Recommended AutoUpdate Utility/Library?
Community Forums/General Help/Recommended AutoUpdate Utility/Library?
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| Can anyone recommend an AutoUpdate utility or library. I guess not many people are using them for Indie games, particularly since Steam and whatever have one built in, but perhaps some of you use one at work or something. It would be particularly useful to me during beta testing as I will probably end up patching regularly and I don't want to waste hours packaging up updates all the time. I've found a whole bunch of different ones, but they all lack at least one major feature. The key features for me are: 1) Must be able to do everything without needing an admin account for the end user. 2) Must be able to do everything without triggering any UAC popups on Vista. 3) Must be able to calculate which files have been updated automatically without me telling it. 4) Must support binary, compressed patching. 5) Must be able to update EXE's, DLL's and components which are currently in use by the system. All the other nice stuff like server-side authentication, dialog editing, skins, FTP/HTTP/HTTPS downloads, etc is nice but not essential. Every single one I've found so far has three or four of my five must-haves, but not five. I'm ideally looking to spend no more than around £150. If I planned on using it for the finished game, I might spend more, but £150 just for beta testing seems plenty to me. EDIT: Thanks for moving this to the correct forum. |
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| It might be a long shot, and probably a lost cause, but what about requesting a feature be introduced to one of the packages you were looking for? |
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| Well as you say, it's worth a go, but a bit of a long shot really. I've had emails back from developers of two of the packages, and both of them were essentially very polite ways of saying "well that's nice but we've taken the decision that the feature you want is of no value". The best of the packages hasn't had an update of any kind since 2007 so I think the odds are high that they view that as a finished product and will reply similarly. I've found a few more packages in the past couple of days and they are all close but no cigar too, so I may just have to accept most of the features as "good enough". |
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| I'd be interested to hear which package you settle on. This is something I'm going to need to tackle eventually for my current project. |
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| I had wrote Xpatcher a few years ago that did 'some' of the things you have requested. I stopped supporting it about 9 months ago when i realized i wanted more features than current framework would allow. Anyways, I started working on Xpatcher2.0 awhile back and I'm glad to say that it's near completion, probably a few more days then a few more for some testing.. At this point it still won't do all your requested, although to be honest I'm seriously doubting there's a package like that out there. A little about xp2.0; Using your a ftp server you can manage your project folder by monitoring and patching files as they are updated. Theres really nothing for the developer to do but install the patch maker, configure a project, run it whenever you feel like updating or set it on an automatic schedule. It will compare your current project directory(s) and make sure the folder on your ftp server is upto date. It only patches files that have changed since your last patch, it also manages all directory and sub directories creation both remotely and locally ( client side ) so you could actually use it as an installer as well, just distribute the small exe and it would do all the dir creation and downloading of files needed. Encryption, compression (password protection) and checksum supported. Control unlimited amounts of projects from one Xpatcher2.0 installion. Acts as a control center for all your projects. You'll distribute a small client side exe file that the end user runs to link to the files that are remotely stored. No messy patch images to deal with, you don't even have to keep seperate folders of the same project just becuase you want to patch ( i've noticed all the others demand this ). No DLLS for the end user to bother with, just a small lite-weight .exe file that can be nested inside your own installer if you prefer. Exclusion lists, exclude a single file or an entire directory/subdirectory from patching, also accepts wildcards ( *.bb). This is great for developers as you can keep your code in the same directory as your distribution but not include it in any patches. A huge time saver-for developers. Client side app can be nested into applications or you may choose to use it as a launcher which checks for updates then launches your main application .exe. Control all clients globally by clicking a project shutdown button, this happens automatically when patching is in process but you can control it manually if you wish to preform some kinda maintance or whatever. Clients pick up the off flag and won't proceede until you have turned the project back on. The feature list is quite extensive and I really only covered the basics in this post, I'll have the webpage ready pretty soon if you want to look at it. It'll display the features much more indepth. Anyways, enough uttering, I'll make an announcement once i've released xp2.0, as i said, it's probably not want you want as it dosen't carry all the features you asked for but it does have other features you didnt ask for that perhaps you would had if you'd know about them. Also it wont cost anywhere close to £150, I may even be releasing it as freeware.. dunno yet. cya. |
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