it doesn't allow me to tell it where the galaxy client is located.

 

[Milldor]

Retroarch and gog are installed in the default locations.
The app seems to find then and then continue with the install.

Just nothing shows in gog.
The only no default location is the ROMs which are on a network share.

 

[petey212]

Retroarch and gog are installed in the default locations.
The app seems to find then and then continue with the install.

Just nothing shows in gog.
The only no default location is the ROMs which are on a network share.

Hi Mildor, sorry. I wasn't referring to your situation. I can't install the new version of the retrogog plugins as it can't find my gog installation.

To prove your situation though, try copying one of the roms to a local drive, re-add it into retroarch and see if it gets picked up.

 

[jshackles]

hmmm it looks like your app doesn't check the registry for the two applications and their install paths. Both of mine are not in the default location and it doesn't allow me to tell it where the galaxy client is located.

There is a pull request on Github that fixes this issue, I'm evaluating it but it looks like it would fix your problem. Stay tuned.

 

[Milldor]

There is a pull request on Github that fixes this issue, I'm evaluating it but it looks like it would fix your problem. Stay tuned.

Will be staying tuned!!
If this works will be very happy, looks like a great plugin from what others have said

 

[Milldor]

Update on my last.

Games have started importing randomly now.
None of them have a launch option though.
They all have a greyed out install button that says incompatible when hovered over.

Any thoughts on this?

 

[jshackles]

Update on my last.

Games have started importing randomly now.
None of them have a launch option though.
They all have a greyed out install button that says incompatible when hovered over.

Any thoughts on this?

How many ROMs do you have importing? Are you doing multiple systems at once?

 

[Milldor]

Only one system at one..
Quite a lot of ROMs though.

Some systems are working fine and I can launch them.
Others import OK and seem to have no issue but I'm just left whit a grey install button.

 

[jshackles]

There is a lot of... strange... server side processing that happens when you add games to GOG Galaxy. This isn't specific to RetroGOG or retro roms, which is why I always ask how many ROMs are being processed at once.

As best I can tell, the program works thusly:

1. User connects Plugin to GOG Galaxy and authenticates
2. Plugin (RetroGOG in this case) tells GOG Galaxy that a new game has been added to the connected platform
3. Galaxy attempts to match the name / platform of that game to their online database
4. If a match is made, Galaxy will attempt to download artwork and associated metadata for that title
5. Plugin informs GOG that the new game is "owned" by the user (RetroGOG should do this automatically for any ROM file it finds in the configured path)
6. GOG then goes through a seemingly complex server-side process that permanently ties that game to your GOG account
7. Plugin runs in the background when GOG Galaxy is running, refreshing this data every "tick" which I believe is 15 seconds

There are several problems with this process but I suppose GOG considers it to be "good enough" since the overwhelming majority of users will have libraries of less than 100 or even 1,000 digital games. Unfortunately, it's not a well optimized process when you want to add hundreds or thousands of games to your client while simultaneously needing to do synchronous server-side tasks. In my personal experience, this creates a race condition on the client-side software if you try to add more than about 50 games at once - at which point adding more will cause significant delays in processing or leave your local client in a condition like Milldor describes where some games won't show as "owned" (see step 4 above).

Hopefully GOG rewrites this entire process so it's less of a mess. I'm not holding my breath though.

 

[Deanobro]

Hey
jshackles , Great job with the integrations. Do you have any plans to add MAME?

 

[petey212]

Hey
jshackles , Great job with the integrations. Do you have any plans to add MAME?

Mame is a whole different kettle of fish Deanobro.. might be difficult to add support for that. I have had luck using the generic gog importer though but it does take some finessing to get it working if you aren't using default install paths. Link here - https://github.com/AndrewDWhite/GalaxyGenericImporterPlugin

This has allowed me to add scummVM, C64 and MAME to gog. I'd much rather use Jshackles plugin though as it directly ties into retroarch and is a lot simpler to work with so if he ever adds support for these platforms, I'll switch them over.

Oh! it also allows you to have multiple emulators within the one category so you can have GBA, GB and GBC all in one! magic.

 

[Deanobro]

Thanks for that, I'll have a look. jshackles installer got everything I want into GOG really easily, So It's wishful thinking on my part.. Hopefully GGI is within my abilities.

 

[petey212]

Hi jshackles ,

Is this project still being actively worked on?

Cheers,

Pete

 

[jshackles]

Hi jshackles ,

Is this project still being actively worked on?

Cheers,

Pete

I somewhat halted working on the project until I could iron out a few of the issues that unfortunately need GOG / CDPR intervention. Since it's been nearly a year and a half and they still haven't rolled out any changes to their back end that need to be done for me to properly implement achievement support, I'd say this project is on extended hiatus.

 

[petey212]

I somewhat halted working on the project until I could iron out a few of the issues that unfortunately need GOG / CDPR intervention. Since it's been nearly a year and a half and they still haven't rolled out any changes to their back end that need to be done for me to properly implement achievement support, I'd say this project is on extended hiatus.

I had a feeling that was the case.

It's a bummer but understandable given the circumstances

 

[jshackles]

I had a feeling that was the case.

It's a bummer but understandable given the circumstances

They have tickets open from early 2020 where they still haven't added platform support for GameBoy Color or GameBoy Advance. Galaxy only got 6 updates released in 2021, and 2 of those were hotfixes released on the same day as a different update because they broke functionality. Only two updates last year actually contained additional functionality and not just bugfixes. Their documentation for Galaxy plugins is pretty barebones and also hasn't been updated since it's released (maybe nothing's changed?)

