Failed consistency check - too strict filetime checking?

Toumal

Ok a friend of mine is currently unable to connect to any server. He had the game since ages ago, but didn't update for quite a while (pre-release). Now he's updated and he can't join anywhere. Failed consistency check on materials/power/powered_decal.surface_shader

He deleted whole dir, verified, no joy. Deleted the entire game, reinstalled, no joy.

I copied the file over to his machine from my box where everything worked. The file contents were the same, only the file date differed.

Guess what, it worked. So I'm wondering, is the verification maybe a little too strict?

IronHorse

Sounds more like steam not installing the game properly, which has been happening for some.
When he deleted that file and verified, did it download every time?
Theres a log of what steam installs per game, and while I can't recall where its located atm , it would be worth a gander

Toumal

Yup it did download that file every time. Sadly I cannot get the logs of that verify anymore :/

Max

The consistency checking doesn't check file times. I have no idea why he would be failing consistency checking with a fresh install of the game, although we're currently trying to track down some issues where the game does not properly install through Steam, so it may be related.

IronHorse

Toumal, follow what Max said here in another post:
<!--quoteo(post=2032207:date=Nov 22 2012, 07:14 AM:name=Max)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Max @ Nov 22 2012, 07:14 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2032207"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->This is indeed due to a bad install of the game through Steam. For some reason Steam isn't properly updating all of the files, which can cause a variety of different problems depending on which files failed to update. In this particular case, the code that creates the main menu is corrupted. I've seen crashes on startup, black screens, the main menu not displaying. It's also possible for the errors to not appear until you are in the game. This is quite frustrating for everyone involved, so we're trying to get it resolved as fast as possible.

If you are having anything like what I described, please run that TechSupport tool (in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Natural Selection 2) and send the zip file it generates to max@unknownworlds.com. This file contains the logs from Steam about how it updated Natural Selection 2 which should help Valve understand the problem better.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->