Author Topic: 45 MB patch download! (Read 620 times)

airhog99 · « **on:** April 12, 2007, 08:53:02 PM »

And all this in a full screen window..
It's not exactly going quickly either.
You guys gotta look into incremental updates...

airhog99 · « **Reply #1 on:** April 12, 2007, 09:04:12 PM »

And it's getting better..
I got out of AH via the Windows key (ALT-Tab does it too), to do some other stuff in the meantime. But now AH is unresponsive. Not too nice.

I started a separate download instead, which is estimated at taking 5 minutes rather than the 20 estimated from within AH. And it seems to be on target.

The Fugitive · « **Reply #2 on:** April 12, 2007, 10:09:05 PM »

The first couple of days of an update are rough. Over 5000 people trying to DL the update, most using the auto-update in stead of the linked update posted on the announcement.

Another "youth" expecting to get EVERYTHING, NOW ! jeez, ease up, give them a break!

38ruk · « **Reply #3 on:** April 13, 2007, 02:08:19 AM »

OOOhhhhh man 5 minutes or 20 minutes , what do i do ??? I cant wait that long jeezzee!!!! Go take the trash out for your folks or pull up yer pants . Front wiper

airhog99 · « **Reply #4 on:** April 13, 2007, 03:30:43 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by The Fugitive
The first couple of days of an update are rough. Over 5000 people trying to DL the update, most using the auto-update in stead of the linked update posted on the announcement.

Another "youth" expecting to get EVERYTHING, NOW ! jeez, ease up, give them a break!

Glad to hear I'm still young, at 40+.
It's about giving a "professional" experience to the end user. If I had by chance started to use AH only a cople of day's ago I might just have put it in the "not a serious company" category and called it a day.

I actually reported the program going unresponsive (in NT parlance), which ought to be of interest.

So an estimated 20 minutes is more like.. forever.

It should be in the company's own interest to avoid these large downloads.

Skuzzy · « **Reply #5 on:** April 13, 2007, 05:50:34 AM »

A single change, like adding a new plane/vehicle can result in a large patch. It is unavoidable. In this case, not only did we have a new vehcile, we also updated the terrain graphics.

Art asset updates take more space than code updates.

When we do have a large update, we always provide alternate download methods. A periodic large patch is unavoidable. And just FYI. All our patches and updates are incremental.

As far as the game going unresponsive. That is simply due to the network stack in the operating system. While the game is waiting for the operating system to hand a packet of data over, the game will be reported as being unresponsive by the operating system.

Puck · « **Reply #6 on:** April 13, 2007, 08:58:44 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Skuzzy

As far as the game going unresponsive. That is simply due to the network stack in the operating system.

IPv4 was implemented on December 31st 1980 at midnight.

Microsoft used the xBSD TCP stack to implement IPv4 in Windows in 1991

16 years later the Windows TCP stack is STILL pathetically weak, non-standard, and barely functional. They have threatened to fix this since 1998, but nothing has substantially changed.

My advice is to download the patch from HTCs site on your Linux or xBSD box and copy it to your windows game machine from there.

doc1kelley · « **Reply #7 on:** April 13, 2007, 09:51:01 AM »

Now there is a great idea! I'm toying around with PCLinux now and I can see a great use for it in the DL'ing department.

All the Best...
Jay
awDoc1

airhog99 · « **Reply #8 on:** April 13, 2007, 01:23:43 PM »

Thanks for the reply!
There is always a reason for everything -I'm merely reporting what it looks like from my side. Surely multithreading can be used to make the program respond even when waiting for an IP packet? How do browsers do it?

BTW, the patch downloaded in 5 minutes on my Win XP machine when doing it from a browser.

Regards

Quote

Originally posted by Skuzzy
A single change, like adding a new plane/vehicle can result in a large patch. It is unavoidable. In this case, not only did we have a new vehcile, we also updated the terrain graphics.

Art asset updates take more space than code updates.

When we do have a large update, we always provide alternate download methods. A periodic large patch is unavoidable. And just FYI. All our patches and updates are incremental.

As far as the game going unresponsive. That is simply due to the network stack in the operating system. While the game is waiting for the operating system to hand a packet of data over, the game will be reported as being unresponsive by the operating system.

Skuzzy · « **Reply #9 on:** April 13, 2007, 02:12:57 PM »

The game will eventually time out on the connection, just like a browser will. We just wait longer.

airhog99 · « **Reply #10 on:** April 13, 2007, 02:19:07 PM »

I don't want to get into a lengthy argument about this, but I can assure you that neither Firefox or IE lock up because a web server doesn't respond. They both refresh their GUIs, and generally allow new windows to be created.

Skuzzy · « **Reply #11 on:** April 13, 2007, 04:26:39 PM »

The game waits as it can't do much more than wait for the connection timeout.

Firefox and IE are not writting in DirectX. Behavior is going to be different.

There can be only one instance of a DirectX application running in full window mode.

Puck · « **Reply #12 on:** April 13, 2007, 04:38:02 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by airhog99
I don't want to get into a lengthy argument about this, but I can assure you that neither Firefox or IE lock up because a web server doesn't respond. They both refresh their GUIs, and generally allow new windows to be created.

Apples and Caribou. http is a stateless protocol.

Skuzzy · « **Reply #13 on:** April 13, 2007, 04:38:49 PM »

Oh duh. Thanks Puck. I do sometimes miss the obvious.

airhog99 · « **Reply #14 on:** April 13, 2007, 06:03:26 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Puck
Apples and Caribou. http is a stateless protocol.

HTTP runs on top of TCP/IP.
Stateful or not has very little to do with this.

Author Topic: 45 MB *patch* download! (Read 620 times)

Author Topic: 45 MB patch download! (Read 620 times)