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 Inizio  Forum Indice del forum BioWare General BioWare News Discussion Nov 20 2002 - Hak Updater Profile
BioWare News Discussion
Robin Mayne
Web Team Manager
Registrato il: 15 ott 2001
Da: BioWare |
 Inviato: mercoledì, 20 novembre 2002 06:38 |
Community member Polyhedral profiles the fan-created Hak Updater utility and interviews creator Artur "Revinor" Biesiadowski, discussing how this tool manages Hak Paks and reduces download times.
Robin
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Robin Mayne
BioWare WebGUY 
+++ Mass Effect +++ | 
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Mecha Dude
Game Owner
 NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
NWN 2
Registrato il: 19 giu 2002 |
Inviato: giovedì, 21 novembre 2002 08:13 |
I use this program extensivly, but it is very unwielding for a module builder. It's extreamly slow, and it's difficult to know wich files have to be sent/deleted on the fileserver.
Some ideas that I've come up with that might make this program easier to use:
Make it more intuitive.
Sub folders: tilesets, creatures, weapons, armor, ect.
entire folder compression: another part of the above, give an option to gzip an entire subfolder, making it even easier to upload files.
Export folder: after synching wth the fileserver, and finding out what files need to be delted/uploaded, those files are then copied to the export folder, for upload, as well as a text file with what files need to be deleted. | |
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Revinor
Game Owner
 NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
NWN 2
Registrato il: 02 apr 2002 |
Inviato: giovedì, 21 novembre 2002 10:17 |
As for the subfolders - I will think about it. It is not trivial, but it can be done. Of course, I would not impose any particular structure - you could as well make per-type categories, or per date (so all new files will go to Dec12 directory, so you will have to upload only this single dir on December 12 update).
As for detecting what has changed, does the 'Hakdir/Send contents...' provide correct results for you ? This was a kind of experiment, but I have never got feedback if it is useful/usable (because it needs a bit of trickery with updating). If yes, then moving files instead of just listing them on screen is no-brainer to add.
As for slowness of downloads, I know it is a problem. In 0.9.7 (out in few days I hope), I have moved back to more threads with shorted wait time, because I have finally implemented per-server limit of downloads for these poor, overworked windows-based web servers. But it is still better to have _first_ download through normal means and absorb contents into cache. | |
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Irritatus
Game Owner
 NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
NWN 2
Registrato il: 23 mag 2002 |
Inviato: martedì, 26 novembre 2002 06:26 |
Hi,
I had mentioned this once before when I encouraged Bioware to add a Hak Pak utility a while back. Something you might wish to try, if feasible (if you used one of the borland products (c++ builder, Delphi) and component based design ) Is to use Multi-point downloads (i.e. Napster). However make the "sources" of the Hak Pak be those that are connected to the server and the server itself. So, a persistent world for example, would serve the first player with the new hak, but each player joining will get the file from both the server and the other player(s) connected. Of course, you could still use the Servers that you are using now. Just a thought.
BTW, I think this is an awesome idea. Hopefully bioware will get on the bandwagon and help you out and include it in an update 
Irritatus
_________________
Irritatus Maximus, Cleric of Tempus, Bane to all things organized, Party Nemesis, source of many a spectacular death. | |
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Blackwings
Game Owner
 NWN
Registrato il: 02 lug 2002 |
Inviato: mercoledì, 27 novembre 2002 09:37 |
Please, continu to develop in Java and not in C++ or Delphi!!!
Maybe the major part of the community play under windows, but some of them use Mac and Linux (server part).
Continu using Java. And I think about the previous comment regarding the multiple connexion, it's possible to do it using java if you include protocol as GNU or other and the multithreading technic
Grats for the tool  | |
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Revinor
Game Owner
NWN
NWN: SoU
NWN: HotU
NWN 2
Registrato il: 02 apr 2002 |
Inviato: mercoledì, 27 novembre 2002 01:50 |
Quote: Posted 11/26/02 18:26:55 (GMT) by Irritatus
So, a persistent world for example, would serve the first player with the new hak, but each player joining will get the file from both the server and the other player(s) connected.
Idea is not bad, but there few serious problems with that.
Technical - a lot of people are behind firewalls/masquarade. It is not possible to get normal connection to them from other people behind masquarade. A lot of effort would have to go in enabling proxies, diagnosing all things etc.
Security - currently HakUpdater only downloads things from other server. It is quite safe - there is only one place where something can go really wrong and I'm checking this place (creation of hakpak). But with starting to serve files from local disk, a lot more possibilities for security bugs are present. It would be really bad to make some kind of mistake and open people's disks to all the script kiddies out there.
Political - I'm not sure if people out there really want to give away their bandwidth to allow downloading of contents to other people. HakUpdater serving mechanism would have to work while you are playing. How many players will accept lag and packet loss just because some guy out there feels like downloading hakpak at the very moment ?
This is one of reasons I have gone with www-based approach - you can put all files on web server, not on game server, so hakpak updates does not lag the main connection.
I do not think that P2P sharing of hakpaks would work in real world.
BTW, I have already implemented subfolder suggestion from Mecha Dude - I hope to release new version of HakUpdater soon. I hope that with this improvement, it should be a lot simplier for server owner to manage his content. | |
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