Forcing mods and TCs to work with stock UT2004 files
- Thread starter tdw-socke
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Absolutely. I could have sworn I typed all this up for INA/Atari/UnrealAdmin forums a while back, but looks like I didn't! D'oh!
We've all been using the standard multimod plan of adding extra paths to your stock UT2004 server.ini with pretty good success. However, a few mods and total conversions use some files that already exist in stock UT2004. As we know, when players don't have the same files as the server, that will generate a mismatch and the client disconnects. That didn't make sense to me because depending on what the files are, they may not be required for server use. I started digging.
In the case of the first project that drove this workaround, Deathball, the files causing mismatch disconnects were 2K4Menus.utx and UT2004Thumbnails.utx. These are client-side GUI eyecandy that the server has no use for at all. Surely there's some way to exempt them from the client checks since it's not necessary for them to match for security reasons or.. hell.. ANY reason. In fact the dedicated server version of these two textures contains NO graphics at all. It's stripped out, cause hey, what would a headless server need a gui for? I did some reading and I found that yes, there were packageflags on these textures that could be set to exempt them from the client checks. Bingo! Time to test this.
I took the dedicated server's two problem files and did the following:
This creates new texture files that I renamed to the original names. I replaced the stock files on my server with these packageflag modified files and found I could now connect to my server both with stock Ut2004 textures in use or 3rd party Deathball ones. Success! Another problem for UT2Vote and multimod servers solved. Unfortunately, this doesn't do a thing for AntiTCC and its specific interface checks. (but that's a different issue)
Killing Floor came up and was billed as a single player mission mod with some multiplayer action too. Unfortunately coop won't work - the multiplayer turned out to be a remix of invasion. This time around, with zombies and a points purchasing system to get weapon upgrades/ammo/health. I thought I would toss this up on the server and give that dev a little help by laying out how easy it is to add it as a votable mod to servers via UT2Vote. I banged right into my old buddy again: mismatch disconnect.
Ooh, haven't seen that one in a long time. This meeting was courtesy of 2K4MenuSounds.uax and a search of the folders turned up 2K4Menus.utx (already patched on my own servers) as well. I did the same packageflag set for that uax file and it solved the incompatabilities for that mod now too.
This is something I should probably mention too.. I had modded those files a long time ago and as a result, I never noticed what, if any, other mods needed this trick to be done. I simply put stuff up and it worked up til KF added a 3rd file to the necessary patch mix. I don't know if this changes things for any mods that may have been thought to be unsupportable by UT2Vote as a multimod candidate, but it's something to think about.
HTH, and of course, any Q's? Bring em.
edit - I should move this to the public side..
We've all been using the standard multimod plan of adding extra paths to your stock UT2004 server.ini with pretty good success. However, a few mods and total conversions use some files that already exist in stock UT2004. As we know, when players don't have the same files as the server, that will generate a mismatch and the client disconnects. That didn't make sense to me because depending on what the files are, they may not be required for server use. I started digging.
In the case of the first project that drove this workaround, Deathball, the files causing mismatch disconnects were 2K4Menus.utx and UT2004Thumbnails.utx. These are client-side GUI eyecandy that the server has no use for at all. Surely there's some way to exempt them from the client checks since it's not necessary for them to match for security reasons or.. hell.. ANY reason. In fact the dedicated server version of these two textures contains NO graphics at all. It's stripped out, cause hey, what would a headless server need a gui for? I did some reading and I found that yes, there were packageflags on these textures that could be set to exempt them from the client checks. Bingo! Time to test this.
I took the dedicated server's two problem files and did the following:
Code:
ucc packageflags 2K4Menus.utx 2K4Menus1.utx +ServerSideOnly +ClientOptional
ucc packageflags UT2004Thumbnails.utx UT2004Thumbnails1.utx +ServerSideOnly +ClientOptionalKilling Floor came up and was billed as a single player mission mod with some multiplayer action too. Unfortunately coop won't work - the multiplayer turned out to be a remix of invasion. This time around, with zombies and a points purchasing system to get weapon upgrades/ammo/health. I thought I would toss this up on the server and give that dev a little help by laying out how easy it is to add it as a votable mod to servers via UT2Vote. I banged right into my old buddy again: mismatch disconnect.
Ooh, haven't seen that one in a long time. This meeting was courtesy of 2K4MenuSounds.uax and a search of the folders turned up 2K4Menus.utx (already patched on my own servers) as well. I did the same packageflag set for that uax file and it solved the incompatabilities for that mod now too.
This is something I should probably mention too.. I had modded those files a long time ago and as a result, I never noticed what, if any, other mods needed this trick to be done. I simply put stuff up and it worked up til KF added a 3rd file to the necessary patch mix. I don't know if this changes things for any mods that may have been thought to be unsupportable by UT2Vote as a multimod candidate, but it's something to think about.
HTH, and of course, any Q's? Bring em.
edit - I should move this to the public side..
Last edited:
Shame on me actually... I worked this out over a year ago and the only blabbing I did about it was in a dusty corner of the interweb for Deathball server admins: http://forum.gameservers.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15928
I wonder what mods would have had a little longer life if this trick is needed to get them working on UT2Vote servers..
I wonder what mods would have had a little longer life if this trick is needed to get them working on UT2Vote servers..
OK, so with these instructions and a copy of the dedicated server I can generate the contents of the multimod.zip file originally hosted at:
http://bud.recongamer.com/deathball/multimod.zip
Sweet!
Actually, this is better than having the zipped files for deathball. It takes up less space and is generic (as you mentioned!); applicable to other mods with the same probs.
http://bud.recongamer.com/deathball/multimod.zip
Sweet!
Actually, this is better than having the zipped files for deathball. It takes up less space and is generic (as you mentioned!); applicable to other mods with the same probs.
