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Maps and Map Variants (From Us and You!)

Yoshiro

Senior Community Manager
Staff member
  • Oct 10, 2005
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    Hello everyone,

    We know many of you out there want to know when you can get your boots into some new maps, and we have some news about this across all fronts! First, thanks to our great modding/mapping community we've pinpointed an issue with the community SDK and hope to have a fix out shortly that will allow the community map projects to start rolling out.

    We are now working on a new version of Song Be (and other existing variants), so that you will have new Territory and Supremacy maps before too long (as we continue to work on future content). We are aiming to ship a Beta version soon, via the Workshop (http://steamcommunity.com/app/418460/workshop/)! And, yes, there are already completely new maps in the works - but they'll take a bit longer.

    Most of you can stop here, but those of you who want to know more about Steam Workshop hosting and SDK upload tools carry on!

    The following are the details server admins will need to set this up on the server:
    1. Make sure that the server is not running. If it is running, the Workshop setup will be overridden the next time you restart the server.
    2. Add a new section to the ROEngine.ini config file: [OnlineSubsystemSteamworks.TWWorkshopSteamworks]
    3. For each Workshop item you want the server to download, add a ServerSubscribedWorkshopItems=<number> line in that section. You can find the number by looking for the id= part of the the URL of the Workshop item in Steam. For example, the URL of the Workshop Test map is http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile.../?id=952365960, so the line will be "ServerSubscribedWorkshopItems=952365960". There might be other text=number parts of the URL, so be sure to use only the number after "id=".

    Example [OnlineSubsystemSteamworks.TWWorkshopSteamworks] section (This ID is for the Cousteau Plantation faction mod by Nymets1104):
    [OnlineSubsystemSteamworks.TWWorkshopSteamworks]
    ServerSubscribedWorkshopItems=952365960

    To make clients download the Workshop item from Steam when connecting to the server:
    This will only work for Workshop items that the server downloads itself, that are listed in the [OnlineSubsystemSteamworks.TWWorkshopSteamworks] section as described above.
    1. Make sure that the server is not running. If it is running, the Workshop setup will be overridden the next time you restart the server.
    2. Find the section [IpDrv.TcpNetDriver] in the ROEngine.ini config file.
    3. Add the line "DownloadManagers=OnlineSubsystemSteamworks.St eamW orkshopDownload" to that section. If there are other "DownloadManagers=" lines, make sure this one is the first.
    4. Do not delete anything from this section, except (optionally) other DownloadManagers= lines.


    And for our content creators, we are also looking at updating the workshop upload tool to include both .ini and .int files so that servers and clients can better handle more complex mods (as well as have maps ship with configs so servers can pick them up more easily in the webadmin).

    Thank you again for your continued support.

    Tripwire Interactive & Antimatter Games
     
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    With the steam workshop changes server side, will the steam workshop map files download to the server? Or do server operators still need to manually sort them out as we do at the moment? Seems like the whole point is so the server gets the files automatically. Just asking because I have done the two steps above and can see no additional map files etc.

    EDIT / UPDATE - found the files. They just were not where I expected them to be. Look in cache area server peeps.

    Yes please to something for the .ini files.
     
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    Has anyone in the dev team looked to see if the Steam Workshop process works when maps are being constantly updated by the mappers? I am yet to confirm this properly, but I am getting the feeling that the Steam Workshop process is only going to work once a mapper has finished making changes to their map. I thought Steam Workshop would overwrite the old maps by using checksum and if the map name was consistent then the servers wouldn't require manual changing, but I am getting the feeling this isn't the case.

    A real shame as the idea behind the Steam Workshop seemed so good.
     
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    Cat_in_da_Hat;n2300076 said:
    Has anyone in the dev team looked to see if the Steam Workshop process works when maps are being constantly updated by the mappers? I am yet to confirm this properly, but I am getting the feeling that the Steam Workshop process is only going to work once a mapper has finished making changes to their map. I thought Steam Workshop would overwrite the old maps by using checksum and if the map name was consistent then the servers wouldn't require manual changing, but I am getting the feeling this isn't the case.

    A real shame as the idea behind the Steam Workshop seemed so good.


    Workshop should update the map any time the mapper updates their content on both clients and servers. However we have passed along a bug to Valve where Servers are not properly picking up that an update has happened.
     
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    Yoshiro;n2300131 said:
    Workshop should update the map any time the mapper updates their content on both clients and servers. However we have passed along a bug to Valve where Servers are not properly picking up that an update has happened.

    Ok so there is a bug. Would have been good to know this at some point in time. I have been rallying the mappers to update their maps with a consistent name only to fine out the thing is bugged.

    Yoshiro, what about if each night the server deleted all the custom maps and then re-downloaded them back using the process. Would that get the latest version on the server ?
     
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    Cat_in_da_Hat;n2300173 said:
    what about if each night the server deleted all the custom maps and then re-downloaded them back using the process. Would that get the latest version on the server ?

    I just tested this method with our test server and deleting cache subfolders indeed re-downloaded the map from SWS to server after a map change (to any map). I was not able to test a situation where we previously had an earlier version from SWS, but this total reload of all maps could work.

    But while this is not too difficult to automate for server keepers with OS access to server computer, it would be a slightly different thing for server keepers using GSPs.
     
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