Updates are too large to be this frequent.

Does anyone else notice that in the last few days the game has updated 3 or more times and the updates are huge? It's because the game is now packed in a .pak file so now instead of download everything that changed, you have to download one massive file. This file kills my ENTIRE DAY's bandwidth, I have 500MB per day and I already go over that just doing normal web browsing. This game is costing me several dollars a month if it's going to be updating this frequently.

I would have tried posting this in support or suggestions, but I don't really see this as a suggestion, or something that needs help. I think it might fit in suggestions but I just wanted to get the word out to the devs that the updates either need to be made smaller (where you only download what has changed) or less frequent.

One thought is to have the update process unpack the game files, add only the things that changed, then re-pack the game files afterwords. So then you only end up downloading maybe a few megs per mini quick update. Hotfixes shouldn't be 400 megs in size, seriously. Not everyone in the world has unlimited bandwidth, and while it sucks, people who live in the country like me get rip off scam internet services and no alternative choices. Each update worries me because I feel like it may break all my mods and then I have to go patch all of them. So seeing an update adds 3 kinds of stress;
1. Bandwidth burned up.
2. "Are my mods broken?" Is the question I ask myself every update I see.
3. Gotta run putty, log out of steam, log into steam at a remote server, update the game, log back out, re-run the game, close putty, and log back into steam at home.

EDIT:
Ok, to say some things here since people keep missing them and getting all pissy at me and getting the thought that I'm dumb or something.

1. I was aiming this towards the pak file, because I believe that content updated in this, may force us to re-download the entire file. I thought that's what was happening though, I didn't think we were downloading another large super mega ultra file every few days. NOW. A solution to the pak files updating, is to download the changed files, THEN, have the patch program unpack the assets.pak file. After, it patches the assets, then re-packs that file. Update downloaded will have been a few megs or so and the patch will be complete without killing or destroying your bandwidth and even take far less time.

2. Someone mentioned an opt-in / opt-out feature for debugging, allowing users who don't want to download a 500 meg game EXE file to not be stuck downloading the 500 meg EXE file. I'm not exactly sure how this would work, but it could be something to research as I'm sure not everyone is going to properly file bug reports like they probably should. Those people can opt out if they want.

http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?threads/manually-requested-debug-symbols.72775/ - manually download debug symbols, a great way to allow users to opt out of debugging which decreases download size by 500MB

3. Stop telling me to turn off auto updates.

4. I'm sorry half of you are to lazy to read more than 4 words, but just because the topic title says "updates are too frequent" in it, doesn't mean you should load the topic, click no on the poll, post a reply bashing me for saying so or pretend you have a clue of what's being talked about, and leave before you have even read "and too large" in the rest of that topic title. Some of you seem to have missed the ENTIRE POINT OF THE TOPIC because you didn't read didly squat. I'm sure making this point here won't matter because none of you will read this far. Except maybe staff. Hi staff. You're probably like liturally the only people reading more than one paragraph of my topic! Horray.

5. EVERY SINGLE COUNTRY IN THE WORLD has areas in which people will be stuck with bad internet options, just becuase YOU YOURSELF have not had bad internet before, doesn't mean the entire country you live in is rich in super high speed unlimited cheap internet. Saying this, shows just how ignorant you really are.

 

This is a major problem with most people.
I have excellent service in many ways, but even so, download speed is slow.
These huge updates, if frequent, would prevent me from ever playing Starbound again, as each would take a few hours to finish.

 

I think that the number of people operating under such draconian usage caps are a vast minority, but I do agree with you completely that the content of the updates does not justify their size in any way, shape, or form. Even patches with no content updates are hundreds of megabytes (as it seems the 400 megabyte patch that just dropped an hour ago is one of them).

I was under the impression that we were done with engine upgrades and from now on we were going to be getting fast, tiny content updates, but I guess I was wrong about the "tiny" bit of it.

