Here's a question I haven't been able to find an answer to.
Most of the games GOG sells list hardware requirements as and XP machine with a 1ghz cpu blah blah. Since there is no limit to the number of machines I can install it on that I own, can I install a game from GOG on one of my retro machines and have it run like normal there, or are the installer packages hardwired to only run on a modern machine?
You should direct the question to GOG.com
Searching through the GOG community forums, I've discovered that the consensus seems to be the below is the easiest and most direct way to get a GOG purchased game working on original hardware.
Both of the below methods for transferring GOG games to original hardware require that it first be installed on at least an XP machine.
For DOSbox based games, simply copying the files from the installation directory to the old machine should do it for you, assuming that the game isn't a modern fix of the original (Tyrian 2010 "remastered" gold edition for example).
For Windows games, copying the game directories to exactly the same directories on the target machine, PLUS, copying any registry entries to the target machine (exploring said registry trees to a win9x/NT.reg file and importing it on the target machine) should take care of most games.
How about KernelEx'ing the GOG installers on the target machine?
Yeah, that's an option, but I'd like to be able to make an archive of the game installers. Not having the bare files and having to use their installer (aside from unpackers and such on the installer itself) is just as bad as DRM to me.
unpacker - http://innounp.sourceforge.net/
use Microsoft's Attack Surface Analyzer to track changes to the system/registry
In my experience, Innounp works for the majority of games, but some (like Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale) need to be installed with the GOG installers, because they do some kind of voodoo with game files. I'm sure you could figure it out with MSASA, but if you're installing it anyway, you might as well zip up the installed game folder and call it good. I haven't had to do any registry exports so far.
I've tried google for hours, but can't find a list of any kind that shows what games can be easily transplanted and which can't. I know for steam, they mess with some of the actual game files, and say Tyrian 2010 is a new release so it can't really be played on older machines.
