I am writing to inquire as to the possbilities of STO offering alternate means of receiving a patch file. Due to the rather abnomally large sizes of these files, I am experiencing difficulties with my ISP to receive them.
At the moment, I am only able to use HughesNet for an ISP otherwise I would have to revert to either dial up or an air card. Currently, HugheNet limits it's subscribers anywhere from 200mg to 500mg per day download limits depending on your package, 500 being the biggest (and most expensive) commercial business account. I hold their best account for residential use and that has a limit of 425mg per day download traffic. In the event of exceeding the established limit, the ISP hangs the subscriber on a "fair Access Policy" violation whereby bandwidth is cut down to a level that is almost worthless and they hold that state upon us for twenty-four hours from date/time of exceeding the afore-mentioned limits.
Now HughesNet does offer a window of unlimited download between the hours of 0200-0700 Eastern USA everyday for large downloads, is it possible that STO establish a means whereby a member can download the patch at a later time and/or at a specific time? Perhaps a download manager for time, date, transfer rate or a manual download with an option to burn to disc / autoinstall, that way one can either pre-arrange to download the patches without being penalized by their ISP or make arrangements to download it via other means (library cable line, friends etc) burn it to disc and install later.
Like many others, I really enjoy the STO game however, the patch is becoming a significant issue and may result in loss of interest and thus possible revenue when we cannot enjoy the game due to not being able to gain access to the patch files, any consideration and/or reply will be greatly appreciated.
i wholeheartedly agree
the downloader for the game itself is a.5 thats waaaay back.
either update the client download or put up offline patch installers please its really makin me think of ending my subscription
please people bump this thread as much as possible.
As a workaround, can you use a macro or other automation program to trigger the launcher one night during the open window? Let it download and apply the patch while you're sleeping.
lol, pretty sure that's not quite what they meant.
You could manually extra the hogg files, figure which one's actually been modified, single those out, and transfer those only, but then course you'd haveta replace your own with the updated ones. Though I suppose it wouldn't be that hard to make an exe that did all of the above just using the codes from the .hogg file extractor. Though you'd have to repeat the process every time and it'd most likely be a variety of different files each time so all in all more work than it's worth on your own.
At any rate, releasing an exe patch isn't all that hard for cryptic since they already know what they're updating.
Though interestingly enough to note, didn't realize people were still on sattelite, I suppose it's still useful in places without landlines. It was pretty much the big thing about 10 years back, though course cable came along promising T1 speeds for a fraction of the cost then 100 times T1 speeds for the same these days.
Perhaps you misunderstand, you can fully patch the game elsewhere and then copy all of the hoggs over via a USB key or something. We have no plans to offer a "exe patch" given that we actually don't know what is being patched (its a conformance system, diffs are done on the fly).
And transfering the entire .hogg files takes far more than a simple cd, 4 gig usb drive, or much less a standard format dvd disc can contain. Compounded with the fact that you'd need to do this for every patch (given that sometimes not all files are updated) does add an addition degree of frustration that come to people with limited connectivity.
For myself, I haven't a care as I do have practically unlimited bandwidth. However it is understandable that for others with limited bandwidth, they'd like to able to seek methods of patching on their own terms.
What he needs is the ability to download a self extracting patch file.
The method suggested here, forces the player to actively taking his computer with him, or installing the game on a pc where it may not be played, or even wanted.
Basically all you will need to do is to create a self extracting file that identifies the path of the game directory so it can do most of the work for the user, and then make it accessable on your homepage.
Im not sure about how the licences work for the program you use to make install files, but im geussing that this would be the most viable solution for such a file.
Alternatively you could just make the .hogg file accesable for singlefile download with a guide on how and where to copy, instead of the SEF.
I dont know why you would not want to do this, but from where i stand, i would as a developing studio prefer to supply my users with my own download source, rather than forcing people to go look elsewhere. Because if you do this, eventually some trolling-hacker will find a way to add evil software to the file, and start distrubuting your files, ending up with half a dozen users having a compromised account.
And yes. I know that all that would be in violation of the EULA, but you KNOW this will happen eventually.
Just outta curiosity, what's a "mg?" Milligram? Milligig?
