OpenGothic is now on GOG

[vii-gog]

Hello everyone!

By request from @Try, I'm creating a public discussion to announce that OpenGothic is now on GOG.com
As of now, it is used as the default way to play the Vanilla version of Gothic 2. Store link

Let me know of any questions or concerns that you may have!

[damianut]

Thank you, it is great ❤️that you support the modders, but I have a two things to point out:

• in the description on GoG is written, that: Open Gothic version of Gothic 2 is available on "Vanilla" public branch in GOG Galaxy. But name "Vanilla" is misleading. Because somebody could think, that it is as in original Gothic 2. The better is to name it "OpenGothic".
• just below the window, where is written: Open Gothic version of Gothic 2 is available on "Vanilla" public branch in GOG Galaxy and as an offline installer in "Extras" section., there is a screenshot: https://items.gog.com/gothic_2_gold_edition/description.png

Which modification did you use to make this screenshot? It has not original textures and probably the models also.

If you wanted to present here OpenGothic, I think the first screenshot from this link is better, and it is not misleading, because players won't see those textures in-game (without installing another mod).

Anyway, if you will change the screenshot, it should be signed, if it is not from original game.

[vii-gog]

Hey @damianut,

Yeah, now that you mentioned it, the description does indeed seems confusing. Thing is, "Vanilla" branch does indeed contain OG Gothic 2 without Night of the Raven expansion and that is the version that is currently using OpenGothic as the default way to play it.
The main branch (one with the NotR) does not have OpenGothic executables yet. Think of this as a soft-test of giving OpenGothic to the players before considering integrating it into the main branch.

I'll bring it up with folks here, we should be able to give a better description of what "Vanilla" branch contains and what's role role of OpenGothic there.

As on topic of screenshots, those should be from the main branch, a.k.a. Gothic NotR Gold.

[damianut]

Thank you for the response. ❤️

The main branch (one with the NotR) does not have OpenGothic executables yet

OpenGothic is not compatible with Ikarus/Lego libraries, Union and Ninja and many modifications and plugins won't be able to run with it. Setting OpenGothic as default for Gothic 2 with NoTR will make playing the modifications and plugins harder.

As on topic of screenshots, those should be from the main branch, a.k.a. Gothic NotR Gold.

The current screeshot is not from original Gothic 2 / Gothic 2: Night of the Raven. You can't find this building while playing. : )

[vii-gog]

That's a good point about some (most?) mods not being compatible. Setting OpenGothic as the default way to play NotR might not be the play indeed. Honestly, now I'm thinking about potentially setting up a separate page/install for OpenGothic altogether. Should also make it easier to provide a good description for OG without competing for space with the game itself.

Huh, I wonder what's the story with those screenshots is then, since they've been on the store it seams like forewer xD
I'll let the folks who're handling the pages know, probably a good idea to updates the screenshots to reflect the game as it is after install 👍

[damianut]

Thanks for taking the arguments from the modders into consideration. @Try shared the link to this discussion on Gothic Modding Community Discord server, that's why appeared Gothic modders here. All commenters here are modders. 😁 @Fabiosek is one of the authors of Nyras Prologue Demake for example. @Patrix9999 maintains Gothic Online platform and knows Gothic engine very well.

I was creating for example Gladiator and Arkona. Both mods are for Gothic 2 NoTR and use Ikarus. Not possible to play with Open Gothic. 🙄 Also our upcoming Golden Gate 2 mod, because uses Union.

There are many Gothic modders, which can share knowledge to choose the best option for the players.

About the screenshot: it looks very nice, good choice, but it is modded. 😀

[Try]

Maybe worth to mention current state of the arm in gerards to mods. There are a severak kinds of them:

1. Content + Script - we have a script-engine compatible with vanilla. This is enough for, what feels to be 1% of mods :D
2. *.dll. Many mods reach into one of many vulnerabilities of original game, in order to inject their own C/C++ code. Win32-pe-code - won't support those
3. In between first two: Ikarus/LeGo also uses vulnerabilities to access game private data, that is not exposed by script-api. We can have partial support here, by replacing high-level Ikarus functions

[Try]

Hi, @vii-gog !

Very great news, and thanks for posting! If there are crash-reports from OpenGothic, do not hesitate to open issue here.

One small nitpick, about the installation of the game: installer seem to take time to install directx9.0c, what is not needed

[vii-gog]

Hey @Try,

Nice catch, that might have slipped though the cracks when I was testing things around so I'll clean it up.
While we're on the topic, OpenGothic doesn't mention any dependencies like the common MSVC redistributable, so am I correct to assume that it's dependency free?

[Try]

OpenGothic is built with MinGW - so we all in on opensource stack :D
All relevant *.dll such as libc++.dll, libunwind.dll, libwinpthread-1.dll are included in build, and there is also libTempest.dll - my pet-game engine.

[vii-gog]

Thanks for the detailed response! Neat, then I'll double check that Gothic itself doesn't depend on DirectX (I know it shouldn't, it using DDraw and all, but I grew paranoid in my ripe, old age) and will clean up the install configuration.

