[Ika]

Hi, and greetings to the board, and many thanks for this awesome mod:)

I'm about to install a dedicated server (windows) to play all hl2 games (hl2, ep1, ep2, lostcoast) from start to finish together with my friends.

I found two documentations: the one in this forum, and the one in the wiki, but the gfc lists are different on the two web pages.

Any help would be greatly appreciated about which list should i use?

Thanks:)

[Krazy Kasrkin]

Use the one here on the synergymod.net website. The wiki is out of date.

Be sure to follow the list in order

[Ika]

Krazy Kasrkin, on 06 February 2012 - 05:58 PM, said:

Use the one here on the synergymod.net website. The wiki is out of date.

Be sure to follow the list in order

Hey:)

Thanks for the help! I installed the server and we already played an hour as a test. I noticed a couple of things, and I would like to ask about those if it's not a big problem.

1, I had some warning messages during the extraction of the gfc files (eg.: "episode 1 shared.gfc", "half-life 2 episode one.gfc", etc). For examlpe, here is the log from GFCscape (the latest version) when I was extracting the files from the episode two content.gfc:

Error writing D:\SERVER\orangebox\ep2\sound\vo\npc\vortigaunt\alert_antlions.wav (Error: Unexpected end of GCF stream (0 B of 94693 B)/>.  Has the GCF file been completely acquired?)
Error writing D:\SERVER\orangebox\ep2\sound\vo\outland_01\intro\OL01_VortCall01.wav (Error: Unexpected end of GCF stream (0 B of 186686 B)/>.  Has the GCF file been completely acquired?)
Error writing D:\SERVER\orangebox\ep2\sound\vo\outland_01\intro\OL01_VortCall02c.wav (Error: Unexpected end of GCF stream (0 B of 238681 B)/>.  Has the GCF file been completely acquired?)
Error writing D:\SERVER\orangebox\ep2\sound\vo\outland_01\intro\OL01_VortResp01.wav (Error: Unexpected end of GCF stream (0 B of 153752 B)/>.  Has the GCF file been completely acquired?)
Error writing D:\SERVER\orangebox\ep2\sound\vo\outland_01\intro\OL01_VortResp04.wav (Error: Unexpected end of GCF stream (0 B of 154036 B)/>.  Has the GCF file been completely acquired?)
Error writing D:\SERVER\orangebox\ep2\sound\vo\outland_02\sheckley_cover12.wav (Error: Unexpected end of GCF stream (0 B of 90599 B)/>.  Has the GCF file been completely acquired?)
Error writing D:\SERVER\orangebox\ep2\sound\vo\outland_02\sheckley_cover24.wav (Error: Unexpected end of GCF stream (0 B of 106668 B)/>.  Has the GCF file been completely acquired?)

(please note that I checked the integritiy of the gfc files and they are all validated as the lates and complette versions)
Question: is this something I should worry about?


2, The number of files are insanely huge. My SERVER directory only contains a L4D2 and a SYNERGY installations, and more than 100K files in there already.
Question: What is the best way to track which files needs to be updated. How can I know if there is a new version of a gfc file, which I need to update and extract again?


3, The srcds session quite heavily punished the server's CPU. Well it's not a speedy box, it's only a low power dualcore atom running at 2.2Ghz, but I never had any problem running dedicated servers before with any game whatsoever. We play L4d2 coop on custom maps all the time without problems. Is it possible that - because of the 2007 sourcemod library - the HT/MultiThreading is not supported? The atom is an inorder-execution cpu, and the L4D2 server gains a lot when I add the two virtual cores with HT. I can't say they are just as heavily loaded as the first core (probably only handling the network on a separate thread and other similar things), but they are all noticeably doing something. On the other hand, when I run the Synergy server, only core0 is active with a full load, and we had serious cpu lags in heavy boss fight scenes.
Question: Is there anything I can do to prevent this problem, because I need the HT for the L4D2 server, and this cheap little box was hosting things very well until now.


Thanks:)

[Krazy Kasrkin]

1. I'm not sure what causes that but you can re-extract the individual files that failed into the proper directory.
They are only sound files, so its not critical, but if you don't extract them they will simply not play in-game -- so your intro ep2 levels would be funky with silent vortigaunt calls.

