Todays update

[Senatus Populusque Romanus]

Starts at 966.6 MBs for me and is increasing exponentially. I keep looking back at the download it has gone up to almost 3G. I checked what the update was almost thinking this was a TLC pass, but nope just some explorer note and I've seen people saying its gone up to 5G. What is the actual size of the update?

[RobbEJay]

引用自 PQUNDCAKE / KsM：

The way Ark patches is extremely stupid, but basically instead of applying changes to existing files like normal patches do, Wildcards patching system instead has you download EVERY FILE that a patch has changed, and replace the old files with the new patch files, which of course means if you're replacing some gigabyte big files, which Ark is riddled with, the download is going to be huge.

It's extremely inefficient, but as Wildcard has been doing this since the alpha/beta days, I wouldn't wager on them changing it any time soon.

That's because it isn't Wildcard's doing, its how Steam handles uodates. Yes it's less efficient, but Valve's thinking is probably that there's less chance of the update botching something, especially if the user modded their game.

Valve or the devs would be the ones getting blamed in that case, as is usually the case when updates break mods or somebody doesn't update/load their mods properly.

[Cat Pondering At Yarn (mogging)]

引用自 RobbEJay：

引用自 PQUNDCAKE / KsM：

The way Ark patches is extremely stupid, but basically instead of applying changes to existing files like normal patches do, Wildcards patching system instead has you download EVERY FILE that a patch has changed, and replace the old files with the new patch files, which of course means if you're replacing some gigabyte big files, which Ark is riddled with, the download is going to be huge.

It's extremely inefficient, but as Wildcard has been doing this since the alpha/beta days, I wouldn't wager on them changing it any time soon.

That's because it isn't Wildcard's doing, its how Steam handles uodates. Yes it's less efficient, but Valve's thinking is probably that there's less chance of the update botching something, especially if the user modded their game.

Valve or the devs would be the ones getting blamed in that case, as is usually the case when updates break mods or somebody doesn't update/load their mods properly.

yet every single other steam game downloads perfectly but Ark is special how then?

[RobbEJay]

引用自 Jesty Depressty：

yet every single other steam game downloads perfectly but Ark is special how then?

Just because you haven't personally had issues with other Steam games doesn't mean anything. The only thing 'special' about Ark is its a huge game, which means the updates end up huge as well, making it much more noticeable.

[Malachi]

It's Ark's download process. I can download 1.5 to 2 gigs on other games in roughly 2 to 3 minutes on average ! With Ark it sometimes takes 45 min. to download 250 mb

[Eneco]

its not just downloading, its the whole patching process thats a freaking mess, steam is giving me 70MB/s but with ark the speed goes down to almost nothing, because its not downloading anything. its downloading bits, fast.. then working on your HDD for ages.... and then downloading a tiny bit again. Its nothing but broken and they give a F about it. as they do with all the other bugs and issue this game has. Just keep releasing updates and season passes, milking the masses...

[Eneco]

引用自 RobbEJay：

引用自 Jesty Depressty：

yet every single other steam game downloads perfectly but Ark is special how then?

Just because you haven't personally had issues with other Steam games doesn't mean anything. The only thing 'special' about Ark is its a huge game, which means the updates end up huge as well, making it much more noticeable.

fixing something usually only taks a few line of code to change. Thw whole binary folder of ARK is just 730MB, how does this compare to a 1.2GB patch ? doesnt make any sense!! Other huge games can do the same, just better

[Knight Siegfried]

For some reason, I had a 16GB patch today

[Max]

Ark has been like this from day one with some of it's larger updates, it's insane.

Was a 9.2gb download for me and required ~155gb free hard disk space (it first failed with 134gb free, I free'd up 160GB and then it worked).

It's a beast...

Basically if you want ARK to have the best chance at trouble free updates you need 150+GB free space on the install drive.

I've observed this behavior with the last few large updates as well.

[ZorTheCruel]

Yeah, i had the same thing last night as Shadow. Five or so hours to install a 1.2 gb update. So incredibly slow. Other games that have a 2gb install or update i can get and install in about 10 minutes. Watching the download in steam, it seemed like 95% of the time it was just using disk and not actually downloading anything. That seems to support what an earlier poster has said, where the updater goes through your whole ark install, probably essentially doing a verify files check, then when it finds an outdated file it stops and installs it and then goes back to tediously checking files. This is where the huge game install size is a true killer.

[TonyMax.Fr]

Tryed to download the patch few hours ago, seems to use ONLY my G: hard disk with only 11GB free instead of my C: where my game is installed and 36GB free. Just now it say me the disk is full (and yes it is) it show me 3 of 6 GB downloaded. Now the game isn't working anymore, i must delete all the game for redownload all (more than 140GB) i'm in france with ♥♥♥♥♥♥ connection ADSL 1 what's the ♥♥♥♥ with steam ??????!!!!!!!! ><

[us271934-Слава Україн]

Both Atlas and Ark did their updates this morning. Ark was the 1.2Gb version and Atlas was 200Mb.
Ark took about 2 hours
Atlas took 4 minutes

something to ponder

[KI-Natas]

hmm i started update yesterday... still updating.

[Knight Siegfried]

That's why I just bought a 1TB SSD for this game and some other big mofo games like XCOM or Siege. It was around 100 euros so not a bad deal.

[Malak]

引用自 PQUNDCAKE / KsM：

The way Ark patches is extremely stupid, but basically instead of applying changes to existing files like normal patches do, Wildcards patching system instead has you download EVERY FILE that a patch has changed, and replace the old files with the new patch files, which of course means if you're replacing some gigabyte big files, which Ark is riddled with, the download is going to be huge.

It's extremely inefficient, but as Wildcard has been doing this since the alpha/beta days, I wouldn't wager on them changing it any time soon.

Amen, brother. A patchfile should only change things at the byte level and not require redownloading the whole file. The devs really need to learn how things were done back in the DOS days when RAM and HD space were a huge issue. This is the ONLY game I have that requires 80GB free to update. It's VERY unprofessional. I mean do they think no one plays this on a laptop with limited space?? I have a PC, but I do feel for the poor saps with nothing but a 120GB laptop.

[RobbEJay]

引用自 `(-_-)´：

fixing something usually only taks a few line of code to change. Thw whole binary folder of ARK is just 730MB, how does this compare to a 1.2GB patch ? doesnt make any sense!! Other huge games can do the same, just better

Because its not just the binary folder being updated.

引用自 PQUNDCAKE / KsM：

Amen, brother. A patchfile should only change things at the byte level and not require redownloading the whole file. The devs really need to learn how things were done back in the DOS days when RAM and HD space were a huge issue. This is the ONLY game I have that requires 80GB free to update. It's VERY unprofessional. I mean do they think no one plays this on a laptop with limited space?? I have a PC, but I do feel for the poor saps with nothing but a 120GB laptop.

Again, its not the Ark devs, is Steam's update system. The game is over 100GB itself, you wouldn't even be able to install it on a 120GB HDD.

Case in point, 7 Days to Die has a 1.6GB update to today, difference is, the entire game is only 4GB. That's still almost half the game, for a bug fix/balance patch.