[2023] Confused as to how patching works..

It is a very frustrating issue for us. Note that we have zero control over how patches are applied on steam. The way delta patching occurs on steam causes this issue, especially on highly optimized binarized data. This means steam reserves a whole bunch of new sectors, copies the data across, and cross references.

We get many complaints about this, but the only thing we could realistically do would be uncompress the data completely, which is what games like Ark do. They don't pack the data and leave it all unpacked, and uncompressed.

If we tried to do this with Icarus, it would very dramatically increase both the load times and RAM used by assets during loading, as well as filesize very dramatically.

Unfortunately it seems following the best practice guidelines for packing data for Unreal, which we did, triggers big problems for steam downloads. I raised the issue with valve who told me to get customers to raise tickets, which I passed on. However, valve then just closed the tickets. So sadly, I think we all just have sit with how it is until Valve decide to change that.

This is a reason why we limit the project to only one update a week.

Originally posted by Grand Forks: love that response @Rocket "highly optimized binarized data" I had to giggle a bit.

Sorry I don't quite understand what you mean?

Perhaps you misunderstood me; but the phrase "highly optimized binarized data" is just a descriptive way of saying "packing" something. It's just a factual statement describing how the files are packed.

Take for example if you took your whole computer hard drive and "zipped" it up. By saying its binarized and highly optimized, I wouldn't be necessarily saying its the best way to work on those files, but it is the most efficient way of storing it. Additionally, if when zipping it, the packing process looked at what files reference what others, and in particular, what files you typically work on after others - and group them together - this is what the engine packing does. Extending the analogy further, by zipping your whole harddrive up in this manor, if you updated *one* file, then depending on how it gets distributed to customers, the software used to download it might use novel ways to copy, apply the delta state change, and then unpack it.

Originally posted by WarNerve: Please don't see my post as a complaint.

Did not come across like that at all, and many have this issue - occasionally even myself. So discussing it is good. While some might get a bit annoyed as it has been discussed before, it can be very hard to know if information is current. So discussing it and continuing to look at options to deal with it are well worth it.

Originally posted by WarNerve: I really appreciate you taking the time to give us all such a detailed explanation and insight into how the mechanics of patching works

Community engagement is how we have gotten the game to the much better position it is in now, and part of that is having good "robust" discussions and liaison with the community. We hope we keep delivering good updates and a better game!