Patch creation utilities.

[Hand X]

Hello,

I was hunting around the web for free solutions for patching PWADs, since both modders and players has problems dealing with huge files updates. Every PWAD misses a little detail that may destroy the gameplay, which may require reupload/download, but the file is too big for so little detail that would modify just 10kb out of 90MB of the file. So I found the following:

bsdiff (makes the littlest file for patching)
vpatch (has GUI and nsis plugin)
wpatch (has nsis plugin)

I believe that all the three may be "scriptable" by the installer creator of your choice. Sadly, only bsdiff is cross-platform.

[Zom-B]

I'd use xdelta. It's stand-alone and can handle large files (typically it's used for ~720mb movies).

However, if the bug fix is in a single level, you can release a 'hotfix' patch, a small wad file that should be loaded along with the original.

I've also been fixing bugs in wad files. In particular I was fixing bugs in a popular wad that contains bugs that zdoom is tolerant to and skulltag isn't. I happened to change about every other level. At such point making a patch file would unnecessarily increase the download time of those that have neither file, so making a new file that contains everything is the best option for now.

So built-in support for xdelta in the getwad dll would be a great addition. (the getwad dll is used by all server browsers I know of)

[Hand X]

Zom-B said:

I'd use xdelta. It's stand-alone and can handle large files (typically it's used for ~720mb movies).

I can't believe I forgot this one! Thanks.

Zom-B said:

However, if the bug fix is in a single level, you can release a 'hotfix' patch, a small wad file that should be loaded along with the original.

Yeah, this works also, but, generally, authors release this type of wad patch and a whole fixed one, which causes issues when going to play online matches, since servers always uses the fixed one.