Question about Wesnoth

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cretin
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Question about Wesnoth

Post by cretin »

There is just one thing that has always nagged me (and undoubtedly many others) about this game is that you have to download the game every time a new version comes out. So i was wondering, in MMO's, the games can autoupdate and patch to bring content in. Would it work for wesnoth? Or are there reasons why this cannot work, like a changing code or something? Im curious.
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scienceguy8
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Re: Question about Wesnoth

Post by scienceguy8 »

The main reason is despite having more coders available than your typical open source project, we still don't have the manpower to create patches. It is simply easier and faster to create completely new binaries rather than patches. There used to be a small group that created an updating script that would open up an existing program binary and replace every file or program component that had changed with a new one, but I'm pretty sure they ran out of steam around version 1.2.
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Re: Question about Wesnoth

Post by anakayub »

The binaries themselves are small (< 20 MB for an Intel Mac only binary IIRC during 1.5, certainly < 10 MB during 1.2). The data is huge in Wesnoth. If you're on a Mac, you might want to ask penguin to create a raw update (no data, just binary + translations), but as scienceguy8 mentioned, the steam definitely ran out; downloads of the raw updates equaled less than 10 % (Dave mentioned this before the exact figures).
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Aethaeryn
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Re: Question about Wesnoth

Post by Aethaeryn »

You could always just upgrade between versions via SVN, which would definitely save diskspace and updating time, once you do the initial checkout. I'm considering doing this for 1.8.
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Yeran
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Re: Question about Wesnoth

Post by Yeran »

A related idea that stuck me a while ago was splitting some images (mostly unit portraits) from the main project, so you could

a) easily update them (basically people could even copy/paste new images from the Arts-Forum or wherever they want and use them if they knew how to)
b) if you are not interested in those images (probably you just want to have some multiplayer games on another pc) you'd have less stuff to download

That way you'd need to access the images dynamically using folders and names. Of course you'd have to grant different choices for downloads (most likely 3 different downloads - whole game / without images / images only), which might be overly complex to new users. And thats beside the time and effort probably needed to get this work. Its just a random thought after all, as wesnoth isn't that big to be honest. :)
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Re: Question about Wesnoth

Post by Aethaeryn »

Yeran wrote:A related idea that stuck me a while ago was splitting some images (mostly unit portraits) from the main project, so you could

a) easily update them (basically people could even copy/paste new images from the Arts-Forum or wherever they want and use them if they knew how to)
b) if you are not interested in those images (probably you just want to have some multiplayer games on another pc) you'd have less stuff to download

That way you'd need to access the images dynamically using folders and names. Of course you'd have to grant different choices for downloads (most likely 3 different downloads - whole game / without images / images only), which might be overly complex to new users. And thats beside the time and effort probably needed to get this work. Its just a random thought after all, as wesnoth isn't that big to be honest. :)
After checking in 1.7.5, I can see that images actually don't take up much space. By far, the largest folder is music, at 61.0% of data/core (118.1 megabytes). Images only take up 33.9%, of which less than half are portraits. If anything needs to be modular, it should be music, since many people do not even play with sound on. (Personally, I don't mind Wesnoth's soundtrack, but I usually use my laptop only in semi-private situations where sound would be distracting. Whether in my dorm or at home, I'm usually at least in the next room as someone else if not in the same room.)
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Re: Question about Wesnoth

Post by Gambit »

Aethaeryn wrote: since many people do not even play with sound on.
These people really do miss out.
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Re: Question about Wesnoth

Post by Aethaeryn »

Gambit wrote:
Aethaeryn wrote: since many people do not even play with sound on.
These people really do miss out.
Hey, remember that not all of us live on our own, with our own rooms, etc. I live in a dorm, for instance, with a roommate. I'm not going to be blasting Wesnoth if he's doing homework or whatever.

Odds are, I'd probably still have the music directory installed if there's an option, but what if you had bad Internet? Or just plain preferred playing your own music?

Separating music makes a lot more sense than Ubuntu's (rather stupid) decision to separate the (relatively tiny) mainline campaigns into separate downloads.
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Re: Question about Wesnoth

Post by cretin »

thx ive always wanted to know. so its possible, just takes time and effort.
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Re: Question about Wesnoth

Post by StDrake »

lets say..it's only time and effort that limit the possibility :)
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Re: Question about Wesnoth

Post by grrr »

http://packages.ubuntu.com/karmic/wesnoth-core

Yes, it's no lie: 2,893.6 kB for a fully functional Wesnoth client. That's the package I used for the entire stable lifetime of 1.6 So perhaps we should follow the clever debian packaging guys (yes, it is *not* stupid, actually, it makes a lot of sense) and split up Wesnoth? I mean, 3MB - this is even smaller than the xdelta! Not to mention you do not have to recompile...

And Aeth, the SVN version is no real solution unless you tell people to be very specific which revisions to fetch. In the long run, SVN produces a lot more data than a simple download.
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Re: Question about Wesnoth

Post by tsr »

grrr wrote:And Aeth, the SVN version is no real solution unless you tell people to be very specific which revisions to fetch. In the long run, SVN produces a lot more data than a simple download.
Well I keep two versions of wesnoth (wesnoth-stable and wesnoth-dev) every time I see an announcement of a new version I do:

Code: Select all

#: sudo -s
#: <password that I wont stupidly show here>
#: cd /usr/local/src/wesnoth-stable (or -dev, depending on what is being released)
#: scons uninstall 
#: svn switch http://svn.gna.org/svn/wesnoth/tags/1.7.6 (or whatever is being released)
#: scons install
... some time passes ...
#: exit
#: wesnoth-stable (or -dev; to try out the new version)
It´s fairly straightforward, I have some time ago configured scons to append -stable/-dev as a version_suffix and to build the targets ´test´, ´wesnoth´ and ´wesnothd´ but I should probably take out ´test´ and ´wesnothd´ from the targets list.

Maybe there is a way to only recompile the files that have only changed, I don´t know...

/tsr
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Re: Question about Wesnoth

Post by Zarel »

Aethaeryn wrote:Hey, remember that not all of us live on our own, with our own rooms, etc. I live in a dorm, for instance, with a roommate. I'm not going to be blasting Wesnoth if he's doing homework or whatever.
Volume control?

Headphones?

The possibilities are limitless. ;)
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Aethaeryn
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Re: Question about Wesnoth

Post by Aethaeryn »

Zarel wrote:Headphones?
Wesnoth's music/sound is not that worth it.
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Re: Question about Wesnoth

Post by Gambit »

Ouch. It must suck to in charge of music, on any project. It enhances the experience so much. But nobody ever walks up to them and asks for an autograph :(
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