Auto-Update Feature

[Not-A-Normal-Robot]

What feature do you want to suggest to the game?

An auto-update feature.

It's not very fun having to redownload the entire game when a new version is available. In fact, many players are stuck on the old version because it's a hassle to manually update the game.

I'm thinking we should make an auto-update program included in the release of the game.

• Every time Techmino launches, it asks either Techmino's server or GitHub what the latest version of Techmino is. (idk if the latter is even possible tho)

(also there should be a toggle to disable auto-update if the player really doesn't want to update)

• If current version < latest version, prompt the player to update the game.
• If they say yes, open the auto-update program asynchronously and then close the game so that the auto-update program can overwrite the necessary files. (Note: we may need to check the hash of the auto-update program when we do this to ensure security)
• The auto-update program should ping github.com for the latest release of Techmino, download it, and unzip it into the auto-update program's directory.

(Also, the auto-update program's directory should be the same one that has Techmino in it, right beside Techmino.exe)

The auto-update program doesn't have to be too fancy. Just a simple command line program should do the trick. Although, I currently don't know of any command-line frameworks that can support multiple platforms. I also don't know how to make this work in Android. Well, not unless we publish the game to Google Play Store, which I highly doubt will happen anytime soon. Or maybe we can publish the game to F-Droid? It's up to MrZ imo.

Edit 1: Also, maybe a detector if the game is packaged or just ran as source code? Basically only devs run from source code, and they usually know how Git(Hub) works so if they want to update they'll just update it using Git. tl;dr: disable autoupdate if running from source

[User670]

Mobile, and probably App Store version of Mac version: the game cannot auto-update; players have to go to the app marketplace to update the app (or have the marketplace do the auto updating, which I have fallen victim many times screw you Google Play defaulting to auto updating apps and then updates the apps that I don't want to update). The game could open a link to the marketplace, which is what most apps do.

Android: Alternatively, the game could download an apk, then initiate installation of said apk. I wonder if Love/Lua has such API for this.

[Not-A-Normal-Robot]

to start working on this we might need a new repo called TechminoAutoupdater

also these might help:
https://docs.github.com/en/rest
https://docs.github.com/en/rest/releases/releases?apiVersion=2022-11-28#get-the-latest-release

i wonder if it's even possible for CI to grab the autoupdater from another repo and put it in the release tho

[User670]

i wonder if it's even possible for CI to grab the autoupdater from another repo and put it in the release tho

CI is capable of downloading files from external sources, as far as I'm aware. I think I saw part of the workflow involving downloading LOVE and ColdClear during the build process. It can also upload to external services, like a mirror for downloading in China or something

[shoucandanghehe]

An existing auto-update tutorial: https://github.com/a327ex/blog/issues/6 Should we try it?

[shoucandanghehe]

Android: Alternatively, the game could download an apk, then initiate installation of said apk. I wonder if Love/Lua has such API for this.

as far as i know: no

and the above automatic update seems to only happen inside love, we can't update the version number registered in the operating system

[Not-A-Normal-Robot]

that solution is overly complex for PC imo

I say, we add auto update to PC this way:

• at the main menu screen, user gets asked if they want to download an update
• new version for game gets downloaded to %appdata%\Techmino\update asynchronously; you can still play techmino while downloading
• when it finishes downloading, show message/notification on top left, it says something like "Update download completed. Go to the main menu to initiate installation."
• when player goes back to main menu, it prompts them one more time to either install the update or cancel updating
• if they say to install the update, the game is closed and a basic command line program (maybe made from C or C++?) and replaces the old Techmino with the new Techmino.
• command line program will also detect Techmino's localization and adjust its language using that, and say "Update installation complete. Press [S] to start the game, or press any other key to close."

For Android, maybe we'll use that tutorial you sent. It might need heavy refactoring though, so idk. It really feels like publishing the game to F-Droid may be a better move, but it kinda risks a DMCA. It's all up to MrZ to choose.

[User670]

If we do the tutorial for Android anyway,........... it would probably work on every platform...?

