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Erik Rutins -> RE: Nightmare with 1.18 download (2/4/2013 10:47:25 PM)
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Hi everyone,
Ok, just saw this thread, apologies for the late response.
First, I understand that those posting here had a bad experience with the downloads. That's not what we want at all, but I need to explain a few things first.
There is no actual problem with the download server or our download system. I've used this myself from many locations without an issue. We re-test it just about weekly from various locations around the world to make sure it's working fine. There are two ways to download an update. The first is the automatic updater that launches when you click on the "Check for Updates" link on your game menu. The second is a direct download from our FTP server through our Downloads section or the Downloads link for each game.
The automatic updater has the advantage of convenience - just one click and you're on your way to the latest update. The download link from our site requires a bit of site navigation, but since it's a direct link to our FTP it's also possible to use download managers with hit. The auto-updater software acts as its own download manager, which usually makes it more reliable in cases of connection issues.
What I think is the issue here is a combination of the update size and the nature of the internet. Internet speed varies widely and is dependent on each link in the chain. Our download servers are in US, so for anyone outside the US, even if the server in the US is doing fine and has plenty of bandwidth, the chances of an issue from a traffic jam of some kind along the route between us increases. The longer the route, the more the chance of an issue or bottleneck.
This is also one of our largest updates. Once we decided to add support for the extremely high resolution board game quality 2D maps, the update size increased substantially. As a policy, we only make comprehensive (rather than incremental) updates so that you only need one update to update any previous version of the game to the latest version. From past experience, this saves far more issues with update and version confusion and the problems of installing multiple incremental updates in the wrong order. We've also tested "difference" updates that patch the files themselves, but we find that while these create smaller installers, they take far longer to actually install for large updates and don't save that much space when there are entirely new files to distribute.
I will check with our network administrator on this issue - it would be very helpful if those of you who are having issues could e-mail me at erikr@matrixgames.com with your external IP address (you can find it here http://mywanip.com/
Also, if you have not had success, try a download manager and the direct FTP link here. I'd suggest http://www.internetdownloadmanager.com/ and the direct download link is here: http://www.matrixgames.com/products/424/downloads/
Finally, you'll note from that downloads link above that we've also made it standard policy to upload updates to several mirror sites, so if you have issues downloading from our server, please try one of the mirror sites and let us know if that works.
Regards,
- Erik
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