Patch delay

[MarksNotts]

As Themer and I said, there were errors, and nine pages were mostly repeating the same ones anyway, but the database was up to date.

Anyway the latest is that patch has been submitted and currently the only wait is for Softwrap, it is out of Chris' hands. He expects that it will be released next week.

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[pyjamarama]

Another week of nothing.

[G1inger]

Are you honestly surprised?! Even the most ardent supporter of ICC 2008 must now admit that the situation with the patch is bordering on farce.

[aus5892]

As I said, there's nothing Chris can do about it. There is a dispute with Softwrap and the updates being free, which he hoped would be resolved but obviously hasn't.

[Scritty]

Are you honestly surprised?! Even the most ardent supporter of ICC 2008 must now admit that the situation with the patch is bordering on farce.

Thank you for pointing this out to us all.

Your input is most welcome.

From what I can read from your many posts, you believe a patch is required.

I am inclined to agree with you.

Far-be-it from me to question your motives. If you would be so kind to ellucidate. I am not entirely sure what purpose you are serving by reposting quite so often?

Judging from the import you express ( by the use of exclamation marks, sometimes doubled up with question marks) you may deem this a neccessity.

From what I can gather, the patch is waiting for a distributor to agree the terms by which it can be broadcast. Cricket Coach had similar problems with its own patching.

This seems to be a problem with third party publishers - who need to consider the value (to themselves) of any new content added to a program that they distribute.

In short "does the patch constitue an update which the end customer should be charged for "?

I can live with this. It is the way things will continue for some time I am sure.

I understand you are not happy with this, but fail to see what repeated (and almost solitary) spamming and trolling of this forum will achieve.

Regards

[pyjamarama]

Thank you for pointing this out to us all.

Your input is most welcome.

From what I can read from your many posts, you believe a patch is required.

I am inclined to agree with you.

Far-be-it from me to question your motives. If you would be so kind to ellucidate. I am not entirely sure what purpose you are serving by reposting quite so often?

Judging from the import you express ( by the use of exclamation marks, sometimes doubled up with question marks) you may deem this a neccessity.

From what I can gather, the patch is waiting for a distributor to agree the terms by which it can be broadcast. Cricket Coach had similar problems with its own patching.

This seems to be a problem with third party publishers - who need to consider the value (to themselves) of any new content added to a program that they distribute.

In short "does the patch constitue an update which the end customer should be charged for "?

I can live with this. It is the way things will continue for some time I am sure.

I understand you are not happy with this, but fail to see what repeated (and almost solitary) spamming and trolling of this forum will achieve.

Regards

The most annoying thing for me though is that we have to 'spam' or 'troll' to get any kind of information as to what is happening with the patch. We are continually told 'patch will be ready soon, next week etc' then it isn't and there is no explaination why. I'm not blaming Chris at all for this delay but I would find it easier to understand if updates on progress were communicated to us instead of letting us get worked up over it.

[G1inger]

Well, its nice to see my "solitary" spamming and trolling isnt that at all.

I wholeheartedly echo the comments above, its not that I hate the game, or even dont enjoy it, its that ever since day one a patch has been promised and we are now nearer next season than the start of this and still no patch.

The frustrating thing is the constant miscommunication and delays with the patch.

Surely when the deal was signed to distribute the game initially, there was a clause inserted to distribute supplementary content that, knowing the database had as many errors as it did, would surely be needed.

[Scritty]

Surely when the deal was signed to distribute the game initially, there was a clause inserted to distribute supplementary content that, knowing the database had as many errors as it did, would surely be needed.

The logic of the above statement seems a little spurious. It suggests that Chris knew the game was full of errors.

If that were the case the bug that occurs when you play all the ODI's mid season, and the game misreports championship matches immediately following (showing another teams results rather than your own) then showing a blank page, then crashing...would not have existed in every version from ICC2 to ICC2006 (over 7 years and 5 iterations of the game).

