the updating problem :)
Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2014 12:27 pm
Warning: some technical stuff and ramblings. You can ignore this if you just want to play games is mostly for _renke haha
As some of you know if you follow me on twitter, yesterday did 3 updates. Now the game is getting big, 146mb, so basically I've uploaded 450mb for an actual change of ... maybe 50kb?
This is a big unsolved problem and that's why I might use Steam Early Access for the final testing of the game. I'm not eager to do that and I would still provide updates the "normal way" anyway, but for example I could have done yesterday testing much faster.
I've spoken with other indies asking what they use, and everyone is in my same situation.
I've tried to use rsync but the fact is that the amount of time to calculate the differences was higher than... just uploading the file with my connection takes 15-20min to upload to a server nearby, and then I copy the file with ssh to my CDN server (that is even faster, so overall the process is around 20-25min max).
With rsync was taking 10-15 min so was quicker on itself, but then I had to .zip the folder, and at that point I wasn't even sure if would work or not (I've never tried this before). And I had to use cygwin, because the rsync implementation on Windows aren't exactly good IMHO. But in general, is more time consuming for me because I have to remember even a series of steps, and I don't want to stress myself even more. Every new step in building the beta = more chances of failing = more chances of me wasting days doing nothing instead of finishing the game.
Comparing this to steam where you just launch a batch file and done...
As some of you know if you follow me on twitter, yesterday did 3 updates. Now the game is getting big, 146mb, so basically I've uploaded 450mb for an actual change of ... maybe 50kb?
This is a big unsolved problem and that's why I might use Steam Early Access for the final testing of the game. I'm not eager to do that and I would still provide updates the "normal way" anyway, but for example I could have done yesterday testing much faster.
I've spoken with other indies asking what they use, and everyone is in my same situation.
I've tried to use rsync but the fact is that the amount of time to calculate the differences was higher than... just uploading the file with my connection takes 15-20min to upload to a server nearby, and then I copy the file with ssh to my CDN server (that is even faster, so overall the process is around 20-25min max).
With rsync was taking 10-15 min so was quicker on itself, but then I had to .zip the folder, and at that point I wasn't even sure if would work or not (I've never tried this before). And I had to use cygwin, because the rsync implementation on Windows aren't exactly good IMHO. But in general, is more time consuming for me because I have to remember even a series of steps, and I don't want to stress myself even more. Every new step in building the beta = more chances of failing = more chances of me wasting days doing nothing instead of finishing the game.
Comparing this to steam where you just launch a batch file and done...