question about wads and updating

Wasn't there a way to create a patch that will automatically update a wad without having the user re-download an updated version of that wad?


for example, I have a wad file thats 10mb and there was a serious bug in the map, which has been fixed. But this means I have to reupload the entire wad for users to re-download again.

Is there a way or some program that can create a patch that can apply any changes that you made to the outdated wad file without having to re-upload the new wad?



just a thought, because I swore I saw something similar to this

There are quite a lot of utils that do this kind of thing. A google search will turn up quite a few. I had a couple of command line tools that did the job quite nicely, but I don't know where they are ATM. Patch maker from clickteam looks like it might be quite good. I DL'ed a copy ages ago, but haven't got round to trying it. It makes an executable patch (windows exe) so no need for the end user to have the patch making prog.

http://www.clickteam.com/English/patchmaker.php

Or you could do what Cyb did with MassMouth 2 and upload a patch with all the changed entries. (which you can then merge with the original wad)

forgive me for being lazy but can you find me that link to that thread?

Well, the problem there is that if you change the map around, you're basically just re-uploading the map. Which would be a prob if teh map is large.

Even if a map is HUGE it's a meg zipped at the very most. I'm just talking map data here, not textures or sounds or music or anything else. Most maps are like a few hundred K zipped. So just add the updated map (in a WAD of its own, with the correct MAPxx number) and that will be the patch. If you load both (in the proper order) when playing, this will effectively be a "patch" as you will get the updated version of the map in the second WAD while using everything else from the original WAD.

...Or you could supply something like deusf and a batch file to merge the two.

Deathman said:
Is there a way or some program that can create a patch that can apply any changes that you made to the outdated wad file without having to re-upload the new wad?

just a thought, because I swore I saw something similar to this

DeuTex should be perfect for adding a modified map to an existing PWAD.

You can upload a package with the modified map PWAD (and any necessary resources, like if you added a couple of flats or a new music Lump) along with a batch file to make DeuTex (probably including DeuTex in the ZIP for the user's convenience) join (using -join old.wad new.wad) the patch PWAD with the proper add-on PWAD; it will overwrite any Lumps in the first WAD sharing names with Lumps in the second one.

Or to save a little space you could use deusf.exe. You can find it with old releases of Wintex IIRC. If you can't find it let me know and I'll mail it to ya. You merge wads the same way as with deutex, just the exe is smaller. :) Just remember if it's a multiplayer wad as well, then you have to merge all released version the same way so that the wads are exactly the same.