Aliens vs Predator was available for free to promote GOG's new Galaxy client. So of course I picked it up! Little did I know, the Galaxy client is bundled in the executable. So naturally I would do my PlayOnLinux installation as per all of my guides and the installation would never start correctly. I would get some errors I've never seen before: Code: OLE error ProgID: "WBEMscripting.SWbemLocator" Turns out, this is unique with Aliens vs Predator Classic because Galaxy is bundled with it. Of course, now I'm concerned because as all of GOG's games start becoming Galaxy "compatible" are they all going to have these installation problems? There is a work-around for the time being... Launch PlayOnLinux Click Configure Create your virtual drive Copy/Paste the aliens_vs_predator.exe into the virtual drive drive_c Create a shortcut to aliens_vs_predator.exe Select shortcut Arguments: /nogui /SILENT /SUPPRESSMSGBOXES Close Configure Select exe shortcut Click Run Wait for game to unpack (please be patient, its very slow) Go back to PlayOnLinux Click Configure Select Aliens vs Predator virtual drive (left side) Click "create a new shortcut in this virtual drive" Select AvP.exe Name shortcut "Aliens vs Predator" Close Configure Run game Have fun with setting the resolution! This is the work-around, basically extracting the .exe with PlayOnLinux and a few arguments. Kinda sucks, but hopefully GOG will work it out so the installers work fine again.
When GOG advertised AvP for free, one requirement was that you participated in testing the Galaxy multiplayer service, so I am not surprised that this game got Galaxy bundled with it now. It will probably go back to s regular GOG installer when it get the regular release on GOG.
The strange thing was the game is in my Library just like all the other games. So I assumed it was a standard GOG download/installer. Maybe there is something about Galaxy in the fine print, but geesh, did they have to break the extraction process? Most retail games for Steam come with the steam client on the DVD. So it kinda makes sense, but I hope they have an option to not install Galaxy if we don't want it. I would prefer to download and install Galaxy first, then search for games or see my library and start downloading.
According to GOG, Galaxy will always be optional. I didn't get AvP when it was free, because it clearly stated it was part of the Galaxy beta testing on the promo page. I sincerely hope they don't change their installers since that would be a headache for all our GOG guides. I'm hoping it's just now while AvP is only available to those who got it for free, and once it becomes normally available in their store, the installer become like the rest.