Do you mean MB=Megabyte, or Mb=Megabit?
I assume you mean megabyte, but how on earth do you surf the net/play a game on 425 MB per day? Do you have a counter for your internet traffic that you watch carefully? How do they justify giving you less than 13 Gigs of downstream bandwidth per month for what I'm sure is a premium price you pay?
This is a satellite internet service right? None of the other networks can provide you service? Sorry bout the questions, but I'm just astonished that your total download allocation is so low. I never knew Hughesnet was so stingy (are all the rest the same too?)
I'm just outraged that the numbers I'm seeing amounts to highway robbery, if I'm reading you right. I feel for you.
What he needs is the ability to download a self extracting patch file.
The method suggested here, forces the player to actively taking his computer with him, or installing the game on a pc where it may not be played, or even wanted.
Basically all you will need to do is to create a self extracting file that identifies the path of the game directory so it can do most of the work for the user, and then make it accessable on your homepage.
Im not sure about how the licences work for the program you use to make install files, but im geussing that this would be the most viable solution for such a file.
Alternatively you could just make the .hogg file accesable for singlefile download with a guide on how and where to copy, instead of the SEF.
I dont know why you would not want to do this, but from where i stand, i would as a developing studio prefer to supply my users with my own download source, rather than forcing people to go look elsewhere. Because if you do this, eventually some trolling-hacker will find a way to add evil software to the file, and start distrubuting your files, ending up with half a dozen users having a compromised account.
And yes. I know that all that would be in violation of the EULA, but you KNOW this will happen eventually.
Just outta curiosity, what's a "mg?" Milligram? Milligig?
Do you mean MB=Megabyte, or Mb=Megabit?
I assume you mean megabyte, but how on earth do you surf the net/play a game on 425 MB per day? Do you have a counter for your internet traffic that you watch carefully? How do they justify giving you less than 13 Gigs of downstream bandwidth per month for what I'm sure is a premium price you pay?
This is a satellite internet service right? None of the other networks can provide you service? Sorry bout the questions, but I'm just astonished that your total download allocation is so low. I never knew Hughesnet was so stingy (are all the rest the same too?)
I'm just outraged that the numbers I'm seeing amounts to highway robbery, if I'm reading you right. I feel for you.
I apologize yes I meant Megabyte. HughesNet applies the limit to download only not uploads. I have their best residential account "HugnesNet Pro PLus" that gets me 1.6MB download rate, a 250K upload rate and the 425MB download limit per day, it is $79.95 and some change with tax as I own my system (dish modem etc). I live in the sticks and the closest hardwire service is two miles and the company wants over $28,000 to run it to the house (no way in @#$). So my options are either dial up modem which I had thru AOL back in 2002 that on its best day was a 1.4 to 1.8KB download rate, a modern air card that from what I have found thus far is just as restrictive as a satellite and the satellite that I have had since 2002 (when it was DirectPC), moving is no option
I generally watch what I do with the computer on the net, I seldom use video resources or audio resources that cause large downloads, I generally use my account for typical email, flight simulation and light web development for the flight sim hobby and now STO Hughesnet as indicated does afford a five hour block of time for large updates for windows and the like during their low peak time periods, otherwise when I need large files for download, I usually do it at work from a hardwire fiber optic line and burn it to disc and install at home.
As I have stated the HUGE STO patch files they add in when you login are definately a show stopper for me as I have no alternatives thus the reason I submitted the this thread to see if STO would look at this and consider alternatives, I hope I submitted my issue to the proper media / point of contact.
What I see as a fix for my issue is an ability to download and install the updates at my convienence, or a means to engage and preset (throttle) the rate of download so I can meter the downlaod so as not to violate my ISP bandwidth policy. Or whatever other alternative that the techies of the hobby could devise to help resolve this...
Any consideration towards this problem of mine will be greatly appreciated.
While we aren't planning to do standalone patches, a lot of my work over the last few weeks is going towards making patches (and the game install itself) much smaller. Due to the scale of the change it probably won't go live until Season 2 at the earliest, but it is on the horizon. As amore interim solution, I would bet that you can script the launcher pretty easily via AutoIt. You could make a script to run everything and schedule it to run at night.