I had a lot more hope that GOG / CDPR would pour more resources and manpower into their Galaxy client. Don't get me wrong, it's still really good - but I had hoped that simple things like this would have been buttoned up in a matter of weeks, not months or years. Every contact I've had with them has suggested that the Galaxy client itself is basically only getting critical bugfixes and maintenance required to keep things working for GOG games, and that they're not working on new features, new integrations, or fixing bugs that don't affect non-GOG games.

 

[BigBooper]

If you're considering an alternative, I've abandoned Galaxy and switched over to Playnite. It's much more lightweight than Galaxy 2.

 

[petey212]

If you're considering an alternative, I've abandoned Galaxy and switched over to Playnite. It's much more lightweight than Galaxy 2.

Another good alternative that I use as well as gog galaxy (mainly because I was using it pre galaxy client) is launchbox

 

[Ozrimandias]

jshackles Man you are awesome​

RetroGoG it´s simply beautiful to watch when you have all those retro ROMs organized, but I have an issue...
When I loaded Retrogog it sync with all of a folder that I didn't want to have in GOG Galaxy (like 200),
It doesn't matter if I delete the game from the GOG folder or delete GOG completely it always shows those games. What can I do? I think those games are "saved" in GOG Cloud?

 

[petey212]

jshackles Man you are awesome​

RetroGoG it´s simply beautiful to watch when you have all those retro ROMs organized, but I have an issue...
When I loaded Retrogog it sync with all of a folder that I didn't want to have in GOG Galaxy (like 200),
It doesn't matter if I delete the game from the GOG folder or delete GOG completely it always shows those games. What can I do? I think those games are "saved" in GOG Cloud?

Hey bud,

That depends, do you still want to use retrogog and remove these games or you want to remove all of the retrogog games?

If it's just these specific games, the way retrogog works is it reads in your retroarch playlist for that system. E.g. if it's a game listed in your snes games, it will pull up all of the games you have listed in snes games and try to find a match in igdb's games database (so if a game is detecting as unknown, look for it there first and rename to match.. or add the game if it's not listed). If you still want these games available in retroarch, you'll need to add a second playlist and dump them into that one so that retrogog doesn't read them in.

Another alternative would be to hide the games in gog galaxy but that's tedious and not the cleanest method.

If it's all games, you have to disconnect the plugin in gog galaxy, close gog galaxy and remove the plugin folder.

 

[Ozrimandias]

Hey bud,

That depends, do you still want to use retrogog and remove these games or you want to remove all of the retrogog games?

If it's just these specific games, the way retrogog works is it reads in your retroarch playlist for that system. E.g. if it's a game listed in your snes games, it will pull up all of the games you have listed in snes games and try to find a match in igdb's games database (so if a game is detecting as unknown, look for it there first and rename to match.. or add the game if it's not listed). If you still want these games available in retroarch, you'll need to add a second playlist and dump them into that one so that retrogog doesn't read them in.

Another alternative would be to hide the games in gog galaxy but that's tedious and not the cleanest method.

If it's all games, you have to disconnect the plugin in gog galaxy, close gog galaxy and remove the plugin folder.

Thanks, dude but, HOW do I disconnect the plugin in GOG Galaxy and all the stuff that comes after? Sorry, I'm a little confused, I want to erase from my library all the games and start from zero. I have like 500 Japanese and small games that I don't care/want to be showed.

 

[petey212]

Thanks, dude but, HOW do I disconnect the plugin in GOG Galaxy and all the stuff that comes after? Sorry, I'm a little confused, I want to erase from my library all the games and start from zero. I have like 500 Japanese and small games that I don't care/want to be showed.

ok, I got you fam.
In gog, go to the cog in the top left menu --> settings
In settings, go to the integrations tab on the left-hand menu
find the plugin in the list of plugins on the right --> click the disconnect button
once the plugin is disconnected, close gog galaxy (make sure it's not running in the taskbar near your clock)
Now, open windows explorer (or windows key + r to open the run dialog) and browse to %localappdata%\GOG.com\Galaxy\plugins\installed\
Find the plugin folder, delete it
Add a fresh copy of the plugin folder instead --> Add your configuration changes to point to your retroarch like you did last time

That last step might be different for you but only because I can't use the automagic installer

That should clear out the games from gog.

 

[Ozrimandias]

ok, I got you fam.
In gog, go to the cog in the top left menu --> settings
In settings, go to the integrations tab on the left-hand menu
find the plugin in the list of plugins on the right --> click the disconnect button
once the plugin is disconnected, close gog galaxy (make sure it's not running in the taskbar near your clock)
Now, open windows explorer (or windows key + r to open the run dialog) and browse to %localappdata%\GOG.com\Galaxy\plugins\installed\
Find the plugin folder, delete it
Add a fresh copy of the plugin folder instead --> Add your configuration changes to point to your retroarch like you did last time

That last step might be different for you but only because I can't use the automagic installer

That should clear out the games from gog.

Thanks! i'm gonna try it right now. Hope it helps.

 

[Damien Crowley]

If you're considering an alternative, I've abandoned Galaxy and switched over to Playnite. It's much more lightweight than Galaxy 2.

Because of your comment, i dove hard into the playnite-rabbithole, dammit XD