How updates affect steam game downloads

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
They cancel them and force them to restart from the beginning:
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/2860219962098973259/#c2860219962098338292

If a patch is released while you're downloading the game, and you stop or pause the download for any reason, it restarts from the top. Whereas if you keep downloading, it's fine, you just then need to download the patch on top of that.

Apparently this is a known 'thing' but it's one I haven't encountered before. Until my 16h download for Kingdom Come Deliverance was about 32gb out of 40gb complete. 16h being the actual downloading time, not the time since I started the download as it had to be interrupted to enable working from home, sleep (Pooter is not silent), etc.

So maybe I can launch the game on Friday, assuming there isn't a mini-patch to address issues caused by the big patch today.

I was rekt on an altar of carven pwn.
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
The carrier pigeons moved out of the area due to poor internet.

Actually we do have fibre optic available here, but that involves minimum 12 month contracts which aren't an option. So it's about 8mbps download on a good day.
 

polycrac

Rising Star
I'm with Virgin, by chance, not design. We were on a crappy bundle but recently found it was cheaper to have no TV or landline at all (not used the landline in years, if people call it, they are probably not calls I want to take) yet have bottomless 350mb/s internet. It is wonderful - 350 is the minimum, often closer to 400. Best thing is how few adverts I've seen since.
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
I steal your internet now.

In fairness, at least it was only KCD. I'm pretty sure Mordor Shadow of War was like 100gb download...
 

Tony1044

Prolific Poster
I switched to fibre the week (pretty much the day) it was available - before that, I got 3Mb, maybe 3.5 on a good day when the wind dropped and the sun was at just the right angle etc.

The guy who lived opposite me happened to come out to his car as I was outside and he asked me if I'd got a phone problem. "Nope...getting fibre" says me. "You can't...it's not here... you must have a phone problem"

I mean how do you answer that?

Anyhoo, I was with BT then because they were literally the only provider. And in fairness to them it was a reliable service and I usually saw around 62Mb out the supposed 72Mb so not bad.

But I moved to Vodafone last July. £32.50 inc VAT for business fibre with 8 static public IP addresses and no line rental. I had been paying BT £50 for the fibre, £6 for 4 static IPs and if I recall, £17.50 for line rental and about another £8 for various add-ons which I should have binned years ago as there isn't even a phone attached.

The only downside was that it was an 18-month contract. But I bit the bullet purely from the cost savings.

Steam does seam to love fibre and will frequently max it out at 6Mb/s downloads.

I didn't know about the quirk of the resets though - that might answer the question of where I've seen it happen a couple of times but had no idea why! Thanks, Oussebon.
 

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
They cancel them and force them to restart from the beginning:
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/2860219962098973259/#c2860219962098338292

If a patch is released while you're downloading the game, and you stop or pause the download for any reason, it restarts from the top. Whereas if you keep downloading, it's fine, you just then need to download the patch on top of that.

Apparently this is a known 'thing' but it's one I haven't encountered before. Until my 16h download for Kingdom Come Deliverance was about 32gb out of 40gb complete. 16h being the actual downloading time, not the time since I started the download as it had to be interrupted to enable working from home, sleep (Pooter is not silent), etc.

So maybe I can launch the game on Friday, assuming there isn't a mini-patch to address issues caused by the big patch today.

I was rekt on an altar of carven pwn.

I by 'pooter is not silent' you mean it beeps etc. whilst you're sleeping then get a copy of Nircmd from https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html (download link at bottom of the page). Amongst a host of other useful features, nircmd can mute and unmute the system audio. I have a couple of scheduled tasks that run nircmd, one mutes the system audio at 11pm (us old gits go to bed early) and the other unmutes it at 7am. It works a treat and the PC stays silent overnight. :)

BTW. My Internet access is all copper courtesy of OTE (the Greek telephone company). We get a pretty constant 8Mbps for €26.25 (about £23 at today's rates) per month. There is fibre in the town but they haven't got around to installing a fibre cabinet near me yet - and things move slowly in Greece so I'm not holding my breath....
 
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Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
No beeps, just fan noise even with them turned down to 5v. :) And it's on a desk which vibrates very softly due to the fans spinning.

Unfortunately I can actually hear that on a different floor of the house, sometimes.

Our 8mbps internet here is £21.40 I think per month.

It was several years after the rest of the town had fibre as an option before we did. And yes, of course, we live in a fairly central residential area.

Things run pretty slowly in the UK for fibre rollout now tbh. BT's constant garbage that providing fibre to various densely populated areas is not commercially viable. And because they deem it not commercially viable they don't provide any more information to anyone who asks about why they CBA. Never been to Greece but I think BT's staggering ineptitude, inefficiency, and basic lack of will should rival that of any of their equivalents around the Mediterranean.
 
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Tony1044

Prolific Poster
No beeps, just fan noise even with them turned down to 5v. :) And it's on a desk which vibrates very softly due to the fans spinning.

Unfortunately I can actually hear that on a different floor of the house, sometimes.

Our 8mbps internet here is £21.40 I think per month.

It was several years after the rest of the town had fibre as an option before we did. And yes, of course, we live in a fairly central residential area.

