What's the problem in downloading apps from "third-party" sites? Auto-update? (that's an honest question, I don't have itch.io app)
Viewing post in No more excuses please
hum... so by "third-party" he means free file sharing services, yeah I get that, it's pretty crappy and usally not very safe either.
So I'd like to know if people like him would be ok with downloading from an actual game website, taking into account that an automatic update companion app would be shipped with the game (that's what I'm planning to do with my game in case it ever takes over 2GB anyways).
Oh, it is safe. you get the link from the dev, after all. and only crappy if you push your users to their download limits or your service shuts your content down for you exceeding your own quota. I saw that happening on google shares.
What I deem rather unsafe, untrusty and a no-go is an update companion of a mere indie game. And most aaa games for that matter. Essentially bundling a download app for the app I want? Nah. I might trust a small indie game dev to cobble up a fun game. But managing a downloader and updater, complete with hosting as well? So I get infected with malware, when his update server gets hacked? Or he messes up my system with some update scheduler? And also trusting the dev not to use his infrastructure to secretly phone home some "innocent" usage data or do other questionable things, just because he has a bad day.
The problem i see, this is games we talk about. not an everyday usage tool like vlc. Or an online game. The need for an updater companion for an offline game makes me suspicious. a button "check for updates" might be ok, especially if it just opens a browser.
Using the devs homepage would be ok. For me. But I am curious, how op sees this.
Well, almost every software you download nowadays have some sort of new version detector anyways, I see no point in worrying about the game say "a new version of the game is available do you wish to update it?".
Also, to be honest any game you download in itch or anywhere could be downloading something you don't want and not telling you, so worrying when it tells you makes no sense to me.
And the update server, is a host web service, like any website host service, which is paid, not free like the free file sharing websites which can have their links removed by the server and later replaced by someone with not so good intentions using the premium service from them (this os not that uncommon btw), just throw money on their face and you would be surprised on how flexible they get with deprecated links (they don't even verify if you were the original person posting it).
every software
while games can be classified as software, i make a serious distinction between most software and most games.
most games on itch are single time encounters. download. play. move on. it is rare to immediatly download a new update, even if it comes out monthly or even weekly. i can update it, when i feel like playing it again. no need for any update companion scheduler. there are only so many games I could "really" follow, like installing an update when it comes out.
and if you have an account for some webservice, you are prime target for hacking.
but the bottom line for me is, i do not even trust bigger companies to manage an update service, so i absolutly do not trust a single dev with it, and to make it worse, in most cases i do not see the need for such a service to begin with - not for the type of content we are talking about.
to put into another perspective, from what i saw on itch so far, game devs do not even bother to make their games installable. rightly so, because it is not needed. unzip and you are done. in ye olden days thsi would have been called portable. the olden days where itsy bitsy tool devs had installation routines, routinly bundled with adware and leftovers when you deinstalled. I saw about once a game with some kind of "companion" app. Maybe twice. And it was basically to ensure some kind of drm by way of a launcher/updater. (still talking about offline indie games)
If I was planning to make a one-play-time game, yes I'd not bother to not even make a installer for it, the project I'm working on atm is supposed to have at least 10hr of gameplay, that's why I think the user would be plased not have to relocate his save files everytime there's a new version of the game. That was one of the critiques about itch.io, I got from people is steam: it's hard to manage updates.
I myself am not a fan of installers either, so I understand an auto-update could trigger some disconfort in some people, thanks to your input, I will prompt a message asking if the user wants the game update itself once a new version is out there, if not I'll simply prompt a link to the download page.
the user would be plased not have to relocate his save files
Huh? save game locations are to be put into a user specific folder, not the game folder.
You seem to reinvent the wheel a lot. As a rule of thumb, if no one else is doing something or everyone is doing things a certain way, there usually is a reason. It might be a stupid reason, of course. Or a limitation of some engine.
Like in this thread, the overly big games. The offenders are usually visual novels with heaps of pictures. If those are lossless output of their rendering chain they are needlessly big and could be made a lot smaller. But here we go back to the reasons why I would not trust a single dev with an updater companion. It is different skills. Some of the devs are not capable or aware how to make their games reasonably small. Or they just do not care. Or they do, but in a different way. They hear lossy compression and fear for their art to be diminished, or so i imagine.
Huh? save game locations are to be put into a user specific folder, not the game folder.
Sorry, I was not clear, the actual save file is in a user local folder, but a huge portion of the game is procedurally generated, thus needs to be cached. Whether I could also save that in a user folder or not is a good question, I think it would be better to not do that so the loading time would be only in the first time anyone runs the game.
limitation of some engine
That's the reason I've seen dev. complaining in another thread in steam, I'm making my own engine so reinventing the wheel some times with more flexibility is a common thing to me.
And yes, I really don't think my game will even be larger than 1GB, as I said most of the data is procedurally generated in the first time you run it, so the actual download size will not be that big.