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So, I've created an XNA game, but I'm not selling it... it's just a private game to give away to my friends, more of a practice project. But say I find a bug, or think of a new feature...

I don't want to have to resend the file to them every time an update comes out. That'd be too many people to send it to. How should I go about this issue?

If this question is a duplicate, please tell me, or if there's a Web page with this answer that I missed, also tell me.

Thanks in advace!

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Get a website for $10/year somewhere and post it. Or, add auto-update capability to your app. \$\endgroup\$
    – 3Dave
    Commented Sep 27, 2016 at 23:02
  • \$\begingroup\$ @David_Lively How would I add "auto-update capability"? \$\endgroup\$
    – Daniel G
    Commented Sep 28, 2016 at 0:30

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If you want a website for free, then you can use Github Pages(*.github.io) to get a free static(you don't handle the server side) website. I once built a launcher that you could download that would download from github raw files. A good example of a launcher is Minecraft's launcher. It allows you to select versions you would like to install by creating profiles that let you pick which version to download as well as how much ram you want that profile to use.

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As David already mentioned, get a website and program an auto-updater for your projects. It works as follows: When your game starts check for the server version located on your website in a file. If the version is newer than your client one, you have to update.

Updating can be done by either downloading the whole project, or just the new and modified files, which saves time and unneccessary data transfers. If you're game is small or you only have a few files, updating the whole project should be enough.

But if you want to update only the modified part of your game, you have to compare all your files with the files on your website. A fast way to determine a difference between two files is to first compare their size and if they're equal copmare their hashes instead of the whole file, if any didn't match download the file.

Before uploading a new version, you create a file which contains all file paths, sizes, and hashes generated from each file, so that the client only has to download this file in orer to determine which files need to be downloaded. Also don't forget to zip your files, before uploading.

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