Not “improved compatibility”. Real games that did not work, the exact fault, and the fix. Nothing needs configuring, it goes on when the game launches.
Four faults in a row, each one hiding the next, and all of them come from installing off the disc rather than letting the disc’s own installer do it. The game needs a file that sits in the setup folder rather than beside the game, and without it there is no window and no error. Then it asks the screen to become 640x480, which a modern display refuses and the game treats as fatal. Then it wants a CD-ROM drive, and the disc is a folder now. Then it wants the note the installer leaves saying where the game lives.
All four are handled when you press play. The file is put in place, the game gets a 640x480 screen of its own scaled up to fill yours, a drive is pointed at the disc and told it is a CD, and the note is written. No wizard, nothing to copy by hand.
On Windows GOG’s installer does more than copy files: it writes down where it put the game. On Linux the download finishes and that step never happens. Both GOG’s launcher and the game itself look for that note before they do anything else, neither has a fallback, and both give up quietly reporting success, which is why nothing anywhere had a complaint to show you.
The note is now written when you press play, and rewritten if you move the game. The language goes in at the same time, without which the game starts with every menu blank.
GOG includes a small helper file that keeps this one running on modern Windows. Letting a game use the helper it came with is normally the right call, and it is what rescues Quake and Resident Evil 2. Here it is the opposite: the helper cannot work on Linux, and it takes the game down before anything reaches the screen.
It is now left out for this game, the only one so far. Nothing is deleted, and the file stays where GOG put it.
The intro is a run of video logos, and under a compatibility layer the first can sit there a minute or more. Not frozen, but nobody waits that long. The intro is now skipped.
The community patch installs under a filename Wine replaces with its own, so it never loaded. The game’s own copy now wins, as on Windows.
The patch is a graphics library beside the game, and Wine loaded its own instead, so it never ran. The game’s own copy is now loaded first, with Wine’s behind it as a fallback.
The fallback is the trick: the patch passes what it doesn't implement through to the real library. With nothing behind it, the game crashes instantly.
GOG ships a 3dfx driver from the nineties, and Wine substituted its own, so the game died before a window appeared. The driver GOG shipped is now used.
Every file downloaded perfectly, but GOG’s installer performs three finishing steps afterwards and nothing on Linux did them. Now applied at launch, repairing the install you have. No reinstall.
The same story as New California, one game later. GOG’s installer has finishing steps and nothing on Linux performed them, so the plugin list never arrived and none of London ever loaded. Now applied at launch, repairing the install you have.
The switch that turns loose files on had to go somewhere other than the file GOG writes it to, which is why it looked like it was already set. Put where the engine actually reads it, and it survives the game rewriting its own settings every time it starts.
Two faults. The configuration files GOG’s installer copies were never copied, and the game started from the wrong folder, so DOSBox looked one level too high and quit. Both fixed.
One file was damaged on a GOG server. Half arrived, the connection closed, every time, and the download kept asking that same server. Now each piece is checked and a different server is used when one keeps failing.
Most of what goes wrong is solved by a general rule, and those are part of the app. What's left belongs to one game and nothing else. Each costs an evening. Writing them down is the least I can do.
The list will grow. A game on it behaves on your machine the way it did on mine.
Found one that doesn't work? Open an issue. This list is how it gets fixed.
clarity · source ports & mods · macOS (Experimental) · support · github
From Chaos Comes Clarity
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