Check for updates first, load assets later

[sillyfly]

Simple change, which may or may not be easy to do:
Why does Factorio load all assets (sprites, mods, sounds, etc.) before checking for updates? If an update is indeed available and the user chooses to update their installation, all assets have to be reloaded.
This probably won't save too much time (depending how fast your computer is ), and won't be as relevant once a final stable version comes out, but it seems to me that checking for updates first thing makes more sense.

Doesn't it?

[SuperSandro2000]

+1

[bobingabout]

Yeah, I've got to agree, and have wondered why it didn't do it that way around in the first place.
Especially when you have mods installed, it can take a couple of minutes to load, time wasted just to be told you need to download a small update and restart the client.

I think the best time to check for updates would be after loading and verifying the mods list(check that scenario pack is installed, etc.), but before loading any data from the mods themselves.

[Phillip_Lynx]

I second (fourth?) this

[silenced]

Maybe it's even better to put in a button at first: "Check for update? YES/NO" before loading the whole game. There are still some people that play on systems without internet all the time, and there has to be some timeout for a server request before the program should continue, which again may delay the startup process due to no internet available at all.

So many circumstances to take into account.

[warmadmax]

+1

[Gandalf]

This might result in a launcher similar to the one(s) available for minecraft. Might not be such a bad thing, with profiles for modding etc. On the other hand it always felt like overkill to me. I don't really have a problem with the way it is, but then again it starts pretty fast for me anyway.

[FishSandwich]

Yeah, this has always bugged me, +1

[ssilk]

Someone made a bug report, answer from Kovarex:

https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... ate#p66982

[sillyfly]

I know kovarex said it is a very minor issue, but maybe with 0.12 going to steam it is worth re-considering?
The reasons are - more users, and more frequent updates (as per notes on the roadmap: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... ?f=3&t=678), and presumably integrating into Steam would require at least some adjustments for the updating mechanism (as Steam has it's own).

So I'm just giving this a small bump

[Zeblote]

I know kovarex said it is a very minor issue, but maybe with 0.12 going to steam it is worth re-considering?
The reasons are - more users, and more frequent updates (as per notes on the roadmap: https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... ?f=3&t=678), and presumably integrating into Steam would require at least some adjustments for the updating mechanism (as Steam has it's own).

So I'm just giving this a small bump

Steam will automatically update the game before launching it, so that actually fixes the problem.