I wanted to take a moment to talk about our recent launch, and where we're going to go from here with Launcher updates. As some of you are are aware, our new launcher has a much larger file size than the old one. In fact, the current public build is more than 10 times the size of the old launcher. Some have suggested that the new interface design is responsible, but the culprit is actually our new multi-lingual support. 18 out of 20 Mb of the current Launcher file size is the three fonts that currently ship with the launcher. They are 6Mb each because of the universal language support they include.
Multi-lingual support is really important to us, but the status quo cannot continue: you're tired of the launcher taking so long to update, our network gets saturated on the weekends from people updating the launcher, which makes it harder for you to update your launcher and install our official modpacks. Nobody appreciates these problems, so let's talk about what we're doing to fix it:
- First, we've started research and development into a byte-patching API. When finished, you won't have to redownload the same fonts over and over again, and updates will be even faster than before!
- Second, we've suspended all promotions to the Stable launcher stream until the byte patching system is in. This means that you won't see any more updates for a couple weeks. We will continue doing Beta promotions weekly until then, so if you are suffering from bugs or issues, feel free to see if the Beta stream helps you out.
- We've removed one of our three fonts, Open Sans Bold, from the launcher for a little while. It's not used in very many places (although it does look very good where it's used), and it reduced the Launcher installation size by 30% to remove it. This will hopefully help those who do feel the need to use the Beta promotions update a little bit faster.
- Lastly, we know that several people have been upset by the update spam we sometimes put out, and so we've implemented a policy that will reduce the number of updates we release. Every Tuesday, we'll promote a build to Beta, and when the byte-patching system is in, we'll also update the previous week's Beta build to Stable. Sometimes we'll have to send out some hotfixes in order to fix urgent issues (this is especially possible on the Beta stream), but we'll avoid deviating from this new schedule as much as possible, so that we don't interrupt your play experience.
Last night, I promoted build #216 to Beta. If you're interested in using the Beta stream, we'd really appreciate it if you joined us in #technic so that we can discuss your thoughts about the current build. It's also a good place to get help for any other issues you might be encountering.
In addition to the byte-patching update system, over the next weeks and months, we have a lot of great stuff coming to the launcher that we think you'll be pretty excited about. We can't talk about all of it yet, but here are a few highly-sought-after features that are currently in development:
- The ability to deactivate the clipboard-sniffer and start the launcher directly into the Modpacks tab.
- Improved automatic error report generation to help us to diagnose crashes better.
- Functionality to add packs to your launcher using network sync instead of through the clipboard.
- The ability to select which java version to use to launch minecraft.
- Functionality to allow pack authors to declare RAM and java version requirements.
- And of course, support for even more languages and dialects.
And these only cover new launcher features! We'll continue to keep you up to date on these developments as they get worked on. Thanks for playing Technic!
