What should be done to address FAF patch download issues?

Swkoll · 22 Sept 2021, 19:10

Having a CDN could fix other non-saturation based issues as (insert random ISP) is less likely to have issues communicating with the nearest cloudflare server than a single dedicated server in germany.

Brutus5000 · 22 Sept 2021, 19:15

Well we had the same problem with Github downloads which has a worldwide CDN, so I'm still not sure if CDN can actually fix it.
So apart from just throwing money at some company, how would we measure that we actually improved the situation?

Askaholic · 22 Sept 2021, 20:18

Isn’t that just a feature of github though? They don’t want to be used as a free CDN so they’re going to throttle download speeds. It just makes sense.

I think the biggest bottleneck is once again manpower. We don’t really have the free time to figure out how to set up a cdn, and how much it would cost, and how it would integrate into our stack.

If I had infinite time and money I’d love to do the following:

Enable a CDN for patch distribution
Fix our awfully inefficient distribution method so it only gives you the data you don’t already have
Integrate a proper version manager into the client so you never have to download the same patch twice, even if you watch a lot of replays on different patch versions or on fafdevelop.

Sadly my money and time are only finite and already allocated to many FAF projects like TMM.

Anachronism_ · 22 Sept 2021, 20:33

@brutus5000 said in What should be done to address FAF patch download issues?:

Well we had the same problem with Github downloads which has a worldwide CDN, so I'm still not sure if CDN can actually fix it.
So apart from just throwing money at some company, how would we measure that we actually improved the situation?

Perhaps we could get data on download times and look at averages/medians/etc?

Sheikah · 22 Sept 2021, 20:35

@emperor_penguin said in [What should be done to address FAF patch download issues?]

Perhaps we could get data on download times and look at averages/medians/etc?

Problem is someone has to develop all that and then parse through the data.

archsimkat · 23 Sept 2021, 02:48

I personally wasted like 20 minutes refafing trying to join a lobby without realizing it was downloading a new patch, and then spent around another hour downloading the new patch, leaving me with no time to play the game I was originally excited to play. It was such a frustrating experience I haven't really played since. I'm obviously not going to leave FAF because of this, but I can see less committed players quitting because of it.

It's a really bad player experience because it's not clear what's happening when you are downloading a new patch—the download progress is small and in the bottom right corner and not at all descriptive. I think it was downloading something called env.nx2 and the loading bar was not even visibly moving, so at first I assumed something was wrong.

I understand that this is a very difficult problem to tackle, and I know how much work you devs are putting in already, but I really think this should be one of the highest priority problems to tackle. For average users like me, if the actual download issues can't be solved, I think at least communicating clearly that it's downloading a new patch and that I should just sit tight and wait for it to finish would be a big improvement.

Sheikah · 23 Sept 2021, 02:58

@archsimkat said in What should be done to address FAF patch download issues?:

I think at least communicating clearly that it's downloading a new patch and that I should just sit tight and wait for it to finish would be a big improvement.

So no complaining when I put a big blinky flashing box about the patch downloading and you think it pops up too often

archsimkat · 23 Sept 2021, 03:00

Maybe just a pop up that tells me there's a new game patch when I try to launch a game would be fine, I don't pretend to know good design practices and what would work well here.

Sheikah · 23 Sept 2021, 03:04

It would have to show progress of some kind otherwise it is the same thing where people see it once and then think it didn't work because it takes so long. And would also need to be more in your face about it than the current iteration as that gets overlooked.

Perfect place to bring back everyone's favorite ACU

archsimkat · 23 Sept 2021, 04:53

Kill two birds with one stone and just vertically fill out the dancing ACU as a loading bar

snoog · 23 Sept 2021, 12:10

Why not allow people to download the updates before joining a game? As in, add an update game client button somewhere in the FAF client. So people don't see a game they want to join, attempt to join it, and then just get stuck downloading an update while that game fills and starts. If we can't easily fix the download speed issue right now, we can at least make the experience a little better.

Giebmasse · 23 Sept 2021, 14:23

Just throwing this idea out there:
RSS BitTorrent feed for new patches, small BitTorrent client built-in within the client.
https://rometools.github.io/rome/
https://github.com/mpetazzoni/ttorrent

I know it would involve a significant amount of work client + server side, but it would in theory minimize download issues and we would not be dependent on some service or have to pay for it.

Aulex · 23 Sept 2021, 16:53

Not to take away from the thread but I think this a great a way to summarize how people feel.

kdrafa91 · 24 Sept 2021, 22:20

I think my patch downloaded in less than a minute =\