New to PC gaming....Question about how patches work?

[aswan1101]

I recently got a pretty powerful Dell PC with a Nvidia Geforce 7900 GS video card. I purchased FarCry an Fear and just had a question about how patches work. Say for example FarCRy has 3 different patches named versions 1, 2, and 3. Do I need to download the older patches first or can I just download the newest one? Thanks for any help by anyone.

[spambox]

Originally Posted by aswan1101

I recently got a pretty powerful Dell PC with a Nvidia Geforce 7900 GS video card. I purchased FarCry an Fear and just had a question about how patches work. Say for example FarCRy has 3 different patches named versions 1, 2, and 3. Do I need to download the older patches first or can I just download the newest one? Thanks for any help by anyone.

just the newest one. Patches fix game bugs/glitches and anything to do with it...or atleast attempt to do so. But say for example you have Patch #1, and looking to install Patch #2. there should be a Patch #1-#2 patch which is considerably smaller than the whole entire patch. If you dont have Patch #1 and want Patch #2, you can just install Patch #2 which is a big file.

[aswan1101]

Thanks for responding. But say for example patch #1 is 78mb and patch #3 is only 20 mg....will patch #3 include all the stuff with patch #1 and 2. Just asking because patch #3 is alot smaller than patch#1 so how could the newest patch include all the patches? KNow what I mean? Thank again!

[War Hawk]

The patches are usually labeled "Incremental" or "Full". If they're Incremental, then you have to download every patch and install them in order. If it's a full patch, then you just download that, install it and you're good to go.

[fett321]

A lot of times the sites will post the information as to what has been corrected with the patch. There are some games that you will have to download some of the earlier patches because they did not include all the corrections in the latest patch. I hate to say it, but you will have to look for the info on the patches prior to installing them. A lot of the time you can install all three patches if you want to, just some of them do something redundant.
Good luck. Hopefully this helps.

[aswan1101]

Thanks guys. So basically just make sure the patch says "full" and I will be good to go. Thanks again.

[Faceless32]

Although far cry has only incremantal patches, so have fun gdownloadin all 16 of them!

[aswan1101]

WTF!!!! I HAVE TO DOWNLOAD 16 patches before I can even play the game??

[uberhen]

I only had to install 3 or 4 patches to update it from retail version. The 1.4 patch is unofficial, and you should backup the files you replace with it first.

[*The.Doctor]

Originally Posted by aswan1101

Do I need to download the older patches first or can I just download the newest one? Thanks for any help by anyone.

I'm not sure on FarCry, its been awhile since i patched it. In my patches folder i have farcry 1.1, 1.3, 1.31, and 1.33 so i assume its incremental.

But it all depends on the game, some games you have to download every patch, some only the newest version. Try looking in the readme files for the patches, they should state if any older patch versions are required prior to installing the newest.