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Desura Ongoing Issues (& Build V16.1)


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It used to be updated just via a zip file back in the day (prior to the Paypal Incident). I think only Gauddlike and Gazz from the forum regulars remember that though.

Wow, crazy that was only a year ago. Times have changed a lot since then...

I remember it, because it was only days after I bought my pre-order in via Paypal and quite a bit before I'd got around to joining the much quieter forum :)

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Engine troubles, patch troubles. Not really happy to hear that. I was wondering why desura took up a whopping 18gb when all I used it for was Xenonauts. Not really amused to walk into silly gameplay bugs and then redownload the entire thing when there was little to no change in the assets.

Sounds like you could use a SVN and just rsync to interested testers. I'm actually surprised there isn't one.

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Thats what an Alpha phase is all about.. find the pain points, work out methods, find flaws that will impede even trying to balance.

If you have done real Alpha testing then none of this is a surprise. Frankly I was impressed with how playable V15 (when I joined) was given many other projects are 100+ iterations just to give you stable logins and save methods, let alone stable play. The delivery engine issues are the next part.

And I am assuming you missed a decimal, since it is 1.8GB not 18GB; that would be quite something. :)

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Thats what an Alpha phase is all about.. find the pain points, work out methods, find flaws that will impede even trying to balance.

If you have done real Alpha testing then none of this is a surprise. Frankly I was impressed with how playable V15 (when I joined) was given many other projects are 100+ iterations just to give you stable logins and save methods, let alone stable play. The delivery engine issues are the next part.

And I am assuming you missed a decimal, since it is 1.8GB not 18GB; that would be quite something. :)

I'm not surprised, just sad to see it happen again as I was secretly hoping to see these types development snags avoided. The engine limitation one is especially serious as those are never really simple. I've done alpha and beta testing in amateur capacity before (COR project, Empires mod). From design doc and prototype to "end product". This included an engine switches as well (not really advisable). Plenty of war stories ranging from elevators descending faster than gravity killing players riding them to flipping tanks using inertia from mouse acceleration. And the hotfixes, patches, glitches and emergent gameplay coming from all this.

I guess I'm just nitpicky and looking at this as an end-user too much.

Anyway, its a few weeks since I uninstalled desura as it was clogging up my C:\ drive (clicked next a bit too much on the desura installation, derp). But it was somehow well over 6gb and I needed the space. I'm definitely looking forward to future builds though.

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Thanks for the well reasoned reply L3tuc3 .. its refreshing to have points well laid out.

Having done this from the other end (dev side, and paid job) I'm probably more forgiving than most, so between the two of us this looks like a well balanced viewpoint.

I checked my Desura btw.. Xenonauts is all of 1.9G but Desura itself was over 8G .. and this is the only game. Wow.

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Hello Folks,

one question to the Desura Xenonaut version. I bought the premium Xenonaut version, intsalled the desura version and look to the changelog. There I see only it´s version V16 not 16.1 or something else. How can I update the Desura version or is this not possible. When I start the game I see it´s the Version V16 from the 12th october.

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Hello Folks,

one question to the Desura Xenonaut version. I bought the premium Xenonaut version, intsalled the desura version and look to the changelog. There I see only it´s version V16 not 16.1 or something else. How can I update the Desura version or is this not possible. When I start the game I see it´s the Version V16 from the 12th october.

You could try this: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/3446-Binary-patcher-for-V16-to-V16-1-for-testing

(it's also linked a few pages back in this thread and in the other 2 V 16 threads here in the announcement forum)

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I'm giving the patch program another try. Basically the plan is to try the patch (if I get it working) with the forum users and if it fixes the crash bug I'll go through the rigamarole of updating all our builds on Desura again. That will be Build V16.2 (or maybe Build V16.5 to save confusion). I'm not going to recompile the .exe's though, to prevent new bugs creeping in, so the version on the launcher will stay at V16.1.

I'll make an announcement on V17 today probably, but right now my priority is to get V16 stable so people can play the game for an extended period in case V17 takes a little longer than expected.

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Hi,

I hope to god the finished product doesn't have rediculously stupid amount of files, it takes far too long to install, uninstall, move and copy around your hard disk. if it does I'll give my premium preorder to somebody else.

I have a small but very fast SSD and I move my games to and from mass storage rather than keep installing and uninstalling them, at the moment I just delete xenonautes and wait for the next release because moving 80k files is stupid, I can install UFO Defence from steam from fresh in less that 2 minutes (yes its tiny I know) the new UFO:EU is massive at 13+gigs and contains less that 3.5k files but takes less time to move about than the 1.8gig xenonauts.

I am sorry but in my mind if you can't consolidate the files then a different game engine that can is the only way forward, it would seem that the game engine isn't up to the task what with issues with multi level ufo's and stuff. Back in my game programming days I used to write the math formulas that worked out where the needed graphics tile would be in a single file and move it to the correct display address, that was over 20 years ago (things have indeed moved a long way since then).

I remember the days of installing MS Office 4.2 that came on 28 plus floppy disks and took most of a morning to complete, please dont let this happen to Xenonauts I am so looking forward to playing the finished product over and above the new fancy 3d UFO:EU that I've finished and I'm already bored of (played the Xenonauts beta's for longer than UFO:EU)

Thanks,

Grumpy old git...

Update:

I am being really thick here and a 'grumpy ole git' I dont know why I'm being so stupid when I have four other PC's in my house not to mention my laptop, the last place this game will probably end up is my main gaming PC cus I can only play that while in my Computer/Smoking room, I can sneek one of my smaller PC's down to the living room a psss the mrs off!

Edited by MasterArmadillo
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@MasterArmadillo

First, I wonder how you managed to play beta as xenonauts is still in alpha.

Second, I can agree that such file number can be problematic and the devs are aware of it (as you probably know already if you took some time to read their posts), but are you serious? You said that you really want to play the game but slightly longer installing time is such an obstacle that you almost 'threaten' to abandon it? I would call that a rather strange attitude...

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I think it's safe to say that there's not a civilians chance in an inferno of them moving to a new engine at this stage of development. There were also some recent threads showing (again) that the devs were all too aware of the problem, how much it kills off Desura, and were looking at solutions.

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You should keep it on your SSD if possible. It's a relatively small game and dealing with lots of small files is what SSD's absolutely thrive at!

Thanks mate, I now have a much better solution to the rather drastic stance I had, I am a terrible insomniac and sometime I cant see the wood for the trees. Updated my stupid post.

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