Of course, every gamer would like the computer game he purchases to be fully completed and ready for use. However, unfortunately, this result is far from being achieved by all development companies. Naturally, they do not leave everything as it is - they are constantly engaged in correcting errors. Special patches help them in this, which users can then download absolutely free. In this article you will learn about the patch: what it is, what they are and how to use them. It is clear that everything changes over time, respectively, the form for submitting patches also does not remain the same, but the essence remains always the same. And you should definitely know what the patch is.
Game development
Many gamers, when they play another major project, do not even think about what he went through before falling into their hands. If you want to know about the patch, what it is, how to use it and why you need it, you need to understand how computer games are created. Naturally, the whole process will not be described here, because it is incredibly long and many-sided. Moreover, most of it is not vital to this issue. The most important thing you should know is the testing phase. When the development of the game ends, the already finished and playable project is sent for alpha testing. Here, professional testers check the performance of the game, point out the shortcomings and problems that are fixed before the game is released. After that, beta testing begins, which can be open or closed. Here, gamers themselves test the game and tell developers what is wrong with it - depending on the type of testing, the project is in the public domain, or a certain group of people is given the opportunity to test it. And after that, final refinements and corrections are carried out - and the project goes on sale. However, even such an attentive and meticulous multi-level check is not always able to detect all the disadvantages, therefore there is such a thing as a patch. What it is? In this article, you will learn all about patches.
What is a patch?
So, now you can imagine how the game is being tested, but why do we need a patch? What it is? As connoisseurs of English can easily understand, a patch is a patch for a game, a small program that installs into a game and corrects certain moments in it. Unfortunately, even the most multi-level check may not detect all the errors that are contained in the game - they pop up only after the release. This is where the patch comes into force - the developers collect information about what errors are still present in the game, develop a patch for them and provide it for free download. Thus, players do not have to pay repeatedly for the version without errors - they can "patch" an existing game. However, what are the patches? After all, there are a variety of options.
Standard patch
If you know that for the game that you have on hand, there are certain patches that should be installed, you need to understand what these patches can be. The most common patch is an archive containing the necessary files that you can copy to the game folder in accordance with the instructions contained in the same archive. However, by no means always developers force gamers to do everything on their own - sometimes you can use a special patcher program. You just need to run it, select the game that you need to patch, then select the patch that you want to install - and that’s it. Fifa patches are most often issued in this form, because this series is very popular and has existed for a long time, so the patcher program does not change over time, and gamers can easily patch any version of each game in the series.
Cumulative Patches
We should also talk about cumulative patches. For example, they can very often be found for the Stalker game - patches of this kind contain several patches at once, which were published earlier. Thus, instead of downloading each released patch individually and installing them one at a time, you can download a cumulative patch that will contain all the changes of previous patches, which is incredibly convenient.
How to patch the game?
In most cases, gamers use special platforms for games, such as Steam. There you can configure your client so that all updates that come out for the game are installed automatically. This is a very useful feature, but, unfortunately, not all games are in Steam, so you have to study the patch panel. As mentioned earlier, to deal with this process is very simple. There are only two options: either you download the archive and transfer files from it to the game folder, or you open the patch panel and specify only the path to the game and the patch, and the program does everything for you.