Just as a comment Stephen, There is probably a period of time where a client "appears" to be up to date, but rather he just needed to wait a while for to update to get scheduled in for his particular content server - there is always a little skew there at the leading edge of the release (in fact, there probably is an intentional scheduling skew to try and prevent an instantaneous demand of 1 million players all trying to get the update the hot instant it is released).
By downloading 'the current" map to the players (instead of making the players log out and log back in, or wait a while for the update to become available), you have created a situation now where the next time that map is updated by Steam, the client will be guaranteed to suddenly have an out of date map (and any other updated content) that he now has to manually go and delete. This quite defeats the purpose in having the GCF and auto-update system. In other words, you have now sewn the seeds of the next wave of "your map is different" complaints. <sigh> qUiCkSiLvEr ----- Original Message ----- From: Stephen Moretti (blueyonder) Sent: Saturday, July 17, 2004 3:30 AM Kevin Ottalini wrote: >You probably need to update the maps on your server to the latest version. > > Unfortunately, both the client and the server were up to date and the problem was not just with one server but with all servers. Giving the client the map file, fixed the problem for all servers and not just one. >The client's will always have the latest version in their GCF files (they have no choice) but they can copy older versions into the external maps directory which supercede what is in the GCF. > > Indeed, which is why the _new_ bsp file from the server on the client fixed the problem. Actually, it is possible for the server to be more up to date than the client. The client will only be updated if the user logs out and logs back in again. A client that remains logged in does not update, nor is there a means to instigate an update from within the client. I have to say that I am guilty of just this, because I am on broadband and I work in the computer industry, so my computers generally stay on 24/7. Value/Steam will find that this kind of practice becomes more and more prevalent, if it isn't already. This is not a recommendation for "automated updates", only for a means to check for updates from within the client. >Servers on the other hand may not do an update at the same time so suddenly the server is out of sync with the client. > >If one client in a while has this problem, then the client is probably at fault. > > At the time there were a number of people complaining of being kicked from multiple server for "unmatched maps" - most seems to come right (probably because of a mix of clients and servers being out of sync). However, there were a few people who had the latest updates (clean installs in some cases) and the servers were up to date as well and still couldn't connect. The solution that I posted did solve the problem for those people. >You can run an HLDS update on the server with the -verify_all switch and it will check all the content against the master list which is what the clients are updated with. > I would recommend extending the params to running the update tool with -verify_all and -game gamename. The reason being, that in my efforts to get my server on the master lists I've been ensuring that the server is up to date. Running with -verify_all only appears to update the "half-life" part of the server only. Specifying the game will check the files in the specified game folder as well as the half-life engine. I have to say that this is an observation for Day of Defeat only. I couldn't possibly comment on CS or any of the other games as I don't run them. Thanks for your response qUiCkSiLvEr. Regards Stephen _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds
