[asveikau]

No sir, excuse my bluntness but you are full of shit trying to claim that information theory blocks this from being practical. I worked on stuff like this. I worked on the format that Windows setup uses for installation media for example. It has delta patches too. I think the same exact idea used there would work. It has a hash of every file precomputed and only stores what's unique.

[lazide]

HN rated limiting sucks. And client crashes suck more.

You’re not reading my comment, or thinking about the game distribution problem.

MS can get benefit from reading all the files, verifying hashes, etc.

And in a typical OS update scenario, MS can trust that a files contents haven’t been updated since the hash was checked. Which reading from a DVD/BluRAY, scratches are a problem and it isn’t that simple.

Games typically don’t, especially those on a DVD or BluRAY. Because they are slow, and have terrible seek times.

So, like I pointed out - it doesn’t make sense to do the work you need to do in info theory to actually apply a delta patch in these scenarios.

[asveikau]

The file format I was describing is used in the Windows DVD. I'm sure you know more about it than I do.

[lazide]

And as noted, windows has a lot of use cases games don’t. Which is why essentially nobody does what it does.

Also, windows updates take forever - as you’ve probably noticed.