Could this happen?

[Junanagou]

Well instead of very humongous updates. Could we just get a little bit at a time?

 

[Grega]

id say that is to much to do since evry version is tested to the max be4 it gets out

 

[Hibiki]

theres a thing called the dev journals that are just that

 

[KarrdeKNR]

I think he meant to the game itself. Beyond that, it'd suck to have to write installers for minor updates, and frankly, they'd waste time getting it out like that. It'd be like the bajillion updates to RO when it was beta.

-Karrde-

 

[Junanagou]

I mean like update to models say there has been new models made. Vegeta for example could there be a release to download him, not an installer just a model replacement, or sprite replacements.

 

[Showster]

Doing such things mean alot of twinkering and seperate file hosting although its a nice way to present new stuff to fans Junanagou its not technically viable.

Especially in terms of a model update, image this for instance

there is already

esf 1
esf 1.2.1
esf 1.2.2

and so forth

If at each stage they were to release say a new model for example vegeta

The file would contain different animaitons dependant on the code and would require re-exporting each time, mutliple files would need hosting (which basically do the same thing) and it would eventually confuse people. Can you imagine having 10 vegeta packs and wandering which version works with esf 1.3xxx

Thats just from a modelling perspective, staged releases work well from a team view if you do that with a fan base you may attract a lot of unwanted attention to certain media and also increase your work load.

An example that may work would be to release music over time or some map betas but these can still be dependant on code.

Anyhow just my take on the matter its not necessarily true but when you think of mods its not just all fun and games theres alot of practicallity and design which often gets in the way.

Show

 

[Hibiki]

oh well really the 1.X.1/2/3 versions are small updates

rather then letting big bugs sit there for a while a small patch is released to fix the small stuff


as for large game content no there will never be 40 small patches updating it for many reasons

mainly because of how the game is developed

it would take far far too long to fully bug test 40 small patches then it would to just test one large patch

not to mention as said would be a total hassle trying to figure out which version u need

 

[psymon stark]

wonder if valve would support this like they did natural selection.... then that could be done much more easily couldnt it?

 

[Ultimate 17]

With Natural Selection, their beta 4 patches were merely to level the playing field between different alien classes and marine classes. There weren't any changes to gameplay. Things like changing the cost of points for different skills, changing health and armor statistics for different classes, and minor map tweaks are neccessary patches for NS. Their big releases take a long time to put out, so they don't want you playing their game with unbalanced classes-- this is the reason for their patches.

ESF doesn't have this problem because things are about as balanced as can be. NS has more aspects as far has armor ratings and skill point investing. If they don't keep things balanced, no one will play on the weaker classes-- which can result in bad team play. Imagine if no one picked the Gorge as a class because he had the worst dmg and his offensive chambers were easily destroyed-- there would be no res towers, defense/sens/movement chambers, and no class to heal structures. Such an unbalance would ruin NS.