Pre-load PR

[ma21212]

Well put a PW on the Zip file and on Friday give the PW. so ppl dont have to wait to download the mod and just install it right when the password is given. sure ppl could probably hack into it but they cant play it online any way so whats the point.

[LithiumFox]

well for one thing, they're probably touching up on final bugs and seeing what they can jam in...

they don't do incremental patches, so they have to release everyone the same time, so the moment they released it they'd probably have to have hot-fixes out, which is a waste of time..

Also, they do have a "single-player" mode, aka Training, and you can make your own servers to play the new stuff...

=) This just allows for a uniform release date ^_^ So that everyone is surprised...

besides, if we "pre-loaded" it, wouldn't it be the same as everyone downloading it on the day of release just earlier

(and i'm sure that someone would figure out the pw... =/)

> > Point One is the real reason i would imagine...

[LithiumFox]

probably

[ma21212]

yep lol. bascily Steam all togeather. but i mean i do see the flaws in this cuz its not like Steam weres Steam is scure.

[Airsoft]

not bad, I've seen several mods in the past whove done this. Start off with a torrent then give the pw on the day releases to the public. I guess less frustration on everyone trying to download off the same mirror making it only download a rate of 20kb/s

[Masaq]

We could do something like that; but then you'd have a longer gap between us completing the final build (and confirming it works through beta and stress testing) and players getting their hands on it.

Way it works currently is we finish the final build; test it; then distribute the client files to mirrors and issue the release date once we know it works. Release date is set as close to the final build being completed as is realistically feasible whilst allowing us to beta test and confirm with file hosts that we can use their servers and upload the files to them.

Now, we can't make the gap between completing the build and distributing it to mirrors any quicker - that process occurs as soon as we know the build is release-stable and playable with no game-breaking bugs.

So if you want to allow a period for the community to download the update before the actual release date, that means release would have to be pushed back by about a week, say, to allow everyone enough time to download the new version in their own pace.

You'd have to have a relative decent pre-release download period to make it worth waiting a few days before downloading - if you make the pre-release download only a day or two in advance, you'd still get the massive wave of people all hitting the download servers all at once. So, that means having maybe a week or ten days to allow everyone to download before official release...


...which means a longer wait for you guys between us finishing the new version and you getting in-game and playing.

That's why, to date, we've not gone down that route. We figure twelve hours of slow downloads is better than twelve days of waiting