PC games patches Consolidation

[smogsy]

So with with the state of the PC gaming Community we are getting more and more launchers.
Which means you have to often open launchers to find if any new patches are available for your games.
Currently got
Steam, EA play, Xbox App, Epic, Origin, GOG, LoL, Rockstar Launcher, Ubisoft connect, battlenet

OR

open up a less open launcher & see 4 games need 20GB of patches.
Anything out their that Scans Game version numbers & Tell you which games require updates in collection?
Just wondered as if not thought be interesting program To try in my spare time

I know GOG displays all games but not updates

* Index Game location
* Extract Patch Version Number
* Pull information from Official sources
* Display update required symbol

 

[smogsy]

I don't really see the need for this, I mean why do you care if a game needs a patch unless you are going to play it, in which case you'd open the launcher anyway? I appreciate if you have a slow internet connection it might mean a delay to starting but the counter point to this is some sort of universal patching software would be yet another piece of software you have running and it would also waste time prompting you to patch games you aren't going to play in the near future and then maybe get another patch by the time you want to play them anyway. It's bad enough having the likes of Steam wanting stuff updated when I open it without having something demanding updates across my whole portfolio.

The database for this app would need a lot of active maintenance too, you talk about "pull information from official sources" as a one-liner but in reality how easy will that be with thousands upon thousands of games, and dozens of new games coming out every week? Won't this app just get outdated because it doesn't have all the necessary APIs in place to gather this information with the end result it doesn't show games as needing updates and then you attempt to play them and find they do afterall?

The game launchers handle this process for identifying patching pretty well, an extra layer over the top just confuses matters IMO.

it was more of a idea for fun project, than something viable for the masses, GOG kind of has API to pull in Games from all platforms, wonder if this is a feature request for their app. but either way would be a fun project to trial out

sad fact even on optics at 90Mbps games takes ages to update in a household as Users are watch Netflix/Amazon prime video which takes priority

Division was 50GB that took me 9 hours to download, internet is decent when house is empty but with a full house patches take ages, so scheduling them over night is a good method specially being a game hopper

I think you have a great idea for a new program !!
that be cool, if we could open just one application, and it scans and updates where necessary
rather than individual

Done a far bit of app development in the past in C/C++/C#, little in python & played with RUST.

but could be a fun side project when I have time away from work.

 

[smogsy]

50gig taking that long even with streaming seems high. You sure you get that speed?

yup but when you have 3+ people stream youtube & netflix/Amazon at 4K it drops massively

No one i get 90Mbps 3 people stream it drops to 60Mbps or less

Noticed that Netflix can take about 12MBps & amazon greedy can take up to 30mbps in bursts

so I have to limit it to like like 5-8MBs overwise their stream stop & buffer.

 

[smogsy]

For me this concept would be excellent, if we didn't already have a plethora of middle-man software layers. 20 years ago it would have been awesome.

I remember the first time I had to download Steam just to play Counter-Strike, it annoyed me then. Now? I have 7 platforms installed, and I'm aware of at least 3 more.

Buying a new game or playing one you own inevitably involves careful searching of up to 10 or more platforms. Modern PC gaming is already rather convoluted, if I had to run another client to keep them up to date, I think I'd turn to console.

Frankly, if a console didn't look so crap I'd switch.

Kinda agree but no reason it couldn't be web page that collates uodates hence no software installation

 

[smogsy]

Don't blame you mate. 3 years ago I thought people were mad to switch. Now, I don't know why anyone would go PC, unless they have money to burn and love the hobby.

I've got a setup I'm particularly happy with, and I very much enjoy ultrawide 120hz. Otherwise I'd switch.

With the insane pricing, the complete mess of platforms & publishers, and the death of exclusives, I don't think I could recommend PC gaming to anyone anymore. Can you imagine introducing your console buddy to PC?

"You'll need 10 programs with 10 logins, each with 2FA. You'll probably want to compare half a dozen sites to buy games... Oh and hardware's going to cost you £4k"

In fact the more I think about it, the more I reckon the OP is onto something:

• Simple interface; think win2k detailed list
• Advanced sorting; installed, update size / time, date added, platform
• Batch updating / installing / uninstalling
• Search all games; check if you already own something
• Open & Close platforms automatically

I reckon I'd pay money for that actually.

@smogsy you're a genius!

well i don't claim to be... but we all know i am

tottally agree with switching to console though after my 3090 cant do 4K id certainly consider switching & buying all 500+ games i have on PC it WOULD still be cheaper than buying a 4080/4090

 

[smogsy]

The thing is I still get great performance on my 1080 overclocked, most games are around 100fps with dips smoothed by g-sync. A 3090, whilst obscenely priced, should see you right for years.

Like you, I have hundreds of games, and frankly I could probably never buy another game, and just play what's in my library, in addition to the freebies

indeed, 4K 120hz is a bit hard though glad got my 3090 when i did i get it for 1300 now their like 3K

 

[smogsy]

It would be fairly niche, but as you pointed out, the PS5s ability to update overnight is a godsend. What about how games are installed and updated would make it not work? AFAIK there are round about ways of doing it currently (at least with steam) - spare PC with the games installed set to download updates after a certain time, with a steam cache to cache the updates. Main PC turns on and asks for the update and it pulls the files from the cache.

@smogsy idea would be usefull some of the time for me. As I generally only run Steam, and when we kinda get a few of us on TS to play a game, I'll log into Battlenet (overwatch), Epic (Killing floor 2, WWZ), Origin (BF3, BF4, Battlefront 2) ,Ubisoft connect (Anno) or Rockstar Launcher (GTAV), to find that there's a patch for one of those games. So knowing in advance, assuming our gaming session is kinda planned, that a game needs an update would be helpful. But I suppose I could plan things a bit better and just open all the launchers a couple of days before hand to have them all update.

you can setup a steam cache server, which can be the server your connect to for all your games, (this then pulls the games) and your network then gets local network speeds.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017...m-caching-server-to-ease-the-bandwidth-blues/

or easier to follow:
https://linustechtips.com/topic/962655-steam-caching-tutorial/



virgin Media actually have a ton of these in London canary wharf. found this out from a VM employee when we was troubleshooting connection issues

VM steam downloads can be insane, i was maxing a 500MB/S connection back then so much so my ryzen 1800X was hitting 40-60% usage decrypting these SSDS were going nuts too

 

[smogsy]

From what I understood (I was looking at the same Arsetechnica link), you need to have one of the PCs download the files first. I could dump the games on a laptop, and have it on over night, but then I'd need more space on the laptop for all the games. Which is why it'd be nice to only need to download the patches without the game being installed. TBH, unless things have changed the launcher that would benefit from this idea the most would be Epic, since they had it so that if you closed the launcher while it was downloading you'd lose the download. Hopefully they've changed that now.




Now I'm just jealous

yeh those were the days, moved and now on 50mbps

I used to be a Virgin media Beta tester, they selected me due to my high usage & that the green box was literally at the end of my drive my noise margins were so good they had to put 20Db reduction on my line as it would kill my router

I was paying for Virgin media 100Mbps but they gave me 500Mbps down/500Mbps up. i used to have lot of netflix/Youtube/PC games running with ton of automation. so used to rack up to anywhere from 2TB-10TB per month data
(i think this is why they wanted me testing) reported a ton of router bugs as well. but moved house