Workshop Fall Back?

ZEROibis

Given how often the workshop manages to break servers with lots of custom content or maps (combat) it would be great if there was some sort of built in backup into the game to protect against this and allow the servers to automatically recover. Currently this is what occurs:
server changes maps and the workshop is down
no players can use the server
several hours later server operator sees problem and restarts server
sometimes still only some mods work so server operator restarts again
server works until the issue randomly occurs again later in the week or next week if your lucky.

Here is one example of how it should work:
server changes map and workshop is down
server assumes current mod versions are latest
clients join server as normal unless a mod is actually out of date in which case they logically can not connect.
if clients can not connect due to a mod sync issue the server detects this and changes the map to retry the workshop and continues this until the workshop can be reached and a situation where clients can join the server is reached.

Balmark

workshop pisses me off tbh

I'd also like if workshop is down and 'client doesn't have a mod on the server' OR 'the client has those repeated download errors from the workshop' .. that it can take it from the server (possibly in a sandbox.. ie. after they leave, it deletes the mod completely..)

I had custom maps on, then after I reset all my mods etc. I tried joining my own server... it took me about 3-4 attempts to connect to the server ... soley due to workshop failing to download mods! .. server turned into a vanilla server after that

No idea what was wrong with the standard.. server gets the mods, client downloads from the server.. simple, effective, server is up mods are available..

QwiXXeR

When it works its wonderfull, standard mod across all servers not different versions. Able to update your map and know everyone is playing the same version. Everyone having high speed download of the content without taxing the server/server hosts.

But when its down its down .

JCD

Would be great if you could host the stuff locally on your server and have it downloaded like in hl1

ZEROibis

Well yea that is why I complained about this sort of issues months ago before they become really common but no one really believed me that it would be as unreliable as it really is. Now that we have seen that the workshop is not perfect we need some sort of simple method to prevent servers from going dead in the water.

As stated above another idea would be to allow servers to just serve the data to clients and use the servers local copy when the workshop is down. (assuming client does not have mod or versions differ)

In that case you would get the benefits the workshop offers but the benefit to the players that they can always talk to the server and actually play the game independent of the current condition of the workshop.

Balmark

Yup .. the Workshop is a fantastic idea .. but it fails in alot of it's execution AND NS2 doesn't cater for the possibility of the workshop failing which imho it really should :P .. do other games have the same obvious issues? (tbh I havent seen any problems with others .. they might just handle the failures from workshop better?)

The general idea should be .. client tries to get mods from workshop, if fails on first attempt it takes whatever the server has and stores in a sandbox (so server cant corrupt mods) .. after all the client is trying to get to this particular server and the server should be getting updates from the workshop on map changes ..

standard mod across all servers not different versions

This'd still be the case if servers updated then passed the updates to the clients.. era if UWE want to sort the issue, I'm sure they'll devote the time to figure out the best way to keep things all in sync with highest reliability

Jekt

Getting download error: 7 at the moment. On top of the innumerable errors and problems I've had with the steam workshop and this game a fall back system would be very nice indeed.

GhoulofGSG9

My personal tip: use Shine CycleonEmpty

ZEROibis

The issue is that shine like any other mod will break when the map changes and workshop is down. When the mod can not be reached the game disables it and then the server gets locked up. This is how for example in combat when this occurs you get tens of thousands of lines in your log file that look like this:

Error: lua/Gamerules_Global.lua:36: attempt to index a nil value
[Server] Script Error #1: lua/Gamerules_Global.lua:36: attempt to index a nil value
    Call stack:
    #1: lua/Gamerules_Global.lua:36
        client = ServerClient { }

But if you restart your server before copying that it auto deletes the error logs on server start so you will lose what was blowing up.

ZEROibis

GhoulofGSG9 wrote: »

My personal tip: use Shine CycleonEmpty

In addition losing all your players and then not allowing anyone to connect for 10-20min while you wait for the map to cycle is not a solution, that is the problem.