11 ms·

Holy cow, I bought the game 10 years ago, found my old email with the "Secret World of Goo Download Location" and it worked :) No Linux update yet, but I'm goin

by kgwxd 8y ago

Holy cow, I bought the game 10 years ago, found my old email with the "Secret World of Goo Download Location" and it worked :) No Linux update yet, but I'm going to play the original anyway. Such a fun game. Edit: .deb package didn't work on Xubuntu 19.04 but extracting the .tar.gz and running ./WorldOfGoo.bin64 worked like a charm

beefsack 8y ago
I've got the same email, dated 23rd October 2008, and very impressive that the link still works and has the updated binaries listed.
mav3rick 8y ago
The deb package not working is sad. Any idea why that is ?
- kgwxd 8y ago
  When I tried to run it from the terminal, it said something about a missing Gnome thing, maybe it would work on Ubuntu (I'm on Xubuntu). Either way, I already have a ton of other games I run directly without installing as a package, it's not really a problem, I actually prefer it.
skummetmaelk 8y ago
This is actually super impressive. Managing to create an application bundle which doesn't break down every now and then with new system updates is super challenging. 10 years is just wild. Unless you only have libc as a dependency but I doubt that for a graphical application.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- skrebbel 8y ago
  Doesn't that mean Linux is entirely broken? Isn't the whole point of OSes that things that used to work, keep working? I mean, lots of things are wrong with Windows but I can double-click a .exe from 1998 and in most cases it'll just run. I'd assume Linux, being used a lot for servers and long-running apps, would have this too?
  - yani 8y ago
    Missing a runtime... missing dll... missing direct3d or different version of it, compatibility for certain version of Windows. It is all the same everywhere.
    - wolfgke 8y ago
      On Windows, you can easily install lots of parallel versions of libraries.
      - icebraining 8y ago
        So can you on Linux. Libraries are installed with their full version in the filename (e.g. /usr/lib/libpurple.so.0.13.0) so you can keep lots of parallel versions.
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    > Doesn't that mean Linux is entirely broken? Isn't the whole point of OSes that things that used to work, keep working? Not Linux, libraries instead are the ones breaking compatibility over time. Or missing libraries as well...
    - badsectoracula 8y ago
      As far as the user is concerned it is "Linux", when people say they use "Linux" they do not just mean the kernel, they mean the entire OS. On Windows these libraries have APIs that remain backwards compatible (new methods can be exposed, but existing stuff remains there). Unless the equivalent Linux libraries also decide to provide backwards compatibility, they'll just make Linux look broken (even if it isn't the kernel's fault). (and no, this isn't something you solve by being pedantic about what is userspace and what is kernelspace and who controls what, as that information doesn't solve the actual problem - you solve it by cultivating a culture that actually cares about backwards compatibility)
- wolfgke 8y ago
  > 10 years is just wild. Most 20 year old Windows applications still run on Windows 10.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- badsectoracula 8y ago
