[bf1942] v.103 Announcement

[Mark J. DeFilippis]

"Maybe Valve solution with steam wasnt so bad after all..."

Ironic you should say this...
Valve recently did an interview on their strategy and
upcoming "aftermath" release for H/L. and all future
direction.

Their strategy, through Steam, is to release a game, and add
content, much like chapters in a book on the underlying engine.

They get to control the experience as all points are addressed.
Delivery, piracy, cheating.

What caught my eye was that they pointed out they need to
fix some things in Steam, but in general this is how they see
game delivery going forward in the future.   It allows them
to avoid the entire garbage with publishers, and retail distribution
which is one of the major inhibitors.

With Steam, they can release fixes more easily, and they go out
to all (e.g. they eliminate the confusion and next time player
comes on, they get the update automatically.  So they can
do patches/fixes, and next chapter releases with ease.

They clearly indicated that they are convinced this flexibility,
will make for extensible gaming, and avoid exactly what we
are used to when a game is released.  There was even the
concept of the "Thin client", where you can log in to your
account, and download the code content needed from any
PC, not just the one you installed the 4GB of game on.
They pointed out that in reality, in a campaign, a player
hardly uses many files. This type of dynamic loading
is in the works...

It has to be better than this on every good game release...




At 07:36 AM 7/24/2005, you wrote:

>On Fri, 22 Jul 2005, Rene Belloq wrote:
>
> > Towards the end of August, we will be releasing a new patch, 1.03. This
> > patch is currently underway and will undergo thorough testing before it 
> goes
> > out to avoid the problems that have occurred in the past. There are 
> over 140
> > fixes and improvements in this patch. Here are just a few of them:
>
>End of august? This is hilarious.
>
>I know that either EA or DICE reads this list. But instead of releasing
>140 fixes at once every 2 month, scale down and release it more often.
>
>If the fix is minor and is not an required update, just release a patch
>whenever a bugfix is fixed. The major updates should be released within a
>cycle of maximum of 2 weeks. Preferable in the beginning of the week,
>early on the day and not like they have done and released it at fridays.
>If a mayor bug is found by the community, a hotfix should be released the
>same or, lord forbid, the next day. The best sollution would be to have a
>fixed time when it is released, ie 09:00 on Tuesdays.
>
>Maybe Valve sollution with steam wasnt so bad after all...
>
>/Bjorn

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark J. DeFilippis                    defilm at acm.org
                                       defilm at ieee.org


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