Comment by thanksgiving
11 hours ago
We aren't talking about the initial downloads though. We are talking about updates. I am like 80% sure you should be able to send what changed without sending the whole game as if you were downloading it for the first time.
Helldiver's engine does have that capability, where bundle patches only include modified files and markers for deleted files. However, the problem with that, and likely the reason Arrowhead doesn't use it, is the lack of a process on the target device to stitch them together. Instead, patch files just sit next to the original file. So the trade-off for smaller downloads is a continuously increasing size on disk.
from my understanding of the technique youre wrong despite being 80% sure ;)
any changes to the code or textures will need the same preprocessing done. large patch size is basically 1% of changes + 99% all the preprocessed data for this optimization
How about incorporating postprocessing into the update procedure instead of preprocessing?