[Not-A-Normal-Robot]

true, maybe the command line program should only be a temporary fix for PC only until the complex version is finished

[shoucandanghehe]

maybe for Android We can open the download page with the browser

[Not-A-Normal-Robot]

they'd have to install the apk normally tho

some people are just lazy and don't wanna update unless it's just a single click

[shoucandanghehe]

yep, but love does not provide an api to call the apk installer, can we write a Java extension or magic change love?

[User670]

maybe for Android We can open the download page with the browser

Same goes for every system.

they'd have to install the apk normally tho some people are just lazy and don't wanna update unless it's just a single click

... ...... ... tbh there is literally no harm in players playing an old version? If you really don't want old versions to be out there, just block old versions from launching (check update on launch and throws an error/plz-update page if there is an update) and people will just have to update anyway, no matter how many clicks it takes

[shoucandanghehe]

... ...... ... ~tbh there is literally no harm in players playing an old version?~

If their version is too old, the save may be lost when updating (

[User670]

magic change

Did you mean 魔改? https://www.wordsense.eu/%E9%AD%94%E6%94%B9/

[shoucandanghehe]

magic change

Did you mean 魔改? https://www.wordsense.eu/%E9%AD%94%E6%94%B9/

yep（ I am using google translate（

[shoucandanghehe]

Same goes for every system.

For other systems, we should have a better way At least for Windows it's simple (

[Not-A-Normal-Robot]

use DeepL it's usually better than google translate

[shoucandanghehe]

I know, but it's a bit slow sometimes

[ImpleLee]

Isn't this mostly an upstream problem?

[ImpleLee]

An existing auto-update tutorial: a327ex/blog#6 Should we try it?

After reading this, I believe that auto-update is achievable in user-land. But we have to do some other things to make our code in appdata dir to have higher priority than our own code... which I think is possible, but not that easy.

[ImpleLee]

Maybe move all code into appdata, and make our game a launcher instead? I mean, we can leave only necessary code in main for future update, and move all other code into the appdata dir.

[Not-A-Normal-Robot]

feels like that solution will make the code a lot more messy...

[ImpleLee]

I will make a demo recently...

[ImpleLee]

A runnable demo on Linux (because the library used for downloading depends on libcurl) at https://github.com/26F-Studio/auto-update-demo.

[Not-A-Normal-Robot]

Maybe we should also disable auto-update if running from source code (because you'd use Git to update)

[Not-A-Normal-Robot]

yeah i have no clue how to code up the downloading part without using an external library to help with downloading releases from github

i know zframework has an http module but i got no clue how to use it lol

anyways, can someone else do the downloading portion? i plan to make the "installer".

downloader:

• downloads latest release of Techmino into %appdata%\Techmino\update (file) (replace %appdata% with the app data location based on OS)
• extracts the .zip into %appdata%\Techmino\updateExtract\ (directory)
• delete %appdata%\Techmino\update (file)
• runs the installer located beside the Techmino executable, named autoupdate.exe (or other file extensions based on OS, but the name will be autoupdate)
• exits the game immediately after

installer:

• detect if Techmino.exe has been closed, if not then wait 0.5s and repeat
• moves the contents of %appdata%\Techmino\updateExtract\ into the executable's directory (which should overwrite Techmino.exe and others
• reopens the game, unless speciifed otherwise

[ImpleLee]

By using luasocket (bundled with love2d), the auto-update-demo does not need Linux now.

[Not-A-Normal-Robot]

I've done the installer portion: https://github.com/26F-Studio/Techmino-autoupdater We just need to implement the downloader in the game

[Not-A-Normal-Robot]

okay so for my current plan (only for desktop) we have to do one of these:

• make the separate autoupdater also download the release asynchronously and somehow signal the game to close when it's done downloading
• ask MrZ to make Zframework's HTTP module support HTTPS
• wait for love2d v12 for the HTTPS module (or grab a snapshot)
• grab a module from somewhere else that has HTTPS support (like luasocket)