So seriously, are updates going to be ~500MB every single time?

Well, not so irrelevant to me.. and I will hold that I enjoy both the large and small games both, and I am willing to be patient to see them both completed without being all drama on either of their forums about their size, or a few accidental glitches being discovered later than sooner.

 

This is probably going to make me sound like a dick, but I'm actually not trying to be a dick when I say- It's fine that you're content with it. But this thread, and its line of discussion, is not for you. It's for people who actually have to -watch- their bandwidth usage to avoid being billed extra, or people whose internet is so poor that constant 500MB updates are a severe hindrance. Just because it isn't a problem for you does not mean it can't be a problem for anyone. I made this thread in hopes (foolish ones, since the devs don't really pay attention to these forums) of getting some kind of actual, definitive response on why they're always so big, despite all these assurances that updates are going to be somehow different in the future. Every single time one gets pushed.

 

Probably, yeah.

They'd have to do some big engine changes, I believe, to get it to not be a ~500mb download every patch/hotfix. I believe they had mentioned they were going to work on that soon. Don't quote me on that, thought.

 

Consider yourself quoted.

 

As I have explained, I am in the same boat, but I am perhaps a bit less inclined to whine about my bandwidth troubles, as they seem to be trying to fix the issues about bandwidth, and just had a major pain in the butt glitch that they have less hair over, and surely people can be a little more patient than what they are tending to be here.

 

Depends on whether or not they replace the entire packed.pak file each time or not.

 

Not 500 MBs, but packed.pak is 351 MBs.

More specifically, it's the non-OpenGL executable for Windows. Every other executable for all the other OSs are 10-20 MBs.

 

which everyone downloads. or so i assume. after all, i am on windows and i have a mac app folder in my starbound so......

 

shhh it's k bbu...
last update was ~200mb
everything's gonna be alright

 

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that anyone complaining about this beta game updating 500mb a couple of times in a day didn't play Dungeon Defenders when it first came out.

That was a released, finalized product that was getting a gig or so of updates two or three times a week and almost every single one of those would be followed by another patch around 200mb and that would usually be followed by ANOTHER patch that was in the 20mbs or so range. The frequent and horribly annoying patching on that game finally got so bad and the yelling in the forums got so loud that the devs finally commented on it. Their response was one of brilliance "We had no idea that bandwith caps existed" and "Sorry for those with poor internet, but content content content."

The updates did slow down a bit after that, but so many of my friends had already uninstalled the game that there weren't many left to play with.

So I guess it could always be worse to the tune of a released game that is patching lots and huge amounts frequently.

 

Yeah, that never made much sense to me.

 

We're going to try to build up a way to make the small content patches... small. For whatever technical reasons currently you have to download a lot more than you should. Why? I'm not a programmer. But I do know discussions have taken place so that when we had 1mb of content it won't take a 500mb download.

Engine updates will still be sizable. But some time in the future hopefully we have it built in such a way that non-engine updates don't take so much.

 

oh it's a non-issue. we've already figured it out, debugging symbols on the direct x windows exe. thank's for the communication, though. it goes a long way towards pacifying that mob with pitchforks and torches. (by the way, holdable pitchforks and torches would be fun items ;D)

 

Can it also be upgradable into a torchfork?

 

Why is 500MB a problem? I downloaded the ESO Beta which is 21GB. We live in a day and age where if you can't download 500MB then you need to upgrade your internetz lol

 

some of us have bandwidth restrictions, and get charged extra if we go over our plan.

this is actually the norm for landline internet in some countries.

 

Yeah I have restrictions... aka 500GB. I wasn't having a go at anyone, in fact I had an 8GB limit a few years ago but upgraded and got myself an extra 492gb for another $10 a month, so just saying you should look around for new internet if you have this problem that's all ^_^ Not trying to be rude which, upon re-reading, I may have sounded

 

In Canada there's bandwidth limits, where if you use more than, say, 100GB in a month, you have to pay extra per GB you went over the limit. There could be similar "rules" in other countries, although I'm not sure.

It's also just a small nuisance; people shouldn't have to redownload the entire game to get half a megabyte of new content (especially when updates start happening near-daily).