Some Basic things about the way we run the server

[Oldsparky]

Jackal has long told me that he wanted to fix a bunch of the single player and coop maps for online play. He basically said if you build it they will come. We have been working on the maps for well over 6 months now, with many players, admins and map editors doing the work. We now have over 390 coop maps installed on the server. We continue to make changes to these maps. We are fixing errors and fixing stalls that effect the enjoyment of on line play. I personally have not fixed a single map. We have made many changes. The total map number far exceeds the capability of most map sequencers. In our years of server hosting, we have found that file mismatches are the biggest problem encountered as you move from one server to another. We implemented super cache for our other servers several years ago. We have changed urls, that tell the server where to go, to what next map when a map ends. This simple change makes the map un compatable with other versions. We have toyed with the idea of changing our method of linking maps, but this would be flushing all the work, and require a lot of time, and since there are multiple versions of many maps out there, most likely would not fix the problem anyway. The real problem remains as sequencing 300+ maps.

The solutions quite simple if you want to play on Jackals coop without map mismatches. We suggest a second install of unreal and name it perhaps unreal2 or whatever you like. You can download supercache and install it to this unreal installation. You can copy over any skins and the user ini and unreal ini files and you should be good to go. This will stop mismatches, however it will not stop your downloads, as the mappers continue to make improvements in the maps. We try and keep the supercache files updated and this in itself is a chore. At this point and time, we intend to continue to operate the JACKALS coop server in this manner. We are concentrating on this being a good ONLINE server and have little concern for map mismatches or offering our versions for download. If you want to play here, I suggest you play with super cache on a second installation as noted above as this seems to be the lesser of many evils. Our goal remains to run maps that would never see the light of day in on line play and our server rules of course stil apply. Have fun and play nice. http://newbies.thenerdnetwork.com/np/un ... p%20Cache/

[solo=(cat)=]

I think its brilliant to see here maps that other server admins have abandoned becuase they dont work well in coop play.

although there are a lot of maps that have been modified by other servers to run perfectly in coop,
these tend to be the ones that are the most impressive, such as shinigami, illhaven etc.
unfortunatly each server seems to have made the same modifications to each of these,
i think I must now have more than 4 versions of some of these packs now lol.

Im not sure what map sequencer you use, but I wrote a coop game type, oh so many years ago now lol
and im sure its in use by a few coop game types. I know there was one other person doing pretty much the same thing as me,
and several people took the best bits from both, so i have no idea what the final code is in use now.
I wrote it so long ago I dont seem to be able to find my original work

certainly the basis of it is used in many as i recongise certain unique features.
it has a built in map sequencer, and modifies the coop game ending mechanism so it stops any one dieing or killing anyone else once someone has hit end etc.

theres no hard limit on the number of maps that a sequencer can handle if I recall corectly, at least none thats set by the unreal engine.

id like to have one unreal and be able to play all maps online and offline,
however im puzzled why we still get mismatches even though the file is in the cache.
If its also in the unreal directories in some circumstances it doesnt use the cache version.
If i delete the non cache file, it then works, and doesnt even have to fetch the file.
theres obviously a bug in unreal somewhere, someone said its something to do with a certain type of package.

there are many servers out there that I cant join becuase of mismatches.
I cant possibly have seperate unreals for seperate servers.

I use nepthys wich is great but no other coop server seems to use it that I know of other than zoras,
this ought to be able to solve all that problems, it has file redirect and much more.
it at least means I can always play on zoras server with no problems whatsoever.

although it could benefit from tweaking i have no idea if the source is acesable or the authour is open to sugestions.
i have made such sugestions, such as :-
preloading the next map so that theres no delay,
trying to sort out mismatches (wich i dont think should be hapening but they do),
making it so that it works usefully as stand alone for client,
making it so when the client doesnt have it installed the server redirects to a website before it downloads the maps not afterwards lol.

another option is to use a virtual file system, this would be a small program on the client wich builds a cache directory from all the available files. this is neat as it doesnt need to mess about with any of the unreal files.

another option is to have a proxy server for both or either client and server, this would have to understand the unreal protocol though.
but only enough to recognise file requests and do something usefull.

however im never awake enough to get very far with these and coop seems to be so less popular than it was a decade ago.
it seems like a lot of work for such few people. however sometimes i enjoy mesing about with this stuff more than the game.

it seems a shame you have had to go to all this work and modify maps just so they link together rather than a beter sequencer,
but now that its done its a brilliant effort thanks

[Oldsparky]

Most of us play on a standard unreal install, either gold or patched old unreal. The only thing you should install are skins and ini and user files. If you don't install any custom files, you wont have any mismatches. This is not the problem it once was when servers were running on home dsls and cable connections. The rented servers in data centers have no limit on uploads or bandwidth problems. The only mismatch you could possibly have would either be a skin or a cache file loaded in ram. When moving from server to server, it may be necessary to restart the game to clear the ram of loaded unreal files. Sparky has zero stuff installed in my game other than cache files, and the Oldperson skins. When unreal loads a map to play on the server it checks the map and other unreal folders before it looks in the cache. If it finds the file in one of the unreal folders, it trys to load it, and if its not an exact match, you get a mismatch. If you dont have the files or map in your game it looks to the cache folder and if it finds it there it loads it, if not it proceeds to download it to the cache folder. You can have multiple versions of the same map in the cache folder, and since each version has its own unique identifier, it will not result in a mismatch. When you disconnect and reconnect in gold, you see ghosts of the previous connection, I guess that is stuff loaded in ram that hasnt been deleted by reconnecting. There is a purge command that will do this, but I have heard that this command will crash some servers. I personally have not seen this happen. Anyway,, want error free playing, play from the cache for on line play. From time to time, I zip up my cache and store it elsewhere. I gather up my skins, ini and user file and save them as well. I can completely reinstall unreal in a matter of minutes. Run the cd for unreal,, drop in the skins, ini and user files. Create a cache folder in unreal and extract my cache to that folder and I am good to go with a fresh install. This is also a easy way to install your game on multiple computers if you have more than one.

[solo=(cat)=]

thats not strictly true, the unreal game should look in the cache directory first,
I have many files wich I play in sp mode, and wich i have several versions in cache,
I only get this trouble on a few maps, where it looks in the unreal directories first
and its something to do with the way some maps refer to packages in themselves
rather than external packages.

[Oldsparky]

I think thats true of UT but not unreal

[solo=(cat)=]

well maybe UT works that way without problems, i cant remember i havnt played UT for so long now.

but unreal 1 sort of works that way becuase i definatly have maps etc that i run in sp mode.
when i get a mismatch i just delete or rename the offending file,
then when its downloaded it and put it in the cache folder I can put the offending file back and it works for 99% of cases.
its the 1% that i cant figure out.

I did actually end up deleting all my custom files when i joined newbies cos of mismatches,
as they are all handled by nepthys anyway wich downloads the zip files and extracts the unreal files as needed.
but i find its quicker if i let nepthys leave them extracted rather than extract them every time.

it realy needs something that sorts out this mismatch,
im not sure if 227 adreses this problem,
if it could be made to work the same as UT that would be cool.

another posibility is to have seperate ini files and seperate directories for each server,
as some servers require skins etc to actualy be installed,
im not sure if you can specify it to use a specific ini file,
il have to look, but that would be a fairly neat solution.
if not it could always be a mini program that copies the relevant ini file to unreal.ini

all i need then is a game browser wich luanches unreal and runs diferent program depending on what server is selected.
I dont think gamespy can do this lol, although another mini program can intercept the server name from the command line
and do the copy etc. then run unreal.

its well doable , but not in my current state.