Big Fish Games Manager Forum

After installing the Game Manager with the C4P, I was ready for some games, so I went to the Big Fish web site, logged in, and downloaded the installer for the game Drawn: The Painted Tower.

It's a very small file, because it's only supposed to cause the Game Manager to trigger the real game download.

1. I opened CXG Bottle Manager and chose to install another application in the Big Fish Games bottle.
2. I chose the Drawn installer. Immediately, the BFG Manager was opened asking me for my credentials; when I provided them it proceeded to ask if I really wanted to download the (somewhat) large game. I said yes.
3. The BFG Manager downloaded and installed the Drawn game successfully.
4. The CXG installer was still running, so I closed the BFG Manager. The CXG installer claimed success.

Then I was able to run Drawn either directly or from the BFG Manager itself. The game seems to run perfectly.

A couple of observations:

a) I tried the game immediately after step 3 and it didn't work. So step 4 is important.
b) I probably could have just skipped the CXG installer altogether by running the Drawn "installer" directly as an executable.

Hi Alejandro,

With a) above, I think that's caused by registry entries entered by
the game installation itself -- if you run the game immediately after
installing the BFG title itself, the bottle is running on the registry
values set when you -started- the cxinstaller process. Unless you do
a bottle reset (simulated windows reboot) to cause the wine engine
to reload, things get stuck as you noted - some BFG games are more
difficult than others in this regard.

Wrt b) above, you're quite right - if the BFG Manager/bottle already
exists, you can run the game installer stub.exe with the 'Run Command'
option for that bottle - the installer stub.exe will detect the presence
of the BFG Manager client, and launch that to log you into your 'download
session'. Once the download have completed and the game is successfully
installed, and registration exe is launched by the installer, to validate
the installation against your user login session.

The C4P install profiles that I'm doing for a number of BFG titles, will
(or should) defaultly install into the Big Fish Games Manager bottle if
it exists. If this bottle does not exist, the game will install into it's
own standalone bottle that will have the name of the game itself. You can
change this behavior at the beginning of the C4P execution manually, for
the case where you might prefer to install a title into it's own bottle
rather than into the BFG Manager/bottle. There are some BFG titles for
which this will not be so - they will defaultly install into their own
bottle because some of the registry tweaks required to get them running,
can break of BFG titles already in the BFG Manager bottle.

The there's a couple of reasons why I've staged the C4P profiles I've done
for some many BFG games like that -- one of them is that many of the BFG
demo downloads are the full versions of the games, just time limited. If
you subsequently purchase the game after trying the demo, you get access
to another installer stub.exe -- this also contains the credentials to
register the full version of the game. If you run the C4P profile again
after downloading the purchased installer stub, the C4P installer AI will
treat this the same way as if it were a game installation - the BFG Manager
installer AI will detect the needed files are already there, and register
(take the time limit off) the demo version content.

If you purchase 2 (or more) BFG titles at the same time, you're given access
to a special installer stub.exe for both/all purchases. I'll need to check
that more thoroughly, but I think I concluded both titles had to be installed
into the same bottle for that registration stub to work (I might be wrong)...
..the Big Fish games support crew are really helpful too, so I suppose ...if
you asked them...they might be able to provide you with individual installer
stub.exe files for each game (but I might be wrong there too 8)...

@Alejandro - I've a number of BFG game C4P profiles done, but I'm putting
off publishing them until the next CXG release to allow changes wrt 7854.c4p
and the C4P system itself to roll into the base CXG installation. I'd encourage
you to submit the BFG release of Drawn into the C4 database and create a C4P
profile for it. I've tested about 60 or so BFG titles in all -- there are a
number of common factors many of the games share...ie; the working C4P profile
for one BFG titles becomes the 'template' for many others of the same kind - I've
found more than a few different kinds however...

I've got enough notes here to type up a sort of BFG C4P mini-howto...hmm...I
might do that later on and post it here somewhere...a tip&trick most likely...
...I have to ask Aric about some of the finery involved first before I do
that tho'...so it'll be sometime this coming week one supposes...

Cheers!

"... submit the BFG release of Drawn into the C4 database and create a C4P
profile for it..."

Sounds interesting.

How would the c4p profiles for individual BF games work? I imagine it would be a base install of BFG Manager first. And then run the stub? Can the user choose between the demo stub from the BFG web site or local file?

Alejandro Moreno wrote:

"... submit the BFG release of Drawn into the C4 database and create
a C4P
profile for it..."