  > 10 years is just wild. And on Windows, a 10 year old program NOT working is extremely rare. Hell, a 20 year old program is most likely to be running too (most common issue would be the installer but usually it can be worked around). > Unless you only have libc as a dependency but I doubt that for a graphical application. You can also have xlib as a dependency and it'll work since unlike whatever madness is built on top of it, the X11 API is stable (but of course modern developers dislike that stability and want to replace it with Wayland that breaks everything again so they have new toys to play with). Example: https://i.imgur.com/YxGNB7h.png https://i.imgur.com/YxGNB7h.png (from an old toolkit of mine, showing the same binaries running in 90s RedHat and last year's Debian).
  - Piskvorrr 8y ago
    [citation-needed]. Heck, I've gone as far as running Windows, a Linux VM inside, and running the old program in Wine: more likely to run that way than in Win10. I'm aware of all the impressive Windows compat work that went into keeping the Win32 ecosystem ticking, but recently (last ~2 years) this seems to have gone downhill. In the long run, it always comes down to emulation, regardless of system (e.g. Win16 is no longer a part of current Windows). Perhaps ReactOS has some promise w/r/t old Windows executables...
  - rincebrain 8y ago
    To be fair, X11 sans extensions is stable, but those extensions are how they provide a lot of the more complicated functionality that's been built since X11 was born. Wayland originated, AIUI, because we've got layers upon layers of complexity and indirection to bend X11 into what we want on a more recent environment, and building a system with more awareness of what the constraints are in recent systems lets you implement things much more cleanly than those levels of complexity (or, at least, not much worse, if you're using XWayland). (Of course, it's not implausible that in 20 years or less, we'll think of Wayland as requiring lots of kludges and hacks to do what we need then, but you can only plan for known knowns and known unknowns.)
air7 8y ago
I just remembered I too bought the game 10 years ago, as part of the Humble Indie Bundle. I also found the old email but it didn't "just" work. Interestingly, the part of the chain that failed was their then email marketing provider, that hijacked all the links in the email to provide click tracking, doesn't exists anymore. So all the links are dead even though they would have redirected to pages that are still functioning.
- dorian-graph 8y ago
  This is hilarious, and sad.
- theandrewbailey 8y ago
  Have you tried making an account on Humble Bundle? It might be worth a try to see if it recognizes your old purchases.
- Nextgrid 8y ago
  Some of them encode the target URL in the tracking URL itself so it might be worth checking that. I think MailChimp uses a Base64-encoded JSON object in the tracking URL which you can decode and get the real URL even if the tracking link is no longer working.
- em-bee 8y ago
  look at the text version of the email, it contains the actual URL. based on your post i checked if i got the bundle that included world of goo, and it turns out i did. it contained the key url as http://www.humblebundle.com/?key=.. http://www.humblebundle.com/?key=... and that url is still working. as someone stated elsewhere in this discussion, the humble bundle version is not updated. it's downloading version 1.30 right now...
  - em-bee 8y ago
    in the meantime i am playing osmos in the browser which the humble download page helpfully includes. i am pretty sure that can't have been there when the bundle was released initially
fjsolwmv 8y ago
You can play the windows version on WINE, right?

