BKGaming: It might
suppose to do that, but it's clearly not doing it correctly every time it updates in my experience. I had an issue not to long ago with the Witcher 3 wanting to grab 7GB
again when it already had that large patch for what was clearly a small update around the 1.7/ 1.8 patches. So I just grabbed the new standalone installer at around 2GB rather than download 7GB again.
If the game is designed with large containers as you say, then the standalone patch would still be quite large too even after compression yes? Because like Galaxy, the standalone installer would have to replace that entire container. We can however compare what files Galaxy is downloading in the temp folder to what already on the hard-drive and I've experienced in a lot of cases it's the same files and the exact same file size.
Delta patch management solves this problem and GOG has indicated that they are working on delta patch management. It is possible that many people may be unfamiliar with what this term means, which can lead to wrong conclusions about how this stuff all works in the end. Essentially what delta patch management does is it compares two directories of files with each other to not only see what files have changed, but what specifically inside those files have changed from one version to another. Whether a file is big or large most changes are likely to be small in nature and so the majority of the data does not change, so generating patch deltas looks only at the parts that do change and where they are located in the files that are going to need patching, then spit out a patch that only includes the changes and where they need to be applied to bring the old version of the files up to date to the new version. Without delta patch management you basically are looking at things on the file level and if a file changes then you include a copy of the entire new version of the file and if it is a 10GB file, then your patch is going to be a 10GB patch. With delta patch management, the patch creation software analyzes the old files and the new files and spits out a patch file that includes only the minimum differences that are needed to convert the old file to the new one. If only a few bytes changed here and there, then the generated patch will likely be a few kilobytes or megabytes in size. Then that ends up getting compressed through a traditional compression algorithm such as gzip or something modern like xz/lzma, and the patch would then be sent over Galaxy or made available for download separately, and it would consume minimal bandwidth to update the software. This is essentially how other modern software update mechanisms have worked for years and is the better way of managing update mechanisms.
What GOG is saying essentially is that they recognize the value of doing delta updates and using compression and that they are working on that now and fully plan on it being done this way once it is ready. The results will be greatly reduced network bandwidth both for Galaxy updates, and for manual patches too if they use it with the manual patches as well. It will additionally reduce the disk footprint for storing backups of game patches. They just do not have it ready yet, so for now Galaxy downloads very inefficiently and the standalone patches are also potentially inefficient, but both should likely improve significantly when they are ready to roll out delta updates.
Here's some additional information on delta updates if the term is unfamiliar to anyone and they want to know a bit more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_update BKGaming: Even recently I've tried to import a few games in Galaxy on another PC and Galaxy wanted to re-download the entire game when trying to update. Almost immediately it showed over 7GB getting ready to download (pretty much the size of the game), as if Galaxy failed to even find the files it already had. The files were already there and up to date. All Galaxy
should needed is the files to make the games compatible with Galaxy. So why is it not detecting the files it already has and only grabbing the files it needs for Galaxy or the files that have changed? I even grabbed the exact same files Galaxy had already downloaded for the games on another computer and tried to import them instead and Galaxy still wanted to download the entire game again. Doesn't make since because they were already set up and up to date for Galaxy.
Looking forward to compression & delta patching though as that will surely help... but I really
strongly suggest you guys spend some more time testing updating and importing of games because I really don't think it works right 100% of the time.
And yes I spend a lot of time complaining about that.. but it's the only major issues I've had with Galaxy since alpha and as someone with a limited net it really makes Galaxy less usable to me than standalone installers. I can deal with the patching, but Galaxy should be able to import the files in already has without re-downloading the entire game. I have multiple PC's and that is a lot of data to get all of my games on them and up to date in Galaxy.
Yes, the reason it does it the way it does now is because delta updates and compression are not implemented yet, so it does need to redownload the entire new file for now until they do roll out delta updates. That is the expected albeit unfortunate behaviour everyone will get for now until delta updating is available. If the increased network bandwidth usage and/or disk space requirements are a problem for someone on a limited Internet connection, they probably should avoid using Galaxy for the time being for doing installation as it is going to gobble up a lot more bandwidth until deltas are available. Likewise, the standalone patches might be excessively large until then as well, but they'll at least be compressed.
It's kind of a "it does it" or "it doesn't do that yet" situation though, it's not really something they can provide as a gradually improving incremental solution, it's all or nothing and at the moment it's "nothing". :) It is almost certainly one of their highest priorities though I would wager so we'll likely see it happen in the coming months, hopefully sooner than later.
Travo147: I read on a forum (can't remember which), but the way to do it, it's a bit annoying, but if you want the achievements it's worth it.
The way it said was to go to the folder "C:\Users\*insert username here*\AppData\Local\GalaxyCommunicationService\46988339451789447\47746531845925190" and delete the file gameplay.db and run the Witcher. It is where all the achievement progresses are stored and it just creates a new file when the game is run. Some achievements will be unlocked straight away, but I know for the Munchkin especially, you need to level up to 35 again (hopefully you have the save). Oh, and you need to delete it each time you run it otherwise it doesn't work properly. The only way I've gotten them to unlock properly.
Hopefully this helps :)
Thanks for the info, I've seen people mention something like that before. I'm not inclined to do that level of tinkering myself as the achievements don't matter to me personally for my own gaming needs though, I only report the issues I see and provide feedback etc. to help provide data points to GOG so they can hopefully fix the problems on their end with real solutions for people though. :) A number of the achievements did sort themselves out already, but for those that have not - if it requires me to load an old savegame or hack some file or something I wont bother as that's not a viable end user solution IMHO. In that case all I would hope for is that the feedback we all provide here helps to make both the Galaxy service more robust over time and also the specific game that has problems with achievements so that future players and people doing new playthroughs will not encounter the same bugs again. For those of us that have had issues, I'm sure GOG support could do something on their end if need be also but I don't want to bother them personally.
It would be nice to have a feature to be able to reset the achievements for a game on a given GOG account back to zero though too, so that people who want to can wipe their achievements clear and do them all again if desired, which is also useful just for testing if certain bugs are fixed now too. No idea if the API supports that or will in the future though, but hopefully it's flexible like that. :)
