Question regarding new versions of wesnoth

[Zarel]

As I've repeated many times now, the easiest way to make an updater:

Take the standalone installer, and remove all the music and images (and other datafiles) that didn't change.

Voila, that should bring the 290 MB installer down to 50 MB or so.

[itota]

As I've repeated many times now, the easiest way to make an updater:

Take the standalone installer, and remove all the music and images (and other datafiles) that didn't change.

Voila, that should bring the 290 MB installer down to 50 MB or so.

yes! its exactly what we need !!
any hero who make such updater ?
(sorry i cant because my pc environment sucks)

edit : and of course we need virus free reliable distribution.
i have to say that dev team MUST consider making such updater seriously !! please.

[Iris]

We have been considering it for quite a long time now.

[Gaaren]

We have been considering it for quite a long time now.

Is it hard to make such an updater?
I have no clue about computers, I couldn't even find my wesnoth saves without asking for help in the forum.

[thespaceinvader]

IIRC, it was tried once before, and so few people downloaded the slimmed down version that the effort of making it wasn't worth it. But I could be wrong here.

[HomerJ]

IIRC, it was tried once before, and so few people downloaded the slimmed down version that the effort of making it wasn't worth it. But I could be wrong here.

Would a poll on the Users forum be of any significance to the devs opinion, maybe even a cross-subforum poll-thread if that's possible (like the general announcements)?


Greetz
HomerJ

[Eleazar]

IIRC, it was tried once before, and so few people downloaded the slimmed down version that the effort of making it wasn't worth it. But I could be wrong here.

Yeah, i wasn't involved, but that's what i remember. It's probably been tried more than once.

There's always been a few people on the forums that consider a partial download vital, but apparently no widespread interest.

[Gaaren]

IIRC, it was tried once before, and so few people downloaded the slimmed down version that the effort of making it wasn't worth it. But I could be wrong here.

Yeah, i wasn't involved, but that's what i remember. It's probably been tried more than once.

There's always been a few people on the forums that consider a partial download vital, but apparently no widespread interest.

I guess most people got so fast connections that they don't find the need for one with a measly 250 mb file...With my internet it's a whole other story, though.

[Daravel]

I understand that this idea has been tried before and it never took off, for whatever reasons.

But, aside from the reason the OP posted to actually implement this, there is another reason that I think is fairly major.

See: http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php ... 7&start=15 for a recent example

If a player downloads the game from another source (of which there are probably hundreds), then they will never know that there are updates, unless they come looking. There could be hundreds, if not thousands of players who are on old versions of the game simply because they don't know that there are new ones. Even worse, many of them may have stopped playing due to that version becoming outdated versus newer games.

Sure, it's other people's responsibility and problem if they don't do a quick google search, but, every little helps?

[borsook]

To add something to the discussion about size benefit - I was providing patches for Wesnoth for a few series (I think in times of 1.3.x) and generally they were under 10mb I used 7zip compression, but even with something less effective it should be a huge difference. Preparing such a patch took around 10-15 minutes, the whole trouble was uploading, linking to it etc. Anyway I can do patches for Windows again if there is a real demand. But how many people would be interested in them?

[Daravel]

I'd be interested; I mean, who wouldn't? If I can download the new content in 5 minutes instead of 30, then why not?

If you add an upadate button to the main menu in-game (or even an auto-update prompt, so you don't have to click it all the time), then any player who ever downloads the game can be kept up to date.

Or, even if you don't want to use patches like this and still keep the full download. At least add the update prompt to the game. It can't be too hard to implement something that checks your version to the latest available and prompts the user. This way, you never have people with outdated versions.

[borsook]

I'd be interested; I mean, who wouldn't? If I can download the new content in 5 minutes instead of 30, then why not?

If you add an upadate button to the main menu in-game (or even an auto-update prompt, so you don't have to click it all the time), then any player who ever downloads the game can be kept up to date.

Or, even if you don't want to use patches like this and still keep the full download. At least add the update prompt to the game. It can't be too hard to implement something that checks your version to the latest available and prompts the user. This way, you never have people with outdated versions.

Well actually my past experience is that while a few people find it very useful, the vast majority seem not to care. I have no knowledge of Wesnoth's code and very poor programming skills so I would not undertake anything like you described here. I can do traditional good-ol'patch - i.e. you download a file, run it, and your wesnoth installation gets updated. If there is interested in that, and RL does not get in the way I'll try to provide a small update from 1.8.3 to 1.8.4 when it comes out.

[Daravel]

True, what I suggest would have to be provided by the dev team; but as far as I know, it's relatively simple.

It's only an issue if there are a significant number of players who are on older versions - and simply don't know that this game is updated - which can occur if people download it from another source. Unfortunately, there is no way to find out.

I'm surprised that more people wouldn't use it. When presented with 2 links, why would you pick the full download?

[borsook]

True, what I suggest would have to be provided by the dev team; but as far as I know, it's relatively simple.

It's only an issue if there are a significant number of players who are on older versions - and simply don't know that this game is updated - which can occur if people download it from another source. Unfortunately, there is no way to find out.

I'm surprised that more people wouldn't use it. When presented with 2 links, why would you pick the full download?

Yes, that's true. The patches I did were never "official" so the links were not provided on the main website, just in the forums. Still, regardless of patches the game could display a notification that a new version is ready. This would have the benefit of working across the platforms too. That said one can always use sourceforge's RSS to get news when new version is out.

[Daravel]

[quote="] Still, regardless of patches the game could display a notification that a new version is ready. This would have the benefit of working across the platforms too. That said one can always use sourceforge's RSS to get news when new version is out.[/quote]

Couldn't agree more.