rant: the 'too many .pk3 files' bug sucks.

(SCDS_reyalP) #1

Since RTCW (and maybe q3, I don’t know) and unfixed in ET, if you have too many .pk3 files (or perhaps, arena or campaign ?), and you try to host a game, the game will crash, or try to load the map multiple times or produce various other wierdness. If a dedicated server has too many files, the clients may experience multiple loads and other problems.

In ET, almost every user will hit this limit, because campaign files must be in .pk3s and are autodownloaded. This means, that, for your average joe user, after a short time of playing, they will no longer be able to host games Most likely, they will not figure out the problem on their own. Even un-installing and re-installing may not help, unless they know to manually delete the autodownloaded files.

How the developers can accept a bug that inevitably makes a significant portion of your product unusable to a large number of your uses is quite beyond me…

/rant

(O2.iceman) #2

I agree it’s a horrible problem and one that has plagued the RtCW servers that I help run when we tried loading more custom maps.

bani and rhea tried to help on the OSP forums back in the day, but in the end I don’t think anything could be done as it was an engine bug that they couldn’t fix or something.

(Lekdevil.NL) #3

FWIW, I’ve forwarded a bug description and a link to this post to etbugs@idsoftware.com (again)… Let’s hope, pray, run around the camp fire three times and chant together… :smiley:

(pack) #4

did I just gave this a bump :???:

(G0-Gerbil) #5

Oh great :confused:

The world’s most hated bug for server admins now strikes for normal players.
I’m still wondering why the hell the campaign file (or to put it another way - the server map rotation) has to be a client-side file, because it totally cocks up our attempts to stop stupid autodownload yet run custom maps (the idea simply being people should get them from map hosting sites, not leech our bandwidth).

Now I find out it’ll simply cause this bug for virtually everyone? Wow, I’m chuffed - it’s like all the bad eggs in one basket :confused:

This pissed me off before - how many mappers for RTCW were told their maps were buggy and cocked up servers, only for it to be the game itself? And now ET hastens this demise. :banghead:

OK the banghead anim calms me down :slight_smile:

Still, can someone please bloody sort this - I vote for a patch that stops campaign files having to be downloaded - it’s pointless, annoying, cripples attempts at server control, and now it turns out it also cocks up ET generally. Oh, not to mention it’s most likely to be apparent from people trying to play custom maps - since the custom map and campaign associated with it are the quickest way of getting a large number of new PK3 files…

(bani) #6

because the client pulls up the campaign description out of the campaign file to display it on the screen.

but yeh, the way campaign files are handled is teh sux and we plan to fix eventually in ETPro.

(G0-Gerbil) #7

Cool - an entire PK3 file for a text string - n1 :frowning:
Does anyone remember off the top of their head what the rough maximum limit of new individual PK3s was on a server BTW?

(pack) #8

oh oh it wasn’t only a number. But if you would like more reading material:

My ode to pk3 bug
http://www.forumplanet.com/planetwolfenstein/topic.asp?fid=4324&tid=738922 (for the links inside this thread you should change forumidnr)

http://www.orangesmoothie.org/cgibin/ib3/ikonboard.cgi?s=3f8fffce1d91ffff;act=ST;f=7;t=92

http://www.orangesmoothie.org/cgibin/ib3/ikonboard.cgi?s=3f8fffce1d91ffff;act=ST;f=7;t=115

(pack) #9

About the pk3 problem. So I read it is an engine bug, so not curable by modders. But I remember it was solved by putting sv_pure to 0.

This is hardly a solution off course. But maybe you (Bani/rain/fred?) can find in your mod a way to freeze sv_pure to 0, and design your own system for checking pk3 integrity (?). Not really a tech guy myself, prolly just a stupid idea…

:moo:

(G0-Gerbil) #10

It just seems like a weirdly shit bug that the PK3 checker goes wrong after XXX times of being used - memory leak perhaps?

Don’t suppose anyone ever tested if, on a buggering up system, combining all the pk3 contents into 1 super one still exhibited the same problem?

Because the number of PK3s varies, I’d guess it’s a bug with either checking X number of individual files inside the PK3s, or X number of folders (since both of these vary, although often not by a lot, from PK3 to PK3) which might well explain why no-one could come up with a ‘fixed’ number of pk3s that caused the problems.

It also means I pity the people who are running the map contest, because if true, it would mean combining everything into a couple of pk3s won’t actually help.

Feck…

(pack) #11

This is how WT (http://www.wolftactics.com/) solved it I believe (not sure)

(DG) #12

is it worth having someone post a single pk3 containing the scripts for the more obvious/widely used campaigns? should cut down the pk3 downloads for players and also make them more accessable for other admins.

unlikely to help for custom map campaigns, since too many diverse options, btu fwiw im thinking we’d be doing this for the contest map pack (in a seperate pk3 from the actual maps, of course).

(SCDS_reyalP) #13

I’d say no. Users will just have to learn to delete extra .pk3s. There are already so many campaign .pk3s out, that, barring the bug getting fixed, most ET players are already screwed.

I agree, BTW, campaign files are teh suck. One of several things that it looks like splash just didn’t have time to finish properly. Not that we can blame them too much, we are lucky to have the game at all.

(Domipheus) #14

[quote=“pack”]

This is how WT (http://www.wolftactics.com/) solved it I believe (not sure)[/quote]

correct, we intended to have seperate pk3’s for each map, but as we were releasing with 12 maps all in, we were already over the limit if u had all rtcw updates, and gtkradiant installed. (if i remembeer correctly)

(G0-Gerbil) #15

Well, that’s some small glimmer of hope.

Must admit I’m getting annoyed now, I’ve easily reached the stage where I have to shift PK3s in and out to test new maps.
I wouldn’t mind so much, but custom map servers all seem to require about 10 different maps each, so you can’t just delete many of them if you want to play on many servers (although I’m going to have to, and just remove some servers from my faves’ list :frowning: ).

(pack) #16

install ET second time :slight_smile:

Use one ET to play (all seeing eye on it and stuff)

USe one ET to map, I did it this way when in a boring moment I made my helloworld.bsp :banana:

(G0-Gerbil) #17

I do have 2 installs, one clean for testing and the other mapping, but I can’t stretch to 3 (bearing in mind downloaded stuff all has to be in 1 location or you cant join the servers!).

So unless you can be arsed to download and copy to 2 locations, then testing locally on my playing setup isn’t going to happen :confused:

(HairyPlums) #18

This is one of the joys of ln -s on Linux…if only Windaes shortcuts worked in the same way…