A question. In order for my users to get the patches I make with your program, they would have to be using your UOPatch Client, right?
I think your program is brilliant, so don't take this wrong please. I just don't like the fact that they would need to download a patch program as it is. I think that would be the one big thing stopping me from using this. I went through it last night and tested it, and I think it works great. I just don't like asking my players to download any extra programs, only because a lot of them are younger (or just dumb) and would have no idea of what to do, even with a detailed walk through showing screenshots of every single step. Believe me. Then all they would do is page and complain that this or that doesn't work, and all because they didn't do it right. Keep up the great work though. If they program becomes more widely known, as I'm sure it will, it won't be as hard to get people to download it.
Sotho Tal Ker said:Um.. err.. this is great
Some things to think about, if you haven't already:
- Compare the patch files downloaded and the ones on the patch server, maybe by size and/or checksum and inform players when there is a new patch released.
- Make a version numbering for patches (i.e. version 1 [date] or something)
- I have not tested it yet, but are the files transferred uncompressed? Maybe you can make it to download zipped files (or any other compression) and unpack them automagically before applying. Would decrease bandwidth, too
- An option to use the original uopatch if OSI makes a new official patch, so people can play with the newest clients.
- Multilanguage support
Maybe I will come up with some more thoughts.
Edit: The reason i think it is great? Because the newest UO does not support verdata.mul anymore and that would make the players to download HUGE files for just a few new graphics. With your tool you only need to download smaller patch files and apply them.
1 more edit and i'm quiet
What kind of patch algorithm do you use?
etherkye said:instead of zipping it .rar it, there a lot smaller (1/4 the size). makes for faster transfer. And how long do you tihnk it'll be before this will be out without the need for users to download?
Sotho Tal Ker said:Two things:
1. website is broken :/
2. Does the algorithm just check bytes at the same position against each other? if it does so it would sometimes give not much benefit if i.e. someone replaces an animation with a bigger one because the entries behind it would be shifted by some bytes. This would make a check for bytes at the same position always fail and it would need to transfer all data from the beginning of the replaced animation to the end. (Sorry, cannot say it very well )
I like your program, just want to know how it works in detail and maybe give some ideas.
The problem with RAR is, that decompression library is free, but compression library is not free. So you would only be able to decompress files and someone would have to install winrar and call it from the patcher to compress it.
There are other good compression schemes out there, which are totally free tu use (compression and decompression), maybe it's better to take one of those, even if they don't give small files like RAR does.
Sotho Tal Ker said:The error i get when i want to access the page is:
Software error:
Unauthorized access... please reauthenticate and try agian at ../WebPerl/Web.pm line 110, <GEN0> line 3.
For help, please send mail to the webmaster ([email protected]), giving this error message and the time and date of the error.