2. Yeah 100k files is about right for L4D2 + Synergy (w/ all hl2 +eps content) it is indeed a lot of content. When it comes to updating campaign files like HL2, you must re-extract the corresponding .GCFs manually as you did during installation. Updates to the Half-Life campaigns from valve are sparse so this process will be infrequent (Last update to hl2 was ~June 2010.) As for knowing when an update arrives, the best way would to just keep an eye on your steam's downloads -- some patches aren't documented; if it were to be any thing significant like the one in 2010, synergy will naturally show errors such as "mapname.bsp differs from server's" depending on the update.

3. I have used a similar CPU for dedicated servers for Synergy and it caps it 100% at active areas in-game, Synergy overall is a relatively expensive game in terms of processing power -- especially on the networking end (most hosting services charge double per slot for Synergy due to this), and it is only single threaded (with exception for particles system I believe). There is probably nothing you can do in a piratical sense to fix this.

[ultradude25]

Ika, on 07 February 2012 - 09:42 AM, said:

Hey:)

Thanks for the help! I installed the server and we already played an hour as a test. I noticed a couple of things, and I would like to ask about those if it's not a big problem.

1, I had some warning messages during the extraction of the gfc files (eg.: "episode 1 shared.gfc", "half-life 2 episode one.gfc", etc). For examlpe, here is the log from GFCscape (the latest version) when I was extracting the files from the episode two content.gfc:

Error writing D:\SERVER\orangebox\ep2\sound\vo\npc\vortigaunt\alert_antlions.wav (Error: Unexpected end of GCF stream (0 B of 94693 B)/>.  Has the GCF file been completely acquired?)
Error writing D:\SERVER\orangebox\ep2\sound\vo\outland_01\intro\OL01_VortCall01.wav (Error: Unexpected end of GCF stream (0 B of 186686 B)/>.  Has the GCF file been completely acquired?)
Error writing D:\SERVER\orangebox\ep2\sound\vo\outland_01\intro\OL01_VortCall02c.wav (Error: Unexpected end of GCF stream (0 B of 238681 B)/>.  Has the GCF file been completely acquired?)
Error writing D:\SERVER\orangebox\ep2\sound\vo\outland_01\intro\OL01_VortResp01.wav (Error: Unexpected end of GCF stream (0 B of 153752 B)/>.  Has the GCF file been completely acquired?)
Error writing D:\SERVER\orangebox\ep2\sound\vo\outland_01\intro\OL01_VortResp04.wav (Error: Unexpected end of GCF stream (0 B of 154036 B)/>.  Has the GCF file been completely acquired?)
Error writing D:\SERVER\orangebox\ep2\sound\vo\outland_02\sheckley_cover12.wav (Error: Unexpected end of GCF stream (0 B of 90599 B)/>.  Has the GCF file been completely acquired?)
Error writing D:\SERVER\orangebox\ep2\sound\vo\outland_02\sheckley_cover24.wav (Error: Unexpected end of GCF stream (0 B of 106668 B)/>.  Has the GCF file been completely acquired?)

(please note that I checked the integritiy of the gfc files and they are all validated as the lates and complette versions)
Question: is this something I should worry about?

Completely normal, everyone has that. Those files just don't exist.

[Zuul]

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\carnivor_666\synergy dedicated server\orangebox
is this the right folder to extract gcf files to? subfolders being ep2/hl2/episodic ? damn I'm going nuts over this.
When I run dedicated server, there is only DOTA , team fortress and synergy to choose. and if I choose synergy, there are only syn maps available

edit: there is no /content dir in my synergy folder. Or elsewhere. Shiet.

[Krazy Kasrkin]

You don't need to extract anything if your hosting a dedicated server though stram. All you need to do is edit the mount.cache file with a text editor to add ep1 and ep2 (assuming the steam account has it).

Only stand-alone servers need extracting.

[Zuul]

Krazy Kasrkin, on 08 March 2012 - 04:59 AM, said:

You don't need to extract anything if your hosting a dedicated server though stram. All you need to do is edit the mount.cache file with a text editor to add ep1 and ep2 (assuming the steam account has it).

Only stand-alone servers need extracting.

the 2 mount.cache files say ep2 ep1 lost hl2
I have all hl2, all started once, and verified
PS. I just realized that your nick backwards is "knickersack" fun intended?

pss. everything is purple......