Differences between revisions 17 and 18
⇤ ← Revision 17 as of 2015-09-03 04:44:38 →
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Editor: AlexandreDetiste
Comment: explain BTS & PTS jargon
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Editor: AlexandreDetiste
Comment: list advantages
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Using this tool has several advantages over managing game-assets by hand:
 * it does a lot of things automatically:
  * it create an individual meny entry (.desktop file) for ScummVM games, Doom WADS
  * it provide user language autodetection at package and/or runtime
  * it will find data in your Steam folder (both native or under Wine; or even on some mounted NTFS/VFAT device)
 * each needed file is verified with a checksum to ensure it will work
 * G-D-P will store the data where the game engine expect those, in accordance with this engine's maintainer (e.g.: some specific directory under /usr/share/games)
 * G-D-P will know which Debian-provided extractor to use to unpack .exe dos/windows (self-)extracting archives (e.g.: innoextract, 7z, lha, rar, ace, arj, unshield, cabextract ...)
 * some commercial website now provide some .deb's files too, but those:
  * may include some outdated version of the free game engine, games packaged with G-D-P will always use the latest version of the engine

  * doesn't try to follow Debian quality standards

  * are allways i386/amd64 packages while packages built by G-D-P are 'all' packages that can also be used on ARM devices for example.

 * The game you've bought on Steam is now available to all users of this computer; not only the one running the Steam client. You can let your child play games without cheating the 13 years rule or worrying about the online-chat feature.

Various games are divided into two logical parts: engine and data. Often the engine and data are licenced in different ways, such that only one half can be distributed in Debian.

game-data-packager is a tool which builds .deb files for game data which cannot be distributed in Debian (such as commercial game data).

game-data-packager aims to support all games of any kind: FPS, adventure games, text games, strategy games,... in all available languages.

Using this tool has several advantages over managing game-assets by hand:

  • it does a lot of things automatically:
    • it create an individual meny entry (.desktop file) for ScummVM games, Doom WADS
    • it provide user language autodetection at package and/or runtime
    • it will find data in your Steam folder (both native or under Wine; or even on some mounted NTFS/VFAT device)
  • each needed file is verified with a checksum to ensure it will work
  • G-D-P will store the data where the game engine expect those, in accordance with this engine's maintainer (e.g.: some specific directory under /usr/share/games)
  • G-D-P will know which Debian-provided extractor to use to unpack .exe dos/windows (self-)extracting archives (e.g.: innoextract, 7z, lha, rar, ace, arj, unshield, cabextract ...)
  • some commercial website now provide some .deb's files too, but those:
    • may include some outdated version of the free game engine, games packaged with G-D-P will always use the latest version of the engine
    • doesn't try to follow Debian quality standards
    • are allways i386/amd64 packages while packages built by G-D-P are 'all' packages that can also be used on ARM devices for example.
  • The game you've bought on Steam is now available to all users of this computer; not only the one running the Steam client. You can let your child play games without cheating the 13 years rule or worrying about the online-chat feature.

Here is a list of all games supported by the version in git. To see which games are supported by the version currently installed on your computer, simply type game-data-packager at the shell.

If you want to help on improving this this tool, please have look a the worklist .