^please don't do that. My ego is way to big already. :p
pannonian75: The question still stands.
Beside having a Steam DRM, what is the difference between the Steam version vs. the GOG version of NMS, before and after 1.09?
Can't tell for certain. I don't have the steam version, and can't do a diff between them. But pretty confident that the large patch-size could have something to do with ensuring that either the experimental build was updated properly, or that there was some issue with overrides used earlier. I.e., instead of replacing an override or unwinding from a different update, they'd include the new overrides based on the original resource-file instead. You often get things like this over time - patching from the last to next to last version is fine, skipping one version suddenly causes an issue, etc.
But if no conflicts existed, no replacement of that main resource file would be needed. Since the diff is just the new overrides, etc. Even if the intermediate versions could have had overrides for the entire file, or had extracted resource files for it, etc. This would also basically fit with the small amounts of inserts based on what the last experimental build had extracted from the resource files. Some of the desert files, some corresponding resources. So presumably the 6mb patch is part of those inserts and tweaks that were changed between the versions. Instead of the updated diff after the extracted resources were wiped. The fact that steam doesn't automatically purge the existing files when changing branch also has something to do with this. But it's all just guesswork, of course, because no one has the patience to actually check.
In the same way - we know that user-files have been getting extra settings exposed in the experimental builds, and that these user-strings have not been deleted after "updating" to the new branch. In the sense that updating the game didn't overwrite and reset your game's save-files.
And seriously, what does it matter to anyone not invested in the whole "everyone lies, as well as GOG and Steam, and specially GOG because they pretend to be the good guys with "no drms" and shit! I only trust EA, because they're honest about screwing me over from the start!". Meanwhile, I'm just going to go with the idea that it's highly unlikely that gog would try to cover up being one patch-version behind by mislabeling each version with one higher number than the actual patch. While also somehow mysteriously managing to include the updates corresponding to the latest patch-notes every time.
Anyway. Just saying the size of the update doesn't necessarily mean all that much. Remove all the music and the static resources from NMS, and the entire game is something like... 500mb, max. Most interesting stuff seems to be on the layer where various functions put the small "low-res" bits together, for example. Here's a bunch of flat squares with blurry patterns of some sort, some pixel-dust and a bunch of math - and on the other side is a mountain with pink snow on it.
The static resources here are... not very interesting.
