Bug#691772: game-data-packager: Inconsistent from game to game
Jon Dowland
jmtd at debian.org
Thu Nov 1 22:26:55 UTC 2012
On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 04:31:30PM +0100, Fabian Greffrath wrote:
> with its current behavious, game-data-packager is inconsistent from game to
> game.
>
> Take for example "rott" or "wolf3d": Demo versions exist for these two games
> and they are freely available on the net. There are also commercial versions
> available for purchase, but g-d-p does not support them.
We should support the commercial data as well as the free data. So that's two
wishlist items: commercial wolf3d support and commercial rott support.
> Now, when you run e.g. "game-data-packager rott", you are asked to either pass
> the "-w" option to automatically download the demo version from the net and
> package it (very neat, BTW!) or specify the path to the demo ZIP file using the
> "-f" parameter.
>
> Now, on the other hand, run e.g. "game-data-packager heretic": A demo version
> is also available for this game, but g-d-p does not support downloading it. It
> does not even support packaging it, only the commercial version.
I thought we might as well package Heretic, which was shareware, like doom, in
doom-wad-shareware. However we'll probably never manage to get a clear right to
distribute the shareware IWAD like the Doom one (where the original maintainer
saught specific permission from John Carmack himself).
> And guess what, you have to supply the path to the WAD file on the command
> line - without an additional parameter.
Yeah, like the doom target too. In fact, checking all currently supported
targets, the following work if you pass a single argument (after g-d-p game):
doom, doom2, plutonia, tnt, heretic, hexen, hexen2[*], quake
So that's 8 targets. The following require flags (-f or -w)
rott, wolf3d, lgeneral[*]
3.
([*] - targets not in stable/testing/unstable: either in experimental or the
VCS.)
Personally, I like the way the 'quake' target works:
> $ game-data-packager quake
> game-data-packager quake arguments:
> game-data-packager quake path
> -m path path to a mounted Quake CD-ROM
> -d path path to an unpacked Quake directory
> -s path path to a Quake shareware ZIP
> -mp1 path path to an unpacked Scourge of Armagon directory
> or a mounted Scourge of Armagon CD
> -mp2 path path to an unpacked Dissolution of Eternity directory
> or a mounted Dissolution of Eternity CD
> path path to any of the above (game-data-packager will guess)
>
So it behaves like the 9 above if you pass one argument, but you can fine-tune
precicely what behaviour you want if you wish.
> I think this is pretty much messed up. I don't have an universal solution at
> hand, but I think we could use this bug report as a discussion ground.
I'd be in favour of changing rott, lgeneral and wolf3d to not require '-f' and
treat a single argument as a path if supplied, in line with the other targets.
> Furthermore I believe it should be possible to optionally download demo
> versions for all games in g-d-p, if they are freely available.
I guess I don't disagree with that. Someone needs to do the work to implement
it though :) There's no point for Doom since we have doom-wad-shareware. So
there's at least heretic, hexen, hexen 2, quake, quake 3 which have demo
versions.
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