This page is elevated above PG-13. Sailor’s discretion is advised
That being said, FUCK DROPBOX!
It was a good morning until I got a retched email from dropbox that my file hosting was going to run out. Originally, when I hosted my indie game RBG on its service, dropbox decided to be shady as hell and sign me up for a free trial of their pro edition. This caused my trial in time, of course to run out, now forcing all users who downloaded the game to re-register and download the launcher again for the next update.
Pros:
I can use a more reliable launcher
I can replace my file hosting service with a custom one that theoretically is hosted on a paid or self-hosted server. Secure, fast, and easy.
Cons:
All users have to redownload this bs. This—is bs.
A paid service costs money. I don’t have a lot of money.
Self hosting is dangerous and unreliable.
Theoretically, an elegant solution. In practice, can cause security breaches on my HOME Wif due to open ports, and also decrease my networking speed.
Start writing…
Overall, I think Dropbox will end up being fine (they moved my files from team to personal) for the short term, but long term? What are we doing here… Preferably, I find some custom fle patcher that analyzes the game files and creates a hash. This hash is used to differentiate between old and new files, and when new files are detected, only the changed files are updated instead of the whole game.
Right now; I’m using RedLabs Update Utility, a service that simply uses version.txt files to check for new versions (or simply just different content) and if this version file does have new/changed content, it deletes the old application files and downloads the new one.
This leads to BIG updates the size of the game for changes the size of a literal byte…
Will check on updates in the future; and I definitely plan on keeping this blog updated with all the changes I make. That’s all outta me, will check in soon.
-Lua