Comments
the downloader for the game itself is a.5 thats waaaay back.
either update the client download or put up offline patch installers please its really makin me think of ending my subscription
please people bump this thread as much as possible.
As a workaround, can you use a macro or other automation program to trigger the launcher one night during the open window? Let it download and apply the patch while you're sleeping.
lol, pretty sure that's not quite what they meant.
You could manually extra the hogg files, figure which one's actually been modified, single those out, and transfer those only, but then course you'd haveta replace your own with the updated ones. Though I suppose it wouldn't be that hard to make an exe that did all of the above just using the codes from the .hogg file extractor. Though you'd have to repeat the process every time and it'd most likely be a variety of different files each time so all in all more work than it's worth on your own.
At any rate, releasing an exe patch isn't all that hard for cryptic since they already know what they're updating.
Though interestingly enough to note, didn't realize people were still on sattelite, I suppose it's still useful in places without landlines. It was pretty much the big thing about 10 years back, though course cable came along promising T1 speeds for a fraction of the cost then 100 times T1 speeds for the same these days.
For myself, I haven't a care as I do have practically unlimited bandwidth. However it is understandable that for others with limited bandwidth, they'd like to able to seek methods of patching on their own terms.
The method suggested here, forces the player to actively taking his computer with him, or installing the game on a pc where it may not be played, or even wanted.
Basically all you will need to do is to create a self extracting file that identifies the path of the game directory so it can do most of the work for the user, and then make it accessable on your homepage.
Im not sure about how the licences work for the program you use to make install files, but im geussing that this would be the most viable solution for such a file.
Alternatively you could just make the .hogg file accesable for singlefile download with a guide on how and where to copy, instead of the SEF.
I dont know why you would not want to do this, but from where i stand, i would as a developing studio prefer to supply my users with my own download source, rather than forcing people to go look elsewhere. Because if you do this, eventually some trolling-hacker will find a way to add evil software to the file, and start distrubuting your files, ending up with half a dozen users having a compromised account.
And yes. I know that all that would be in violation of the EULA, but you KNOW this will happen eventually.
Do you mean MB=Megabyte, or Mb=Megabit?
I assume you mean megabyte, but how on earth do you surf the net/play a game on 425 MB per day? Do you have a counter for your internet traffic that you watch carefully? How do they justify giving you less than 13 Gigs of downstream bandwidth per month for what I'm sure is a premium price you pay?
This is a satellite internet service right? None of the other networks can provide you service? Sorry bout the questions, but I'm just astonished that your total download allocation is so low. I never knew Hughesnet was so stingy (are all the rest the same too?)
I'm just outraged that the numbers I'm seeing amounts to highway robbery, if I'm reading you right. I feel for you.
I apologize yes I meant Megabyte. HughesNet applies the limit to download only not uploads. I have their best residential account "HugnesNet Pro PLus" that gets me 1.6MB download rate, a 250K upload rate and the 425MB download limit per day, it is $79.95 and some change with tax as I own my system (dish modem etc). I live in the sticks and the closest hardwire service is two miles and the company wants over $28,000 to run it to the house (no way in @#$). So my options are either dial up modem which I had thru AOL back in 2002 that on its best day was a 1.4 to 1.8KB download rate, a modern air card that from what I have found thus far is just as restrictive as a satellite and the satellite that I have had since 2002 (when it was DirectPC), moving is no option
I generally watch what I do with the computer on the net, I seldom use video resources or audio resources that cause large downloads, I generally use my account for typical email, flight simulation and light web development for the flight sim hobby and now STO
As I have stated the HUGE STO patch files they add in when you login are definately a show stopper for me as I have no alternatives thus the reason I submitted the this thread to see if STO would look at this and consider alternatives, I hope I submitted my issue to the proper media / point of contact.
What I see as a fix for my issue is an ability to download and install the updates at my convienence, or a means to engage and preset (throttle) the rate of download so I can meter the downlaod so as not to violate my ISP bandwidth policy. Or whatever other alternative that the techies of the hobby could devise to help resolve this...
Any consideration towards this problem of mine will be greatly appreciated.