Sounds interesting.

How would the c4p profiles for individual BF games work? I imagine
it would be a base install of BFG Manager first. And then run the
stub? Can the user choose between the demo stub from the BFG web
site or local file?

What I've been doing is using the c4p tag <extrafor>=com.codeweavers.c4.6268
...this is how the C4P install AI would determine whether or not the bottle
created by this page's C4P profile already exists...ie; if you install the
BFG client software using the 6268.c4p here, you will have a bottle by the
name of 'Big Fish Games Manager'...

If that happens, the base installation of Big Fish Games Manager already
exists -- the installation logic in the Big Fish Games Manager itself makes
sure it doesn't attempt to install the base client software again. However,
if an updated version of Big Fish Games Manager becomes available, the
installer stub will routinely update the base BFG client software as a matter
of course...

Big Fish Games Manager itself only requires app_id=7854 -- I also include this
as a <predependency> for individual BFG titles' C4P profiles as well. If the
<extrafor> situation above is used, the cxinstaller logic will determine that
app_id=7854 is already installed and not try to install it again. This allows
folks to choose not to install the BFG title into the Big Fish Games Manager
bottle if they wish, and instead install the game into it's own bottle. If that
happens. app_id=7854 is automatically installed into that bottle along with a
base installation of the Big Fish Games Manager client software itself, and
any other <predependency> that specific BFG titles requires -- this varies
from title to title of course.

The important thing to remember there is that any dependency that a specific
BFG title requires, needs to be included in it's C4P profile -- this allows it
to be installed via C4P as a 'stand alone' installation as well as part of the
Big Fish Games Manager bottle. If some other BFG title(s) has already installed
a needed dependency into the Big Fish Games Manager bottle, likewise the cxinstaller
AI will detect this situation and skip over any predependency that's already
installed. You do not need (nor possibly want) 6268.c4p to be a <predependency>
of any individual BFG title -- that logic is already part of the BFG stub installer.

Users -can- choose a local installer downloaded from the BFG website, rather than
rely on the C4P automation to do this -- do note however, the latest version of
the Big Fish Games Manager client software seems to apparently delete the stub
installer file after a successful installation. Mind you, one should only ever
really need to do that for a BFG title not yet in the C4 database/not having a
C4P profile and/or in the case where you're testing a BFG title for the purposes
of creating a C4P profile for it and need to isolate the exact <predependency>
targets that actual game requires. At a minimum, most all BFG title C4P profiles
will have dependencies of 7854.c4p and 7856.c4p to allow the stand alone install
option -- depending on the BFG title involved, you might also need .NET 2.0, one
of the M$ Visual C++/Visual Basic packages or in some cases, certain native dlls
from the directx redistrib package are required (and the C4P profile needs to
provide a library override as well in some of these cases).

To test/install/checkout a BFG title not in C4/without a C4P profile, you would
proceed as follows;

1. Install the following C4 app via the C4P profile on the following page;

   http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name/?app_id=7854

Note: alternately you can install the Big Fish Games Manager using the C4P profile here

2. That will give you a bottle named 'Microsoft HTML Rendering Engine 7' (or the Big Fish Games Manager bottle if going that way)

3. Download the demo installer stub from the BFG website page for the game in question

4. In cxsetup (Manage Bottles) highlight the bottle created -> Applications tab -> Install Software

5. Select 'Other application' and then browse to and open/run the stub installer you downloaded - the installation should complete cleanly.

If the game runs, fine...you're pretty much finished, but if it doesn't you'll need investigate
further to determine whether it's missing a required dependency (or else simply will not work).

If the BFG title being installed pops a window during the install phase related to the Directx
Runtime Web Installer, you will need to include .NET 2.0 as a predependency for this title to
avoid that process erroring out -- I have jotted down some notes about using this...see;

http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name/?app_id=7558;forum=1;msg=86491

An example of the usage described there is part of the following C4P profile;

http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name/?app_id=7709

(it's not published yet, so just advocate for that title if you want to have a look
before it does go live)....

Upon reflection/testing it seems it'll be okay for me to start marking many of the BFG
titles' C4P profiles already done as ready for publishing, so this coming week they
should start appearing....(although we've still got a caveat wrt bfggameservices.exe
as such ; hopefully we can find a solution for that issue soon)

If you've any further questions, just ask -- happy to help 8)

Cheers!