Solution to Workshop mod problems
ZEROibis
Join Date: 2009-10-30 Member: 69176Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2009-10-30 Member: 69176Members, Constellation
So today again I have a server killed by the workshop. Has 22 players on core and after the map change lost everyone due to mod unavailable. As usual the server is then stuck this way until someone manually comes in and resets it so it can load the mods again.
This got me thinking that a SIMPLE solution could be used to help mitigate the workshop problems.
Please UWE consider doing the following:
Allow us to define particular mods as "critical". When a mod is defined as critical such as logically a custom map the server when trying to change to that map will have a fall back action if that map/mod is unavailable. In this instance instead of dropping all the clients it will simply go to the next map in the list and continue to traverse and retry until such time as it is able to reestablish communication with the workshop.
This way you can still have cases where the map loads and some non critical mods do not get loaded but for important mods like combat on your combat server or custom maps on any server the server will attempt to recover from the error.
This is a much simpler solution than trying to code some sort of workshop work around and this while not removing the source of the problem is able to dramatically reduce the effects of workshop errors and drop outs on clients and servers.
I hope that UWE will seriously consider a solution like this or some sort of mitigation as to help improve the reliability of modded servers.
This got me thinking that a SIMPLE solution could be used to help mitigate the workshop problems.
Please UWE consider doing the following:
Allow us to define particular mods as "critical". When a mod is defined as critical such as logically a custom map the server when trying to change to that map will have a fall back action if that map/mod is unavailable. In this instance instead of dropping all the clients it will simply go to the next map in the list and continue to traverse and retry until such time as it is able to reestablish communication with the workshop.
This way you can still have cases where the map loads and some non critical mods do not get loaded but for important mods like combat on your combat server or custom maps on any server the server will attempt to recover from the error.
This is a much simpler solution than trying to code some sort of workshop work around and this while not removing the source of the problem is able to dramatically reduce the effects of workshop errors and drop outs on clients and servers.
I hope that UWE will seriously consider a solution like this or some sort of mitigation as to help improve the reliability of modded servers.
Comments
I think you should do something like they do in the HBZ server. They have all the mods they use, merged in a single one. marked as private in the workshop. That way they can control when the updates takes place, and in case of workshop dreadful error 28, update it manually.
There are pros and cons doing it this way. Also this won't fix the main issue zero is talking about.In fact i would also like if the server just loads the local mod files if workshop times out. By this way mod will still load up and at least a few bunch of ppl could join.
It is just stupid to have players get dumped from a server becuase there is no automated redundancy for when the workshop glitches, which is all the time.
This is the most major issue effecting servers which run custom maps or mods in general. Something needs to be done as to offer players who wish to enjoy custom maps/mods a better experience.
I assume that the devs like custom maps and so I hope that someone will look into fixing this either in a way described above or in some other method which mitigates the file not found error.
It depends how high the load of your regions steam server is. So atm it happens quiet alot due to wintersale.
A simple solution would be to just load up the local modfiles instead of not loading them at all ... . But this is something uwe has to fix.
For the time being, you can write a script as workaround that changes map until all required mods are loaded.
He's talking about a system sided script not a ns2 mod.
Are you working on a solution? Please tell us !
You can do that yourself with a script with very little effort.
The proper solution to the issue is simply to load the mods from disk, and distribute them to the players if connection to workshop fails.
Also, a real download system that could be used along side would be nice (ala source), i.e. a repo where you can put hosted files. Plus no requirement for workshop (/private repos).
Less annoying then having to work around those issues...
As you said this should not take long to make and therefore I can see no reason why such a fix can not be implemented into the game sooner rather than later other than the fact that this is not a major issue for competitive players and thus not likely very high on the list of things to fix.
Again, make a script that changes map to fix that problem for you. Don't count on UWE fixing things in a timely manner, not gonna happen.
Exactly what I was gonna say. You don't need UWE to make mod support since it's already readily available. We would of course first need someone to make a mod so these kinds of mods show up in server browser (which I would imagine should not be that hard).
Apparently, workshop can't help but check if the installed mod is the lastest version, every time a map changes.
Even if not a single mod changed, it will still try to check and when it can't reach the workshop, decides to kick everybody off.
This default workshop behaviour is killing the server.
The sad thing is that pretty much everybody who was on the server last round should already have all the required mods at hand.
The required mod files are all already there, sitting on their disks...
They don't need to check or download anything, they just need to connect again.