 

It takes me like 15 min to download, but I don't even know it's downloading an update till after I get back and find out 300 to 500 megs of bandwidth had just been used and I open steam and see "Starbound just updated" and I facepalm and start looking for change log information and try to figure out how to cut 500 megs of usage out of my next few days. I'm already paying $15 more per month because of my overages, SB will raise it to $1 to $5 a month, $5 if it keeps updating this much. $1 per gig.

Well they can be tiny if they can make it update only the changed files. The bad thing about archiving everything into that one pak file means that now every time you update the game, you have to update the entire file. So maybe, if they use the built in tools to unpack the archive, update the game, re-pack the archive, then that would be great. Of course that amounts to more hard drive usage so SSD users would need to be aware of their write limits if they did this method.

 

Until Chucklefish can reduce all the needless bloat in their update methods, you should definitely disable automatic updates for Starbound, especially if it's costing you money.

 

Just disable steams auto-update function for Starbound and only manually update once a week or however long.

 

Debugging symbols are huge. Go look at the size of starbound.exe.

 

This

 

Although this may be acceptable for some people, the last few patches with their bugs negates the practice as the updates are necessary to play. And in Vas' case, beng a modder requires being up to date for his mods in case of damage.

 

Not sure what you mean, correct me if i'm wrong but AFAIK Starbound can be launched no matter how outdated the client is.

 

The last few days were hot fixes -- they fixed 1 thing, and would find another thing wrong -- if they had known everything that they needed to patch for, you would have gotten 1 patch instead of several. If you're exceeding your bandwidth cap, maybe now it's time to talk to your provider to increase the limit. Patches for Starbound will likely not slowdown in frequency or file size.

Not to sound mean, really -- but this is all on your end. Early Access and a 3-stage beta is a huge commitment on your part in purchasing. You knew the limitations of your bandwidth, and that a far-from-finished game would need updates of all sizes are different intervals before reaching the final product. Installing mods was a choice you made knowing well that issues would occur until the end product as well.

Your best option would probably be to disable auto-downloading on your updates, and leave the game alone until Stage 2 or 3 of Beta -- if not just simply wait until the game is done.

 

Not if you copy Starbound to another location, there, no more auto-updates.

 

True,, with the offline version you can play older updates. So yes, offline you can easily roll back. However, to try to be more clear, I mean that if yu updated the game, and there were bugs, you either have to delete that update and roll back, still wasting that download and possibly reaching your limit anyways, or download the fix patch as well, which is more downloaded data.

 

If a new big update rolls out, wait until all the major bugs have been patched before you download.

 

This issue doesn't effect me directly. I don't have a limit, but I can see how some people would like to stay up to date, but manage their bandwidth at the same time. I am not be the best person to contribute here however, as although I stated that I can see where they may be coming from, I can also agree that it is a choice to stay up to date and download all the patches. So, as I was merely attempting to sympathize with their situation, but can not actually speak in their defense, I will now bow out.

 

It's quite weird that it ALWAYS has to download the full 482MB, I wonder if this will ever change.

 

They aren't engine updates, so they aren't hurting mods as much

 

This is kind of one of those damned if you do and damned if you don't scenarios. The faster Chucklefish gets updates/hotfixes out the door the quicker they get a response back from the beta testers. Infrequent updates makes the community restless (not that this really matters imo, it's Chucklefish's beta and they should take the amount of time that they deem appropriate for each patch, not releasing patches due to impatient backlash from the community)

I prefer the quick updates myself, but I don't have a limit. If I did have a limit, and the frequency of downloads affected my ability to play Starbound (which it wouldn't because I'd auto update as infrequently as would be convenient for my internet bill) then I'd have to consider how much bandwidth I'm paying for monthly and where my priorities lie. It's not really Chucklefish's responsibility to appease everyone on everything from the frequency of their updates to the size of the file.

I think they have a fine handle on how they're running their beta atm. I'm sure if it gets too out of hand it'll be addressed.

 

I, personally, have no issue with updates this size, but I voted yes because I know a lot of people *do.* I honestly think that a versioning system similar to what Minecraft has should be on order, both to take some weight off modders/mod users, and those people that don't have great internet.

 

~500mb .exe

What the Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.....

Is this some method against piracy?