Alawar wants people to use their Gamebox, despite the fact that it's been in beta for several years. They seem to want people to order AND play games through the Gamebox. It is their "manager" and as such, they are no different than any other of these major online distributors. However, there are a few "gotchas" with it.
The one real advantage of the Gamebox is the fact that you can define, through its options, where you want your download file to be placed, whether or not to keep that downloaded install file and where to place the final game. If you download through the Alawar site, you have NO choice where the game is installed. I had one install recently into the D drive! I complained and they sent me a new link to install it "properly" (meaning Program Files).
Now as to the problems:
First - since the product needs internet connection, you can't use it if your internet is down or their servers go down (fairly common occurrence).
Second - if you are using Vista (and presumably 7), new FULL games are not recognized as "full" unless they have been "viewed" by the Gamebox in ADMIN mode at least once. I have no idea why this one but it's a long-standing problem. I just made my shortcut to automatically load in admin-mode to get around it.
Now comes the real gotcha. And it's one that I did not realize until I was helping a friend last night purchase a game through the gamebox. If you have the default configuration of the product, you do not have anywhere near the full list of games that are available. My friend was looking for a specific game and when I realized she only had about 30 Match 3 games instead of over 100, I had in inspiration of the problem and with 5 minutes checking, confirmed.
This problem can be fixed. That brings up the 2nd "gotcha". If you fix the problem so you can see all the games available (or at least far far more of them), you don't update the free game when it's released!
You can have more games to order or you can see the latest freebie! The configurations don't allow both! I have contacted Alawar on the issue but have not yet heard back.
Now, this description of the "fix" is based on Vista. I don't know where XP puts "ProgramData" files so I would appreciate it if an XP user will post a supplement on part of this "fix".
Here's what you need - I recommend copies so you can go back/forth for part of this. With Gamebox NOT loaded:
From the Gamebox folder (that can be anywhere - wherever you have it installed - default is C:\Program Files):
Make a copy of config.xml
Rename the copy config-old.xml (so you can swap back)
Edit the original config.xml (Notepad works fine)
On the <serverconfig> line, change "config.xml" to "config_full.xml"
Save the change.
Now go to C:\ProgramData\AlawarGamebox\temp
Delete player.xml (if it exists - my friend didn't have it but I did)
Delete player.zip
Load Gamebox. You should have the longer lists of games. It may be a little slower to load in this mode but the lists of games is much longer in every case.
To swap back (with Gamebox NOT Loaded):
Go to the Gamebox Folder
Rename config.xml to config-new.xml
Rename config-old.xml to config.xml
Go to C:\ProgramData\AlawarGamebox\temp
Delete the same two files
Now you can get the latest game.
Note - neither mode fixes the problem for which I originally contacted Alawar - 17 of my games don't show in Gamebox at all! Even them giving me the registry entries to put in didn't solve that problem.
The fixes I have outlined are those that were given to me by Alawar in an attempt to solve my original problem. I noticed the "fix" caused the second problem (free game update). They never told me to reset to the original configuration. I do not feel that what they told me was confidential in any way and this description may actually HELP them by giving people a better way of using their gamebox if they are any way handy with PC files.
