Hi agb1:
I may have misunderstood how the automatic update works, but I do not like automatic updates do to the fact that I have received updates in the past that I did not want from Microsoft. I would rather select the updates myself so I do not get trash. For example, I have Windows 7 and Microsoft slipped in an ad for Windows 10 as an update. It popped up at the most inconvenient times. Now, I know that you will not put in ads, but my past experiences with others have made me dislike all automatic updates. I guess you might say you are paying for the sins of others.
I do not use BWS frequently and it only takes seconds to get an update. So I do not see any value with automatic updates. I expect it will take me 15 weeks to finish my current game. I am retired so I play at least 6 hours per day almost every day. Which means that if all goes well, I will not need the latest version for about 4 months. I do not want to take a chance of having an update installed that could interfere or mess up my current game. Also, I have no need for the new benefits an improved BWS might provide because I would need to restart the game after it was installed. If a new update fixes a problem, without forcing me to restart my game from the beginning, then I would reconsider getting automatic updates.
Right now, I am very happy with my BWS install as the sound, graphics, and action of the game are much better than when I had to make my own corrections. That could also be the affect of play it on an iMAC. I expect that the existing problems cause by poorly written mods will also be fixed or eliminated in future versions of BWS. So I look forward to the future versions in my next game.
BWS is a great program and I expect it will get better.
Tom
I am moving the discussion about the BWS auto-update feature to this thread because it was off-topic for Eric's BWP thread.
Tom, thank you for explaining your concerns. I agree with you that if you start BWS only once, select all your mods and run an install, you derive no value from the automatic updates feature. I implemented this feature for a different scenario (which seems to be fairly common): you start BWS on day 1 and select some mods, but you do not start the installation yet because you are still researching some of them; on day 2, you start BWS again and change your selection, but you still do not start the installation; on day 3, you start BWS again, pick a few more mods, and finally start the installation. I want players who are starting new BWS installs to have the benefit of the very latest information, so we can reduce the likelihood that players will encounter already-known and fixed problems.
We are currently averaging multiple updates to BWS per day, including updates to various mods' download links as well as new conflict and dependency rules and fixes for newly discovered problems. I expect this pace of updates will continue for a while because the modding community is very active now with efforts in progress to update old mods to work with the Enhanced Edition games. In a few months, I think that the pace of updates will slow down. At that point, the value of the auto-update feature will also diminish. For now, I think it is a lot more convenient than downloading BWS updates manually, but thanks to your feedback I have made changes so that when you first start the script it explains how to disable the feature (by deleting the autoupdate.bat file) if you do not want it. Also, ALIEN has now included the necessary files in BWS to do the auto-update, so you no longer need to install Git for Windows separately, which makes this new feature even easier to use.
I may have misunderstood how the automatic update works
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I expect it will take me 15 weeks to finish my current game. I am retired so I play at least 6 hours per day almost every day. Which means that if all goes well, I will not need the latest version for about 4 months. I do not want to take a chance of having an update installed
Well, in this the BWS won't automatically do a thing, cause you'll never need to start the BWS in the time you are not installing mods, aka the time you don't start the BiG World Setup.vbs ...
As that's the moment the BWS automatic update is ran "automatically", to get the latest updates and references to mod upload locations etc. As the game itself doesn't need the BWS and could care less what other things are attached to it.
That's what the automatic update means in this case... not a computer virus that devours space when you are not looking at it. Like the one Windows has as you have to start the Windows to play a thing... as it's the operation system, not an external software ....
Yes. As Imp said, this is only for updates to BWS, not to anything else on your computer.