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"Maybe Valve solution with steam wasnt so bad after
all..."<br><br>
Ironic you should say this...<br>
Valve recently did an interview on their strategy and<br>
upcoming "aftermath" release for H/L. and all future<br>
direction.<br><br>
Their strategy, through Steam, is to release a game, and add<br>
content, much like chapters in a book on the underlying engine.<br><br>
They get to control the experience as all points are addressed.<br>
Delivery, piracy, cheating.<br><br>
What caught my eye was that they pointed out they need to<br>
fix some things in Steam, but in general this is how they see<br>
game delivery going forward in the future. It allows
them<br>
to avoid the entire garbage with publishers, and retail
distribution<br>
which is one of the major inhibitors.<br><br>
With Steam, they can release fixes more easily, and they go out<br>
to all (e.g. they eliminate the confusion and next time player<br>
comes on, they get the update automatically. So they can<br>
do patches/fixes, and next chapter releases with ease.<br><br>
They clearly indicated that they are convinced this flexibility,<br>
will make for extensible gaming, and avoid exactly what we<br>
are used to when a game is released. There was even the<br>
concept of the "Thin client", where you can log in to
your<br>
account, and download the code content needed from any<br>
PC, not just the one you installed the 4GB of game on.<br>
They pointed out that in reality, in a campaign, a player<br>
hardly uses many files. This type of dynamic loading<br>
is in the works...<br><br>
It has to be better than this on every good game release...<br><br>
<br><br>
<br>
At 07:36 AM 7/24/2005, you wrote:<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>On Fri, 22 Jul 2005, Rene Belloq
wrote:<br><br>
> Towards the end of August, we will be releasing a new patch, 1.03.
This<br>
> patch is currently underway and will undergo thorough testing before
it goes<br>
> out to avoid the problems that have occurred in the past. There are
over 140<br>
> fixes and improvements in this patch. Here are just a few of
them:<br><br>
End of august? This is hilarious.<br><br>
I know that either EA or DICE reads this list. But instead of
releasing<br>
140 fixes at once every 2 month, scale down and release it more
often.<br><br>
If the fix is minor and is not an required update, just release a
patch<br>
whenever a bugfix is fixed. The major updates should be released within
a<br>
cycle of maximum of 2 weeks. Preferable in the beginning of the
week,<br>
early on the day and not like they have done and released it at
fridays.<br>
If a mayor bug is found by the community, a hotfix should be released
the<br>
same or, lord forbid, the next day. The best sollution would be to have
a<br>
fixed time when it is released, ie 09:00 on Tuesdays.<br><br>
Maybe Valve sollution with steam wasnt so bad after all...<br><br>
/Bjorn </font></blockquote>
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<tt>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>
Mark J.
DeFilippis
defilm@acm.org<br>
defilm@ieee.org<br><br>
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