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Thread: Game Patches

  1. #1
    Mostly Me Lucio's Avatar
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    Game Patches

    Ok, it's World of Warcraft patch day, the day of naval gazing and contemplation of life (or in my case, aerobics class in 10 mins )

    One thing that I did ponder though is are game developers getting unrealistic with the size of their applications? For example, today's WoW patch weighed in at just over 5GB of data that's been trickling down over the last month or so, only to trigger another 1.2GB of additional information.

    The game itself now takes up 23GB of space on the HDD (including some log files).



    All of this seems incredibly wasteful IMO, and I struggle to believe that the game *needs* this much information to be retransmitted, given the vast majority of the changes are either server side, or in the UI scripting. Basically the entire "patch" is effectively sending us the entire game again, instead of simply patching into the existing files and I'm wondering if it's all really that necessary?



    Anyone else think that this, whether about Warcraft or other games on the market?

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  2. #2
    Theoretical Element Spud1's Avatar
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    Re: Game Patches

    It's very unusual for the patches to be that big, and in this case..its because the patch includes the vast majority of Cataclysm content - its a virtual re-write of the game.

    Most of this (total around 7gb) patch is artwork/multi media as opposed to code changes, so its not too unrealistic in this case.

    I admit its frustrating that its a forced update though 2 whole months before release, as you can't exactly wait for the expansion to be released and install it from the DVD..as you'd have to wait 2 months without playing (and there would still be a 500mb patch to grab).

  3. #3
    Moderator chuckskull's Avatar
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    Re: Game Patches

    Spud's hit the nail on the head, nowadays the actual 'code' of the average game is tiny compared to the amount of graphical and media files. We expect high resolution textures, incredibly intricate 3D models, high quality audio, including rafts of dialogue and so on, and we don't want any of it repeated to often, plus we want a lot of granularity in our graphics settings, which means a lot of this has to be repeated at various quality levels, all of which quickly builds up to gigs upon gigs and that's just for the game world, on top of that you add all the story telling elements which usually mean an hour or two of HD or near HD video, more if the game goes down the multiple ending route.

    Finally you can't really compress all this to much or you end up with either slow loading times or poor performance.

  4. #4
    Splash
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    Re: Game Patches

    Quote Originally Posted by chuckskull View Post
    Finally you can't really compress all this to much or you end up with either slow loading times or poor performance.

    Just spotted this thread... I have WoW installed to a 40Gib SSD. Nothing else on the disk. Obviously there are a few addons on there taking my currently installed size to 27.6Gib. While installing 4.0.1 the disk ran out of space while unpacking and installing the patch. That's 5Gib or so for the patch download, then another roughly 12Gib of temporary space during install. I had to copy the entire install to another disk, do the install and then copy back.




    Nuts, it really is.


    That said, given that the entire old world will be remodeled *even for those who don't buy the expansion* come the 7th of December it was guaranteed to be a hefty patch. Doesn't stop it being mental though I'm just grateful I'm with Be*

  5. #5
    Butter king GheeTsar's Avatar
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    Re: Game Patches

    Team Fortress 2 also seems to update continually with 100-300Mb patches. Since the Orange Box first was published I can't imagine how much I've downloaded keeping it up to date.

  6. #6
    Qualified Eye-Tician Iron Sights's Avatar
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    Re: Game Patches

    Quote Originally Posted by GheeTsar View Post
    Team Fortress 2 also seems to update continually with 100-300Mb patches. Since the Orange Box first was published I can't imagine how much I've downloaded keeping it up to date.
    true, tf2 is showing just under 10gb for me

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