Blue's News: Comments - Red Alert 3 Beta Patch

Red Alert 3 Beta Patch

[Aug 18, 2008, 01:47 am ET] - Share - Viewing Comments

EA now offers a new beta version 1.03 of the public beta for Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 (thanks Ant and Planet Command & Conquer). The patch is almost 900 MB, which may say something about how close testing is to completion, or it may not. It certainly says something about the size of patches these days and the speed of broadband connections.

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9.	shady patches	Aug 18, 2008, 20:03	kxmode
	The patch is almost 900 MB, which may say something about how close testing is to completion, or it may not. It certainly says something about the size of patches these days and the speed of broadband connections. The patch is actually 300MB. The other 600MB is for the draconian DRM. ----- http://www.gamemusicjukebox.com/ Game p/reviewer for http://www.gameindustry.com/




	end-of-line

8.	Re: Sloppy	Aug 18, 2008, 13:47	DG
	er how many betas have you guys been on? I generally found updates came in the form of tiny hotfixes (for the show-stoppers), but mostly it's almost entirely new clients. 900mb patches look terrible on a retail game unless they're giving you a big new texture pack or something. But this isn't retail. Beta updates are FAR more frequent to a much smaller base (who individually are far more dedicated) and made during a time where workload is at it's absolute peak. I'm not a dev but it seems reasonable to assume it could take a day's work of someone important to make a proper patch of just the necessary bits. Internal QA also do testing on new builds to minimise chance of screwing up your beta tester's PCs and things, if they find something it may mean not only correcting, but re-doing the patch shrink. It could create a lot of unnecessary work. Perhaps worse, it further introduces a huge potential for human error: will the next bug be down to what we changed, or due to a mistake in the patch? It is far more sensible to release the full new build. That way you KNOW exactly what the position is, and can easily archive it for reference. OK, you can cut out anything large that you KNOW hasn't been touched, but with the amount of work going on at this stage that's going to be limited. Picture the scenario: a lot of people pulling very long hours on something very technical and complex, in a fairly unstructured organisation, under a lot of preassure with very tight deadlines. 900mb is what, an hour on a 2mb line? OH NOES!!!11 Be reasonable. This message was edited at Aug 18, 13:52.

7.	Re: Sloppy	Aug 18, 2008, 13:04	kanniballl
	Kaniballl, obviously no one releases perfect software and this game is still in beta, but a 900Mb Patch?? Agreed, it's excessive and I even stated as much. Though is the patch all client? Or does some of it overwrite data files like maps and such? I'm honestly asking, as I don't know. I forget who it is on Blues, but someone (or a couple of people) has repeatedly said things like "Why should they even need a patch" or "Why should I pay for a game when they haven't finished it yet" or "If it needs a patch within the first few months then they obviously don't know what they're doing." Said poster(s) might have just been flaming/trolling but as a developer it's always rubbed me the wrong way. This message was edited at Aug 18, 13:07.




	"Space. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you." -Fry, Futurama

6.	Re: Sloppy	Aug 18, 2008, 09:26	InBlack
	Kaniballl, obviously no one releases perfect software and this game is still in beta, but a 900Mb Patch?? Thats basically saying its simpler to replace the whole client than it is to patch it. I call that bad/lazy coding, but hey maybe if theyve rewritten the whole client from scratch (highly unlikely) in this so-called "patch" maybe thats fixed eh?




	I have a nifty blue line!

5.	Re: Sloppy	Aug 18, 2008, 09:09	Flo
	Anyone tell me if it still has serious connection issues with routers and bad network performance in general.




	Supporter of the "Chewbacca Defense"

4.	Re: Sloppy	Aug 18, 2008, 08:11	kanniballl
	I think it says something about the tendency for sloppy and lazy coding.... Wow, talk about being jaded. Sure, that patch size is impressive/insane, but considering it's not complete I could see them needing to retool some of the maps and such. It's one thing to complain about massive patches after release... But this is still Beta. That means it's not done. Sure, they're done "adding" new things that they come up with (units, concepts, factions, etc) but that doesn't mean they're done writing what they're supposed to have. On top of that they're testing it on more systems now to make sure things aren't breaking. As a developer, it annoys me when I hear someone say that "when it's released, it should never need any patches... ever!" Software will always have bugs and glitches shortly after release, sometimes forever. Between near-infinite combinations 3rd-party OS extensions, OS versions, drivers, etc it's doubtful you'll ever have a perfect application. But even still, it's a flippin' Beta. This message was edited at Aug 18, 08:23.




	"Space. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you." -Fry, Futurama

3.	Re: Sloppy	Aug 18, 2008, 04:59	Ant
	Yeah. The patch is bigger than the last beta client: http://www.fileplanet.com/189767/180000/fileinfo/Red-Alert-3---Beta-Client !! Maybe EA was testing the patching. It uses RTP method I think. http://forums.ea.com/mboards/thread.jspa?threadID=413412&tstart=0 shows EAPOC saying they know about the big file size. This message was edited at Aug 18, 05:03.




	Ant @ The Ant Farm: http://antfarm.ma.cx and Ant's Quality Foraged Links: http://aqfl.net

2.	Re: Sloppy	Aug 18, 2008, 04:44	Bet
	I'm confused. The beta installer on Fileplanet is 140 megs smaller. Why would they make a patch instead of a new installer? Even adding maps...wtf.

1.	Sloppy	Aug 18, 2008, 04:34	InBlack
	I think it says something about the tendency for sloppy and lazy coding....




	I have a nifty blue line!

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