Bug#691772: game-data-packager: Inconsistent from game to game

[Jon Dowland]

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.