With on-line distribution the agreement you describe is very rarely the case. Third party software distributed by steam (i.e non Valve software) has an entirely different patch process to shop bought software, this is in terms of timeframe and compatability.

In short, the distributor needs to ensure that they are being paid. It could be possible for a benevolent developer to abuse the system, adding conent and fixes free of charge, building a loyal fanbase, with the distributor paying for the bandwidth and admin costs...and receiving nothing in return.

This has happened in the past

Perhaps this may be attributed to the more altruistic nature of developers when compared with publishers which, particularly in the "niche" market does often seem to be the case.

Sadly after sales support is not ANY publishers strong point.

EA - one of the biggest software developers and publishers in the world are very poor at supporting their own "in house" product.

The development teams they now have under their umbrella (e.g Maxis, Westwood ect) often support the games they write, but EA themselves are very quick to drop all after sales support, relying on next years "new game" rather than fixing this years broken one (Cricket '07 is a good example)

Softwrap, Steam, D2Drive etc ALL have publisher difficulties when updaing software.

The above not withstanding, my main point remains.

I fail to see what improvement the repeated posts on this forum have had. I am sure they have had little or no effect on the ICC2008 patch, or its delay.

It could be suggested, that; it would involve a degree of arrogance, and not a little self delusion for the authors of these posts to think otherwise.

[Mongrel]

Not sure if you can answer Aus, have any changes been made to the match engine for the patch? Increased T20 scores? More sixes? Increased ODI and test scores?

Or will these be altered in 2009.

Cheers

[Scritty]

I doubt anyone will get near Graham Napier's score in ICC2008 - I also think that it is likely to be beaten in real life in the next 3 years.

Averages seem to take their "mean" from somewhere near the centre of the Stnd Dev bell curve in ICC2008; whereas in real life similar averages seem to be maintained with a wider range of curve used.

Perhaps this is harder to model and simulate. The possibility of a gamer being put off by an inordinately long run of bad luck/form by a good player, or put off the game thinking it "unreal" when another player scores several double hunderds in consecutive matches.

6 sixes has been achived in ODI's twice in the last 2 years (Gibbs and Yuvraj Singh), 3 and 4 sixes in an over more times than I can remember.

I've never seen more than 2 in an over on over 130 years simming the ICC series. I would go further and say I only remember seeing 2 sixes in an over once in perhaps 2500 List A and 1500 ODI games. This is clearly some way out of kilter.

I really should be sorted - How about it Chris ?

Regards

Paul Clarke

[aus5892]

The patch changes include a some bug fixes but as far as I know no gameplay changes.

As I said, Chris is working hard at trying to get the patch out, but it is out of his hands right now. I will ask him if there's anything new but I'm fairly certain that the next step is for Softwrap to release it.

As Scritty said, asking when the patch will be available will elicit a response from me, but it will be the same one until something new is available. When something new is available, I will post it without being prompted.

[Sureshot]

As Dean (aus5892) has said, if we get more news we WILL update you, but it seems a bit pointless for us to just re-post what we've already said. We're all as frustrated as you are with the current situation.

[G1inger]

Well ....any more news on the patch....ROFL ROFL ROFL.

Why dont you guys just come out and say its not going to happen....

[Typical Stroke]

I dont think the patch will release for ICC 08. So dont wait for patch wait only for ICC 2009.

[Cyril Washbrook]

G1inger, maybe with 24 hour news cycles and on-demand content, it seems to you like you've been waiting an eternity. But in fact, if you go back through the pages of this thread, the earliest indication that a proposed patch had even been submitted to the publishers was only 19 days ago:

Anyway the latest is that patch has been submitted and currently the only wait is for Softwrap, it is out of Chris' hands. He expects that it will be released next week.

That was from aus5892 (who has been nothing if not helpful) on 9 November. Now, maybe that seems like a long time ago to you, and there certainly have been some delays. But in the grand scheme of things, I'm sure you can hang on.