Ruffles
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Posted - 2009.03.10 12:56:00 -
[1]
Edited by: Ruffles on 10/03/2009 12:59:00
This first part was a deliberate test, and I'm sorry to say it failed.
I attempted to run the update in a limited user account. The game fired up and stated there was a new update, and I proceeded to choose the option to download it. I wanted to see if it would actually check to see if it had permissions to run the patch before downloading the file, or if it would just download the file what would be the effect if, as I assumed, the patch would fail.
 Originally by: EVE Online Update 75883 > 83913 Setup
Completing the EVE Online Update
75883->83913 Setup Wizard
Updating failed with the following error:
Unknown patching failure. Error Code: 18
Click here to download manually.
I believe your patcher fails to check if the user has adequate rights to install the patch before starting the download process. If running the client in a standard User account, as will be becoming increasingly common considering the recommendations of Least User Access (LUA) to minimize risk to internet viri, they will have insufficient rights to perform an installation, however your patcher will still download the files and try.
In this case it should check first if the user can perform the update or ask if it can save the files in a user specified location for running by an account with adequate rights to do the update.
However, if the patch fails, the files are deleted forcing the user to once again download the files in full! Excuse me for saying so, but that seems really daft folks!
Here you have created additional problems for yourselves, not only increasing network bandwidth usage during this upgrade, but by forcing the download via BITS for each client rather then giving the user a choice, you have missed out the opportunity your users often take advantage of, of being able to offer a single consolidated download that can be reused on multiple machines at a users property. You could offer this on the first page of the patcher, instead of the last page after the patcher has failed. Perhaps offering an option on the first page to allow the user to choose if they want to use the Auto-Patcher, or download the manual patching file, and then perhaps use BITS to download the appropriate choice.
Furthermore, whilst BITS is great for a single home users pc, more and more regularly you will encounter homes with more then one PC, and sadly large downloads utilising the whole network will sadly affect others on the LAN. It might at least be wise to offer users the capability of also setting a maximum download bandwidth to consume. Sadly a lot of your existing users have download managers that they would use to do this job downloading large files from your site, so it looks like you've created a download manager yourselves but left out some of the essential options.
Classic comment all developers should know: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Whislt we understand this is most likely a one off big upgrade, there will be other potentially big upgrades in the future, and in a game which encourages multiple accounts for a player, why one earth would you force each computer to have to separately download a patch, and delete it rather then encourage reuse of the patch at one site?
At least offer the capability at the beginning of the patch to choose to save the patch files for reuse on another system, or give the user the choice of where to save the patch files or something. This new update mechanism could learn something from the old deployment mechnism that was used to great success prior to today, or at least from other download managers if you intend to keep this BITS route.
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