Few Questions

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  • AM01
    Forum Member
    • May 2007
    • 3

    Few Questions

    Hi,

    I’m with a game company who is creating an MMO lite type of game. We were looking at Indigo Rose’s Virtual Patch, Setup Factory and True Update software as a potential solution for our game.

    I have a few questions which I’m hoping someone can help with:

    Are there any game companies that have used the software for games before and if so which games?

    Our game may have a large number of downloads (500,000+) Can the software handle it and has it been used in real world situations that match that kind of activity?

    The above questions are a bit of a stumbling block. We like what we see in the trial versions but need the security of knowing it’s been used before and that we won’t be pioneers.

    Thanks,

    Matt
  • Tek
    Forum Member
    • Mar 2004
    • 696

    #2
    Hi and welcome!

    Although I am not part of Indigo Rose, perhaps I can help answer your questions anyways.

    You can check here and see a list of companies that use Indigo Rose software. Amongst the companies you'll notice that Electronic Arts is on the list. It doesn't get any bigger for game companies.

    Second, regarding the downloads. Your web hosting provider's services would determine how reliable the software downloads are and not the Indigo Rose software. If you have a fast, reliable web host, distributing any software from any company should be reliable.

    Comment

    • AM01
      Forum Member
      • May 2007
      • 3

      #3
      Thanks for the response. We noticed EA on the list. It's unclear what parts of IR they used and on what. The competitor we're looking at has virtually every game company in existence using their solution. Personally, the IR solution looks better and has a better UI. The fact it hasn't been used as much with game companies is just a bit of a sticking point internally.

      The question of user scale I suppose was more one of reliability worded badly. The larger projects the suite has been used on the more reliable one would assume it is. Again, they have an impressive list of companies who use it, it's just unclear which parts are utilized etc.

      Just looking carefully before we leap.

      Comment

      • Tek
        Forum Member
        • Mar 2004
        • 696

        #4
        I can tell you with confidence that if you need a packaging/installer/update/patch solution that it doesn't get any better than Indigo Rose for products and services. I enjoy using IR software on almost a daily basis and it has fulfilled every need I have ever asked for. The scripting engine used is Lua which you will find used by some game companies (Blizzard with World of Warcraft) but they use it for the game itself rather than the delivery system. I'm not a WoW player but I know that the scripting engine is widely used and being adopted by more and more developers and companies.

        Comment

        • Lorne
          Indigo Rose Staff Member
          • Feb 2001
          • 2729

          #5
          First, my apologies for missing this thread for so long. I usually try to reply as soon as I can.

          It's good that you're doing your research -- the software deployment model is critical for an MMO; your users absolutely must get the latest version of the client software as soon as possible, and if it's a subscription-based MMO the user experience during updates can be of critical importance as well.

          Note that the list of companies on our web site isn't complete by any means; I think our web department literally just chose the logos they thought looked the coolest.

          Unfortunately we don't have any more specific information we can divulge about our customers.

          I know that we have customers who use our tools internally, even though they are forced to use the publisher's tools for public releases.

          (In the game industry in particular, deployment tools are often either chosen or mandated by the publisher, for various reasons. There aren't that many publishers out there, so we don't see a huge variety in deployment tools.)

          However, if you have any specific questions about the quality or reliability of our products, we'd be happy to answer them.

          TrueUpdate in particular is extremely robust. It uses industry-standard protocols, is completely server agnostic (so you can host it on whatever hardware you want, take advantage of load balancing, uptime guarantees, etc.), and has built-in support for server redundancy -- in fact the download logic is entirely scriptable, so you can design it to choose from multiple mirrors based on geographic location, etc.

          TrueUpdate is also unique in avoiding privacy issues because it is entirely client-initiated -- no customer information needs to be sent to the server in order for the update to occur (unless of course you want to send information, for example to gather statistics or perform access validation).

          The other tools don't care whether you have 5,000,000 users or just 1 -- once an installer or patch is downloaded, they run locally, just like any other executable on the system. (Although they both have some scriptable HTTP communication abilities if you want your installer or patch to "phone home" for whatever reason.)

          Setup Factory has been in use for over a decade. It performs archive integrity checks prior to installation, does failsafe copies, and can automatically backup any overwritten files.

          Visual Patch performs MD5 integrity validation on each file, and it has full rollback support, so if anything happens while applying a patch it can completely undo any changes it has made. Visual Patch offers a full library of scriptable actions, so you can perform any additional system changes (Registry, INI, XML, etc.) or integrity checks that you require.

          It also benefits from having the fastest patching algorithm of any tool we've tested -- in fact the patch engine is so fast that Visual Patch can perform multiple passes in order to discover the best settings for each file, and still do so in far less time than most other tools take to perform a single pass.

          Incidentally, most of the team here at Indigo Rose are avid gamers. I've even played a few MMOs (WOW, Guild Wars, Planetside, EVE Online). So if you have any issues at all during development they certainly won't fall on deaf ears.
          --[[ Indigo Rose Software Developer ]]

          Comment

          • AM01
            Forum Member
            • May 2007
            • 3

            #6
            Thanks for the info Lorne. We like what we see and it's good to hear more about it.

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