current community

your communities

more stack exchange communities

company blog
Stack Exchange Inbox Reputation and Badges
tour help

Tagged Questions

The tag has no usage guidance.

learn more… | top users | synonyms

1
vote
1answer
50 views

Process of Game Updates/Patches

I am currently in school studying game design and programming and I am wondering, simply: How are games updated? Whenever I create simple, little programs, if I change anything, essentially the ...
5
votes
1answer
187 views

Making an auto patcher

I'm currently in the last phases of an original release for my upcoming risk game - I'm looking at making a patching system to autopatch the game. My current concept for it is- 1: Player opens the ...
68
votes
4answers
10k views

How does one make games playable before they are fully downloaded?

Diablo 3 and StarCraft 2 have a nice feature: I can start playing before the full game/update has finished downloading. How does this work? How could I implement a similar feature? I guess Diablo 3 ...
0
votes
0answers
96 views

(LWJGL)How would a game patch work

I made a game in java that I plan on selling some day. When I do eventually release it,I want people to receive patches instead of buying it again. How does a game patch work, and where the heck do I ...
7
votes
5answers
650 views

How can I maintain saved game backward compatibility?

I have a complex sim game I want to add save game functionality to. I'll be updating it with new features continually after release. How can I make sure my updates don't break existing save games? ...
1
vote
1answer
175 views

XNA - Distribution and Patching

I have a couple of questions. Some of this I've done some research on, and some of it may be lacking, but any help is appreciated. 1) When distributing an XNA game for PC that uses custom fonts ...
6
votes
2answers
467 views

How do “community patches” for commercial games work?

For a lot of games, mostly role-playing games (Gothic 3, Oblivion, Skyrim, Titan Quest to name a few), there exist community patches. So, patches that are made by the communities, not by the ...
0
votes
1answer
102 views

Updates for IOS AppStore Multiplayer Game

I am developing a multiplayer game for the web, android and ios. For the web and android i can instantly push out new versions of my game because they support executing remotly loaded code. But with ...
32
votes
4answers
4k views

How do patches in games work?

Console and PC games have patches sometimes to fix bugs which the developers missed/didn't have time to fix. My question is how do these work? Sometimes the patch files are a few megabytes in size. ...
7
votes
3answers
353 views

Game Patching Mac/PC

Just wondering what types of solutions are available to handle patching of PC/Mac games that don't have any sort of auto updater built into them. In windows do you just spin off some sort of new ...
4
votes
1answer
463 views

How does Starcraft 2 load its metadata?

Lets say you are playing Starcraft 2 melee map. The game loads the map. Melee maps have the following dependencies: Liberty (Mod) Liberty Multi (Mod) I think the game engine will load the data from ...
14
votes
7answers
568 views

Ways to manage changing designer data alongside changing player data

I have an online game where players get to shape the world in some way - eg. Ultima Online's housing, where you get to build your houses directly onto certain parts of the world map. These are changes ...
14
votes
3answers
656 views

PC game update systems [closed]

I've almost finished a PC game (I'm releasing it in a day or two). I'd like a way to easily release patches over the net in case I find a bug in the game right after release, or in case I want to add ...
0
votes
0answers
184 views

How do you design a replay system for a frequently patched game [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: How do you design a record/replay system for a frequently changing game? I understand that in order for a game to have a replay system it must: Have a deterministic engine ...
10
votes
3answers
1k views

How do you design a record/replay system for a frequently changing game?

I'm working in a free MMORPG and I have a problem. I'm (with other people) developing a video recording system for the game. The idea is basically: we record all the packages sent & received with ...