by kgwxd 8y ago

beefsack 8y ago

I've got the same email, dated 23rd October 2008, and very impressive that the link still works and has the updated binaries listed.

mav3rick 8y ago

The deb package not working is sad. Any idea why that is ?

kgwxd 8y ago
When I tried to run it from the terminal, it said something about a missing Gnome thing, maybe it would work on Ubuntu (I'm on Xubuntu). Either way, I already have a ton of other games I run directly without installing as a package, it's not really a problem, I actually prefer it.

skummetmaelk 8y ago

This is actually super impressive. Managing to create an application bundle which doesn't break down every now and then with new system updates is super challenging. 10 years is just wild. Unless you only have libc as a dependency but I doubt that for a graphical application.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
skrebbel 8y ago
Doesn't that mean Linux is entirely broken? Isn't the whole point of OSes that things that used to work, keep working? I mean, lots of things are wrong with Windows but I can double-click a .exe from 1998 and in most cases it'll just run. I'd assume Linux, being used a lot for servers and long-running apps, would have this too?
- yani 8y ago
  Missing a runtime... missing dll... missing direct3d or different version of it, compatibility for certain version of Windows. It is all the same everywhere.
  - wolfgke 8y ago
    On Windows, you can easily install lots of parallel versions of libraries.
    - icebraining 8y ago
      So can you on Linux. Libraries are installed with their full version in the filename (e.g. /usr/lib/libpurple.so.0.13.0) so you can keep lots of parallel versions.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  > Doesn't that mean Linux is entirely broken? Isn't the whole point of OSes that things that used to work, keep working? Not Linux, libraries instead are the ones breaking compatibility over time. Or missing libraries as well...
  - badsectoracula 8y ago
    As far as the user is concerned it is "Linux", when people say they use "Linux" they do not just mean the kernel, they mean the entire OS. On Windows these libraries have APIs that remain backwards compatible (new methods can be exposed, but existing stuff remains there). Unless the equivalent Linux libraries also decide to provide backwards compatibility, they'll just make Linux look broken (even if it isn't the kernel's fault). (and no, this isn't something you solve by being pedantic about what is userspace and what is kernelspace and who controls what, as that information doesn't solve the actual problem - you solve it by cultivating a culture that actually cares about backwards compatibility)
wolfgke 8y ago
> 10 years is just wild. Most 20 year old Windows applications still run on Windows 10.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
badsectoracula 8y ago
> 10 years is just wild. And on Windows, a 10 year old program NOT working is extremely rare. Hell, a 20 year old program is most likely to be running too (most common issue would be the installer but usually it can be worked around). > Unless you only have libc as a dependency but I doubt that for a graphical application. You can also have xlib as a dependency and it'll work since unlike whatever madness is built on top of it, the X11 API is stable (but of course modern developers dislike that stability and want to replace it with Wayland that breaks everything again so they have new toys to play with). Example: https://i.imgur.com/YxGNB7h.png https://i.imgur.com/YxGNB7h.png (from an old toolkit of mine, showing the same binaries running in 90s RedHat and last year's Debian).
- Piskvorrr 8y ago
  [citation-needed]. Heck, I've gone as far as running Windows, a Linux VM inside, and running the old program in Wine: more likely to run that way than in Win10. I'm aware of all the impressive Windows compat work that went into keeping the Win32 ecosystem ticking, but recently (last ~2 years) this seems to have gone downhill. In the long run, it always comes down to emulation, regardless of system (e.g. Win16 is no longer a part of current Windows). Perhaps ReactOS has some promise w/r/t old Windows executables...
- rincebrain 8y ago
  To be fair, X11 sans extensions is stable, but those extensions are how they provide a lot of the more complicated functionality that's been built since X11 was born. Wayland originated, AIUI, because we've got layers upon layers of complexity and indirection to bend X11 into what we want on a more recent environment, and building a system with more awareness of what the constraints are in recent systems lets you implement things much more cleanly than those levels of complexity (or, at least, not much worse, if you're using XWayland). (Of course, it's not implausible that in 20 years or less, we'll think of Wayland as requiring lots of kludges and hacks to do what we need then, but you can only plan for known knowns and known unknowns.)

air7 8y ago

I just remembered I too bought the game 10 years ago, as part of the Humble Indie Bundle. I also found the old email but it didn't "just" work. Interestingly, the part of the chain that failed was their then email marketing provider, that hijacked all the links in the email to provide click tracking, doesn't exists anymore. So all the links are dead even though they would have redirected to pages that are still functioning.

dorian-graph 8y ago
This is hilarious, and sad.
theandrewbailey 8y ago
Have you tried making an account on Humble Bundle? It might be worth a try to see if it recognizes your old purchases.
Nextgrid 8y ago
Some of them encode the target URL in the tracking URL itself so it might be worth checking that. I think MailChimp uses a Base64-encoded JSON object in the tracking URL which you can decode and get the real URL even if the tracking link is no longer working.
em-bee 8y ago
look at the text version of the email, it contains the actual URL. based on your post i checked if i got the bundle that included world of goo, and it turns out i did. it contained the key url as http://www.humblebundle.com/?key=.. http://www.humblebundle.com/?key=... and that url is still working. as someone stated elsewhere in this discussion, the humble bundle version is not updated. it's downloading version 1.30 right now...
- em-bee 8y ago
  in the meantime i am playing osmos in the browser which the humble download page helpfully includes. i am pretty sure that can't have been there when the bundle was released initially

fjsolwmv 8y ago

You can play the windows version on WINE, right?