lots moaned and complained about when the patch would drop, and now its hear people are moaning about the size!
brilliant :-)

suspected it and on such a large scale patch, it shows clearly the shortcomings of this method

why not make a game with some kind of architecture like a "add/override" folder instead ?

i mean, the way i hear people out about this patch, this is how i understand it:
got a game file of assets/ressources (lets say sounds) of 1 gb.
patch has 100 mb of new voice over dialogues to insert
gog galaxy will download the final post-patched file of 1.1 gb and overwrite the initial file with it.

am i right ?

wouldn't it be more clever to patch the game exe to tell him to look at the main 1 gb file AND any "other named files in one given place" as well ? instead of appending data to huge file ?

if so, well it is indeed a very easy way to clog people connection. This 1.07 patch (and the monolithic game files approach of witcher 3) is an extreme example that pushes the idea to its limits, on a user point of view. not to mention about the rollback ? so far is galaxy rollback working or is yet still a marketing promise ? if it works, does it redownload the prepatched files ? or you keep every version of the game files stored ?

i suspect this method (that seems very tedious and heavy to me) was choosen for good reasons other than just makes gog galaxy look/feel big and heavy. Lets say maybe because of the way windows and it's UAC handle writing permissions ? (and then i prefer a client that follows the os guidelines of security rather than one that auto elevate its rights and make a huge security hole in the system, like a Steam one... but it is like saying i prefer ebola instead of plague)

No, it's just the easiest methods that everyone uses.

oh jeez, no it is not how any of this work, at all, not in this situation, the reason why the install client downloaded from GOG.com is smaller compared to the patch downloaded from Galaxy Client is because the one from GOG.com is compressed into a much, much smaller file for browser to handle and download it in shorter time and more efficient. Whereas Galaxy Client download all the new/updated files in an UNCOMPRESSED form, that's all it is, there are no such thing as GOG.com client editing the game files on your system, its not how programming, patching or even coding works.

If you run the setup file downloaded from GOG.com, it will tell you that there will be a 7GB installation onto your drive, that is the client decompressing the updated files and replacing the old ones.

Code CANNOT rewrite itself, not without user's input, please, stop spreading false information.

I say again, the only differences between the setup client from GOG.com and the Galaxy client is one is compressed and one isn't.

mind to bother you, sir... but... usually, the strong use of conditional and questions implies that the person speaking is NOT being affirmative or spreading information but rather express hypothesis and ask for confirmation.

anyway, what i see is that gog galaxy uses your net connection for downloading 7gb of data, while the manual patch only uses it for 2 gb. Period !

therefor it is completely irrelevant (though it is true anyway) that the 2gb compressd patch unpack itself on the destination computer into a bunch of 7gb sized data bunch to apply then to the game folder installation.

what is relevant is that, no matter HOW you turn and twist it, it is FASTER to download 2gb than 7gb (on same connection, same computer, with the wind in your back and so on)

On very fast dsl connection, then, the download/applying time of the glaxy 7gb method would be faster than the unpacking and applying 2gb manual patch (if you really have a poor cpu and hard drive... but if you have such specs on your computer, he wouldnt really be able to play witcher 3)
maybe on your country, very high speed dsl connection is trivial and well spread. in some country, i assure you "size matters", when it comes to download.

therefore i dont see WHY they choosed to make galaxy download the unpacked patch files, instead of making it download the patch, launch/unpack the patch locally then aplly the unpacked content on the installation folder.

maybe on smaller games, or smaller patches, or games which uses bunch of smaller files rather than monolithic huge data asset files, it is faster and more convenient in some way.

truth is (i dont care myself, i dont install the 1.07 yet i got mine through good old Gog downloader) it was an issue to many folk here. even an gaming website on my country made an article because/about such huge download size, though incidentally spreading wrongly earned bad reputation to a good game.

yet again regarding my hypothesis about the writing permissions, your dismissal answer would suggest that gog galaxy magically "not write anything of the data it just downloaded" ?
Come oooon, dude... it just downloaded some stuff, of course galaxy WILL have to write it down on the disk at some step of the patching process. It would be strange for an application to download data and not write/store it some/anywhere, just keeping it in ram for fun.

Just FYI, Steam actually no longer works that way. It has supported differential patching for a while now, but I think it's up to the developer to take full advantage of it. That's probably why the Witcher 3 patch is only slightly smaller on Steam than it is on Galaxy.

Now, I understand that your English isn't very good, but did you even read what I wrote and fully understand it?

What I was saying isn't about how fast or slow it is to download 2GB or 7GB, nor what I said has anything to do with that. What I was saying, and implying was that he was spreading false information on why the GOG.com setup client is smaller compare to the Galaxy files. Please, read what I wrote and understand it. Never in my post did I said anything about Galaxy not overwriting the old files with the new files, OF COURSE it will does that, how else would the game get update? Again, read what I wrote and understand it. What you just wrote make no sense and has nothing to do with what I wrote.


It's smaller because Steam uses different type of compression to compress all the files together before putting it onto the server for users to download, it has nothing to do with how the game is patch or how the patch is executed once the files are all downloaded.

Galaxy client downloads pure, uncompressed files to your local machine to update the game, Steam client downloads files that were compressed, once the download finishes, those files get unpacked to a 7GB install, whereas GOG.com let you downloads the heavily compressed setup client which will unpack to a 7GB installation to update the game.

The reason GOG.com does this is to help with the download time, and it is much more efficient this way when it comes to downloading files through web browsers.

Steam uses differential method of updating files now, look it up.