Game won't download...

[Vankharr]

Stuck at 0.5%... Everytime I try to launch it

I remember that I had this problem 5 years ago... they didnt fix it in 5 years ??? Are they all internship students ???

[Eshman]

Tons of content has been added to the game over 5 years so clearly they're not interns. Or they're in the longest internship anyone's ever heard of. No clue why other folks have issues downloading the game but I didn't have issues. Maybe try sending a support ticket?

[szalkerous]

The PC version I think has to download direct from a server in Japan and despite having a gigabit internet service I see it updating at around 300-400kbps (0.3-0.4 mbps)...

At that rate, to download just 1GB of data will take over 5 hours.

So it really seems that WFS needs to stage their game updates on a more reliable service, like the Steam backend, or a cloud host like AWS or Azure, instead of their current provider. (EDIT: I just did some snooping and it's using a local Akamai endpoint for the download so that rules out this theory entirely)

Alternatively, I can't rule out really inefficient and unoptimized net code ported from the mobile game (where it may work fine on those platforms) that could be drastically reducing network stack performance. The game otherwise does have a "lazy port" feel to it, so it wouldn't surprise me. The experience I have playing on my latest-gen iPad is night and day better compared to my undeniably more powerful gaming PC. Seriously, this game runs amazing on that tablet. It even runs much better under emulation on Windows (i.e. Windows Subsystem for Android or Bluestacks).

For comparison, to download the initial game package of ~8-9GB off the steam servers took about 3 minutes.

Has anyone tried using a VPN service to connect to a Japan-based endpoint and try updating from there?

UPDATE:

After snooping around a bit with Process Monitor I could see where the data staging was taking place. ("\steamapps\common\ANOTHER EDEN\contents" if you're curious)

It appears the game downloads tens-of-thousands of individual small files instead of one large package which will cause the download performance to drop significantly. Every time a single file is obtained, the stream is closed and reopened for the next file, causing huge overhead to this operation. Data transfers are like a train; it takes a while to get up to speed. If you're constantly starting and stopping you'll never really reach maximum speed or even close to it.

This is why other game services, like MMOs, will download their content updates in large, compressed packs and unpack all the files on the local device to get the maximum transfer possible.

Seems this may be the culprit for why the game takes so long to download.

When completed, the contents folder was 1.22 GB in size, with 19,323 files.

(The progress bar for the initial update and download after a fresh install was most definitely broken and got to around 5% before simply jumping to "New Game".)

[Eshman]

No idea where your filesize stats come from as it could be dependent on how far you've progressed in the main story, what content you have unlocked, or what characters you have in your party but my numbers are completely different. I just checked and my Steam folder currently sits at 10.4GB (10.7GB size on disk) with 149,073 files but the iOS version is only 9.8GB (2.81GB App/6.99 Docs & Data). I get the coding and compression are different between OS's but we're only roughly talking about a 10% difference here.

The best suggestion I can offer would still probably be considered general tech advice regardless of expertise. That being to download the updates over a wired Ethernet connection, ensuring the app has adequate permissions/exceptions through your firewall/antivirus, keeping all drivers & software up-to-date (including Windows itself), and verifying your file integrity through Steam if anything appears to fail. Once the update(s) complete, the game client will actually get through the process and function as it should. Granted, it could use some adjustments and/or fine tuning coding-wise or a dedicated Steam version with a better/local hosting service but I seriously doubt WFS is going to invest time or $ into that.

I also entirely agree that this game does run significantly better on other platforms even though my system is more of a beast than any of my iOS devices.

[wemic]

i find that once it gets past 7-8% it speeds up

[Eshman]

Correct. My best guess would be because it takes that long for the client to download the compressed packs in the background then only unpack the new/needed content and add it to your installed client. So even though the app runs a scan every single time it launches and is slightly annoying because of that maybe folks will realize there is an actual purpose to it?

[J.D.]

Well well, today is my turn to struggle with download woes. First there was there was the download demanded by steam itself, which every time I clicked the Resume Download button, would download for just a short while before getting pulled towards a download speed of 0 B/s as if by gravity. After struggling with that for awhile, I restarted the computer, and thankfully the steam download ran smoothly from there.

After that I got to open the Another Eden client which unsurprisingly demanded another download. It said the download was only like 170 MB, so it should have been fairly quick. But no, it still took most of an hour, got stuck at 100% for awhile (sheesh!). And after it finished, instead of starting the game, the client prompted me to start a >1 GB download, ughhh! I don't have time for that now; guess I'll try that later tonight.

Well at least there's a silver lining: Wright Flyers took my suggestion to drop updates on weekends, when I actually have time for these long downloads. So thank goodness for that.

[HolyPlasmaDragonFox2]

Metered upload speed from server per client verses constant game saves, yet downloading game save to play in queue seems fast.

[J.D.]

170 MB download was so slow, but > 1 GB download flew right by. Go figure...

[Safiru]

I can't even load the game after it was installed.