Flatpak generator for GOG installers

The hope is to have this eventually work with almost any GOG game, but that is probably a ways off.

Prerequisites

You will need flatpak 0.9.7 or later, and python3. Both should be available in your repository if not already installed. 64-bit OS only, but building and playing 32-bit games works.

This all uses the Freedesktop runtime. If you haven't already got it, add the repo like this:

flatpak --user remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

then install the runtime plus SDK:

flatpak --user install flathub org.freedesktop.Platform/x86_64/23.08

flatpak --user install flathub org.freedesktop.Sdk/x86_64/23.08

For x86 games additionally install the required compatibility packages:

flatpak --user install flathub org.freedesktop.Platform.Compat.i386/x86_64/23.08

flatpak --user install flathub org.freedesktop.Platform.GL32.default/x86_64/23.08

flatpak --user install flathub org.freedesktop.Sdk.Compat.i386/x86_64/23.08

flatpak --user install flathub org.freedesktop.Sdk.Extension.toolchain-i386/x86_64/23.08

Usage

First, clone the repo and then pull the submodules:

git clone https://github.com/kujeger/flatpak-gog.git
cd flatpak-gog
git submodule update --init --recursive

To prepare a game, you can use the provided json-maker script, e.g.

./json-maker ~/Downloads/baldur_s_gate_ii_enhanced_edition_2_6_6_0_47292.sh

which will create a new json in the current dir based on the com.gog.Template.json file, with a name like gen_com.gog.BaldursGate2EnhancedEdition.json .

You can then build and install it directly thus:

flatpak-builder --user --install build gen_com.gog.BaldursGateIIEnhancedEdition.json --force-clean --arch x86_64

(see also the suggested command in the output of json-maker)

After installation you can start it like this, or use the desktop/menu icon that should have also been created.

flatpak run com.gog.BaldursGateIIEnhancedEdition

Disk-space use

flatpak-builder leaves some caching in .flatpak-builder, and the prepared Build/GAMENAME directory. These can be safely removed once you have the game running.

Troubleshooting

Sometimes the start.sh script provided from GOG does not work right in our flatpak. You can "override" this by placing a custom start-script in overrides/starter-GAMENAME .

Compatibility

This has not been tested with many GOG games yet, and it is extremely likely that a lot of further work will be needed to cover more games.

See the compatibility list for details.

Further work

Things that would be nice to implement:

• Converting GOG's .desktop files for cases where there are separate "settings" desktop files.