Hi everybody, I have a dedi server and all components we use have the autodownload URL. With the old UI it worked perfect. With the new one we started to have problems. It works OK when you release a fully new component, but as soon as you start releasing new versions of existing components, you click to join the server and it stays forever in the "joining server" screen. Autodownload URLs work fine if you test them from a browser. We found 2 workarounds for this: 1. It works if you delete or rename the "Packages" folder and create an empty one 2: it also works if you manually download and install the upgraded component. Has anybody seen this? Are we doing something wrong?
I'll add a bit more into this subject. This is how the component is installed in the server: And this is how the component is downloaded into my local "Packages" folder: I'm pretty sure the old UI was saving the file with the original name, so there were no conflicts. Now the file is saved using the component name, without version, and then, everytime you publish a new version of an existing component, RF2 finds a file with the same name it's trying to save and it's not able to overwrite it. In fact, we found the easiest workaround is deleting the .rfcmp file in the local "Packages" directory.
Probably it worked because you didn't have old versions of the components, first version download always work.
My assumption: As the downloader looses the version suffix, it may cause issues on "second try" to install stuff. So each time the client downloads a mod with that component, the name is there, but no version to identify contents.
but I am not sure if this a "new ui" thing. I had this issue while working on the APX CLI, and that was about 8 months ago.
In our league, we've been using autodownload for years to distribute new versions of components and never had this problem, that's why I think old UI was saving the files with original name or at least with version name included to avoid conflicts.
To add to this thread, I found an issue with the autodownload. When I enabled it, it downloaded either the track or the main car mod, but, it didn't download the pace car I had added and if the user didn't have that pace car, it just left them on the Join the server screen. It did not say they were missing any packages, it just would never let them join. Drivers, like myself, how had the pace car installed, had no problems. By removing the pace car from the mod, all the drivers could join.
Hi all, I detected another weird behavior of the new UI in relation with downloads. RF2 components have always had a "URL" property which is supposed to be the download URL for that component. I always set it for our components as I host the files in a high-bandwidth service (Amazon S3). However, I've realized recently that the new UI seems to ignore the download URL and always download the files from the RF2 server machine. I verified it analyzing network traffic. Does someone have any other experiences with that? Can you please verify if download URLs are still working?
I'll answer myself to say that I found the right combination so that the component's download URL is used. First place, you have to set Autodownloads to false in the multiplayer.json file and then you have to delete the rfcmp files from the server packages folder, leaving the rfmod files only
Some more testing in the last couple of weeks shows these results: If a server is password-protected, autodownload only works from Packages folder, not external servers Same thing if the RFCMP file name contains uppercase letters (I know it sounds stupid, but...) Maximum length for autodownload URL component property is 64 characters. If you enter a longer one, it will be truncated and, of course, autodownload from external server won't work In a perfect world, all of this would be documented somewhere, but you know, this is living life RF2 way
I host a dedicated server among a group of friends and we've all stayed with the old UI to avoid problems (we initially had system crashes after the new UI update and just greatly prefer the usability and layout of the old UI). Overall, if we are using offline and dedi servers only, is there any new compelling reason to upgrade to the new UI yet? I'd eventually like to try the new competition system but don't want to sacrifice reliability or the ease of using the old UI just for that.
