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From another Ensemble Studios interview with Gamasutra (emphasis mine): "6. We did not plan for a patch. The version 1.0a patch, even though it was a success,
by red_admiral 8y ago
From another Ensemble Studios interview with Gamasutra (emphasis mine):
"6. We did not plan for a patch. The version 1.0a patch, even though it was a success, was problematic in that as a company we had not planned for it. THE GENERAL ARGUMENT IS THAT IF YOU KNOW YOU ARE GOING TO NEED TO RELEASE A PATCH, THEN YOU SHOULDN'T BE SHIPPING THE GAME IN THE FIRST PLACE."
Those were the days!
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoWhich is a ridiculous statement - I remember the number of 90's games that were utterly unplayable in that they'd crash constantly or do other ridiculous things (The remake of Temple Of Elemental Evil would actually delete your C: drive upon uninstall). I feel like things haven't gotten worse as far as the need for day 1 patches, they've just gotten more pragmatic on their deployment.
- rm_-rf_slash 8y agoUgh, the constant bugs and crashes were the reason I never finished Fallout 2. I gladly accept the occasional 10gb update in return for a game that doesn’t crash multiple times a day or week.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoYeah, it's rare I drop out of a game due to an error now, but during DirectX 5 it would happen multiple times an hour.
- lucb1e 8y agoThat almost-relevant username. Anyway, I don't get how updates are so big these days. The games as well, but I guess with some lazy programming... but the updates? I really wonder how hard it is to reliably patch a binary without replacing the whole binary, since apparently it outweighs the additional bandwidth cost for pretty much every company that does any sort of software patching.
- Bekwnn 8y agoGame patches aren't GB in size because of code.
- xkcdefgh 8y agoit's not only binaries that are patched. Data files, which can be of multiple gbs are patched too. You can either delta patch them, requiring significant cpu time or replace them entirely. Most devs prefer the latter
- TangoTrotFox 8y agoOne problem you face here is versioning. You can have tiered systems where you have a patch from version 1 to 2 to .. n. And then if somebody wants to go from version 1 to n, you just incrementally apply each and every single patch. Or you can just have a replacement 'patch' that means no matter what version or setup you're on, you're good to go following the exact same process. And in some cases this is not only easier, but also can provide major performance benefits. For instance imagine an update changes something about a local database that requires some expensive process like reindexing or something. And then another update carries out further changes, and so on. Going straight from 1 to n instead of 1 to 2 to ... n can be vastly more efficient from a user perspective. But if you're seeing huge updates then more often than not it's probably data, not code, though the same story applies there.
- samstave 8y agoHeh, well it is called the Temple if Elemental Evil - so that is to be expected
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoYou must have been terribly disappointed with NetHack.
- rxhernandez 8y agoI know I was.
- SmellTheGlove 8y agoDidn't expect to talk about BBS doors today!
- gambiting 8y agoAs a dev on modern AAA titles - the main driving reason behind Day 1 patches is that you do the first submission to Sony/MS/Nintendo 2-3 months before the game is about to be released. We just did a 1st sub on a title coming out in November. That means you still have potentially hundreds of people on the project for few months until the game actually comes out - so they might as well keep working on the game and their work is released as day 1 patch. Obviously we don't purposefully leave bugs and features until day 1 patch - but in the extra time we might as well add a few things and fix some bugs.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoI'd never assume you left them on purpose. Have you worked with Steam? What sort of turn around time do they require?
- gambiting 8y agoSteam is super quick, especially with a company of our size, we basically have the necessary permissions to publish when we want to, it requires very little from Valve.
- zaphirplane 8y agoWhat do Sony/ms/Nintendo do in those 2-3 months ?
- gambiting 8y agoCompliance testing. They usually take a few weeks to come up with a list of things that are non-compliant that we have to fix for release, then we do 2nd submission, and then they take another few weeks to test that. But even if the game passes on 1st sub, it still takes weeks for the game to be actually burnt to discs and distributed across the world.
- MarkTerrano 8y ago(Author of the original article here) It was really pretty naive - nobody would plan for an RTS now without planning a series of patches to do the inevitable adjustments. Even for AOK we planned to patch and adjust. The 'general argument' was a MS publisher stance as quoted by Matt Pritchard - to do a patch in those days through the MS system meant a lengthy and expensive full test process, rollout, creation of a patch system, etc - so it was something you planned and budgeted for. The concept of 'day-one-patch' would have been pretty horrific. Patching is now something you integrate, plan for and expect - because we aren't shipping on gold masters to a printing company.
- gandreani 8y agoEven if we lived in a world with gold masters there would still be one reason for patches: Balancing. My thinking is to expect patches when making a multiplayer game. There's just no practical way around it
- MarkTerrano 8y agoThe Command & Conquer approach (used by them and some others in the era of gold masters) was to release expansions to the game that incorporated the balance and other fixes as part of the release cycle of the game. In those days they didn't do independent patches because of the logistical complexity. It was an entirely different ecosystem before the Internet was common-place.
- bitwize 8y agoThis is one of the reasons why Brood War exists.
- shawn 8y agoWelcome to HN :)