[Patrix9999]

@vii-gog I have unrelated question regarding the Gothic 2 Night of the Raven position in GoG store.

Would it be possible to ship the System Pack 1.8 as a default patch for this game and Gothic2.exe (2.6 fix)?
AFAIK the GoG contains it's own inhouse fixes, but the problem with them, is that they don't work and might cause the game to crash.
Some other users did even mention that GoG was even shipping Gothic2.exe version 2.7 (the whole modding community uses the 2.6 fix for everything)

I don't remember the exact dll names that GoG ships that aren't present in original game release, but i can later verify this and list them in this discussion thread.

I'm asking this question mostly because when GoG players first install the game, they need to install/remove certain files to get the game to working state, it would be nice, to just have the game build for players that just works after installation (compared to GoG release of the Gothic 2 Night of the Raven, Steam Release just works out of the box).

[vii-gog]

Hey!
Thanks for the detailed writeup! I will take a look at setting up NotR better, though can't promise any dates, with having lots in pipeline and all.
Mayhaps there's a guide for setting up Gothic with all of the bits and pieces that I could reference to make sure I get everything right? It's been a hot minute since I replayed it and I'm pretty sure I just raw-dogged it that time without any patches so I'm not up to date with the current "best setup" :)

[Patrix9999]

Yeah, so basically right now the most stable experience offers those things:

• Gothic 2.6 fix (with LAA patch, i'm pretty sure that you can get it from Union Resource Manager, go to Union section, it will be available under Player Kit + 64 bit system support)
• System Pack 1.8 maybe not as good as Union, but definitively the most stable pack of fixes done by modders community that improves the stability of the game

Optional, but kinda recomennded

• When you install union to gothic directory, it patches some of the old music files, because they are a bit broken, some noise artifacts can be heard in Xardas Tower, as if someone would drop the microphone on ground, things like this are basically annoying, and could be fixed by just getting _Work/Data/Music/ patches files from Union installation.

This should be more than enough to make the game more stable for ppl that just want to play it.
Steam ships exactly the same files (i'm not sure about music patch thing, but basically the Gothic 2.6 fix with LAA hack + SP 1.8 are by default provided in steam release of the game)

Remember about the GoG inhouse fixes!

Like i've said before, GoG ships their own unstable binaries that were meant to make the game more stable (they kinda do the opposite). I don't remember their exact names, so i'll provide you with all of the original file lis from Game/System/ dir, this should help you figure this out:

Original files from Game/System subdir

• BinkW32.dll (required by the game for rendering cutscenes)
• BugslayerUtil.dll (most likely unused binary by the game, left out in retail release, can be left in game build just in case)
• GEDialogs.dll (most likely unused binary by the game, left out in retail release, can be left in game build just in case)
• Gothic.ini (original game configuration)
• Gothic2.exe (game binary)
• GothicGame.ini (file provided with initial mod configuration for the player kit)
• GothicStarter.exe (starter for the mod, provided by the player kit, not present in retail version of the game, but always added by players, to be able to play on mods)
• GothicStarterMod.exe (starter for the mod developers, similar to starter, but has a bit more options)
• ImageHl2.dll (original ImageHelp libary from windows, required by the game, because they've changed it's name from imagehlp.dll to imagehl2.dll)
• KillHelp.exe (kill utility for older windows systems for dx7 apps)
• MsDbi.dll (some microsoft library that was shipped in retail version of the game)
• Mss32.dll (miles sound system library, used by the game in it's music system)
• MssDsp.flt (part of miles sound system file)
• MssSoft.m3d (another file from miles sound system)
• Paths.d (script for managing gothic paths, required)
• shw32.dll (custom memory allocator used by the game, system pack replaces it and use it to load it's own custom lib by the game process)
• Vdfs32g.dll (Virtual Disk File System library that allows the game to read files from custom .vdf archives, required by the game, System Pack replaces this library with custom one that reads files a lot quicker compared to original)
• Vdfs32g.exe (useless program that is only required if you're using original vdfs32g.dll)

[Fabiosek]

OpenGothic as "extras," an additional branch, etc. – absolutely. As "default"? PLEASE, NO. Don't make Gothic on GOG the worst possible version. When I suggested adding a regular 1.8 system pack, you wrote that it's "untested, etc.", yet you added fixes that people remove before launching the game. I respect OpenGothic as a project, but I think it's not suitable for an original branch, especially for playing with mods. Unless you really want people who have the GoG version to only buy the Steam version (I have both the GoG and Steam versions, but I know the GoG version is currently the worst).

[vii-gog]

Hey! Yes, lots of arguments not to add OpenGothic as the default (though do note we'd not remove the original executables even if we would set OG as default). I'll take a look at bringing NotR build up a notch as soon as I'll be able to.

[goldengatemod]

Hello, @vii-gog, do you maybe know how we can apply for publishing our modification Golden Gate: Goddes Heart (https://goldengatemod.com/) to Gothic 2 game in one-click installation program https://www.gog.com/pl/mods ?

[vii-gog]

Hey! No problem, I'll bring it up to the team :)

[goldengatemod]

great! Please let me know if you need some additional materials. Except Polish we have the mod already translated into German and English :)