Things run pretty slowly in the UK for fibre rollout now tbh. BT's constant garbage that providing fibre to various densely populated areas is not commercially viable. And because they deem it not commercially viable they don't provide any more information to anyone who asks about why they CBA. Never been to Greece but I think BT's staggering ineptitude, inefficiency, and basic lack of will should rival that of any of their equivalents around the Mediterranean.

About ten years ago - maybe even closer to fifteen - I was on a Cisco course. On the same course was a Swedish guy who worked for TetraPak. He was saying how he lived in the same house his great grandparents had lived in, by the edge of a lake and quite literally in the middle of nowhere. And he had 100Mb internet access. For the equivalent of around £25pm.

I was green with envy.

It boggles my mind that it's so hard to get FTTP in. Yeah, I understand that logistically it's digging up roads etc, but all of the places where BT have run FTTC, there wasn't much more effort in the grand scheme of things to start running it out to the homes.

Pathetic.

Oussebon...ever thought of trying the PC on a foam pad? https://www.amazon.co.uk/Popamazing-Proofing-Deadening-Insulation-Adhesive/dp/B01MDUB6T6/

Probably won't make much difference if it's fan noise, although as you know better than anyone, you can get quieter after-market fans, but it might stop you hearing the vibrations from it :)
 

Tony1044

Prolific Poster
Might that be beatable by a decent 4G data-only plan?

Good point actually - I get my eldest lad's phone bill which is on Three - £35 a month for all-you-can-eat data (he's done over 50GB before) and you can tether it. The only down side is you can only tether from a phone. It's a rolling 30-day contract.

Edit: Actually scratch that. They are now limiting tethering to 30GB a month
 
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Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
Oussebon...ever thought of trying the PC on a foam pad? https://www.amazon.co.uk/Popamazing-...dp/B01MDUB6T6/
I'd considered it, and it's currently stood on various cotton pads which dampen the noise a bit. As I don't need to leave it on overnight very often, and as the pad would require frequent cleaning to manage dust (dust's an issue for me) I ruled it out.

Normally DLing a game over s few days is fine - to a given value of fine, ofc. It's when Steam resets the progress due to an update coming out that there's the catch!

In terms of working around the specific issue of the paused download getting reset, I think the solution needs to just be to keep trying until I hit a window where they don't patch, or until I find a good window for a 16h straight download.

Probably won't make much difference if it's fan noise, although as you know better than anyone, you can get quieter after-market fans, but it might stop you hearing the vibrations from it
Absolutely - I'm waiting for Noctua to release their https://noctua.at/en/nf-a12x15-pwm as 140mm. At which point I think I will take 3. Although they might be a while, it took them long enough to do the AF12x25s...
The reason for the wait is that the fans are pretty versatile and if sinking £75 into fans I'd like them to be open to alternative future uses (i.e. very good CPU cooler fans as well as case fans).

I've not looked into 4G. My partner and I are on different networks and get weak to 0 reception/ mobile internet here. Looking at the OpenSignal map though we are most definitely in a not-spot. Plus not so good for the occasional online gaming.
 
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Tony1044

Prolific Poster
I'd considered it, and it's currently stood on various cotton pads which dampen the noise a bit. As I don't need to leave it on overnight very often, and as the pad would require frequent cleaning to manage dust (dust's an issue for me) I ruled it out.

Normally DLing a game over s few days is fine - to a given value of fine, ofc. It's when Steam resets the progress due to an update coming out that there's the catch!

In terms of working around the specific issue of the paused download getting reset, I think the solution needs to just be to keep trying until I hit a window where they don't patch, or until I find a good window for a 16h straight download.

Absolutely - I'm waiting for Noctua to release their https://noctua.at/en/nf-a12x15-pwm as 140mm. At which point I think I will take 3. Although they might be a while, it took them long enough to do the AF12x25s...
The reason for the wait is that the fans are pretty versatile and if sinking £75 into fans I'd like them to be open to alternative future uses (i.e. very good CPU cooler fans as well as case fans).

I've not looked into 4G. My partner and I are on different networks and get weak to 0 reception/ mobile internet here. Looking at the OpenSignal map though we are most definitely in a not-spot. Plus not so good for the occasional online gaming.

Yeah dust is a huge problem round us as well. It's a nightmare.

I must admit I've found Three to be particularly good for data and believe it or not, they have literally this month removed the tethering blocks again!

£32 a month on a 30-day rolling contract gets you all you can eat data. My eldest uses his to connect his PS4 and gets better performance than my fibre. Oh and I just saw that he's used 89GB this month (presumably from the COD 4 and FIFA 19 update downloads - the former was close to 50GB on release day!).

This is the plan for anyone interested: http://www.three.co.uk/standalone/priceplan-details?planid=1400624203433
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
I was on Three immediately before my current provider, and more or less didn't have a signal in the house unfortunately. Which was fine as the mobile was really only for work.

I switched as Plusnet were offering 5gb per month, plus as many minutes and text as I might need for £11 per month. 5gb data is all I need for work purposes while on public transport, though I have run that quite close. Outlook is a fiend.

We'll have used, I don't know what, maybe 200gb this month. For Honor had a 33gb patch, and we have 1 Steam and 1 uplay install... KCD 32gb + another 41gb after reset. Hitman 30gb. Various other downloads and updates. Our 8mbps internet is at least unlimited...
 
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