Spiral Knights - Large patch size inconsistency between SK updater and Steam

Large patch size inconsistency between SK updater and Steam

3 replies [Last post]

Wed, 03/05/2014 - 19:38

Gkku

So I've noticed for a long time now that when I open SK before Steam takes over a patch's download, the SK updater seems to download the patch much faster than Steam.
I finally looked into this the other day and figured out what seems to be the cause. Let's use the 3/4/2014 patch as an example.

The patch downloaded by the SK updater was ~4MB, and only contained things that were new and/or modified.
However later when Steam got a hold of this patch, it was ~250MB.
When I went to check for once what could possibly be bloating the size of the patch so much, it looked like it was re-downloading the whole full-music-bundle and full-rest-bundle, along with the little intro-bundle that was in the patch the SK updater downloaded.

As far as I remember, this has occurred with every SK update that comes through Steam - no matter how small of a change it was, when it comes through Steam it's at least 100MB.

Is there any particular reason for this? I'm not angry (I imagine people with very very slow internet are), I'm just curious. Is it a bug? Is it a limitation with the way Steam handles updates?

(also I wasn't sure if this belonged in Technical Issues or Bug Reports, I went here because this seems less oriented towards things that are in-game)

Thu, 03/06/2014 - 00:17

Zaffy-Laffy

The SK patch updater actually patches needed things? When did that happen? I still thought that all patches were to repatch the whole game fully and wholly by redownloading everything (reason why there are always missing textures and stuff here and there between patches).

Thu, 03/06/2014 - 09:49

Derpalike

@Zaffy-Laffy

('scuse the alt, I'm gkku - trying to post this from my steam account kept giving validation errors)

It seems so. Not sure if it has always done it or what, but nowadays the SK updater downloads a patch all packed up inside one .dat, and when it gets to the "Patching" phase it seems to unpack it into the game's files.

The patch from 3/4/2014 only contained modified copies of things that the patch notes implied were changed:

ui/status/parts/panel_cheevos.dat
config/accessory.dat
config/actor.dat
config/attack.dat
config/item.dat

As well as various other things that I don't understand, though are probably either related to the memory leak or are required in every patch anyways.

Wed, 04/02/2014 - 20:20

Gkku

Still happening by the

Still happening by the way.

The first update today when it came through SK's updater was ~10MB, later the update through Steam was ~260MB.
It comes off as though Steam just goes at it with a shotgun approach - "We don't know what's new so we're going to re-download 1/3 of the game and hope the new stuff was in there somewhere".

I just wish I at least knew why it does that.

EDIT: Speak of the devil, I just went to start SK and got slammed in the face by another ~260MB update, presumably triggered by today's second update (which was only ~2MB through SK's updater).

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Large patch size inconsistency between SK updater and Steam