Archive for July, 2009

Another Left 4 Dead update!

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

An optional update for Left 4 Dead is now available.  Please run hldsupdatetool to receive it.  The specific changes include:

- Lobbies and games you’ve recently joined and left will be ignored for two minutes.  This will prevent a player from ending up in the same lobby or game when quickly searching for another.
- Restored Find a Game Lobby/Find a Game in Progress to the Create Lobby screen available from the Lobby Browser.
- Updated localization text.
- Fixed an issue where VPK.EXE would not extract all files.

Jason

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Left 4 Dead game server update (17th July)

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

 Finishing off our week of updates, a Left 4 Dead game server update as released a few days ago.

Left 4 Dead has been updated to include a lobby browser.  This is an optional update.  The lobby browser (under Play Online) will show you a list of optimal games available for you to join.  The browser pares down the thousands of lobbies and games currently being played to show you the best list of  games available to you.  This list includes official and add-on campaigns, including add-on campaigns you have not yet installed, making it a great way to discover them.   You can filter by difficulty, official and/or add-on campaigns and by lobbies and/or games in progress.

The Play on Steam Group Server screen now displays which Steam group it’s searching while updating the list.

After calling a vote to change difficulty in game it is now correctly updated in matchmaking.

Add-on Campaigns:
- When downloading a new version of an add-on and installing it (by double clicking the .VPK file), it will now correctly overwrite the pervious version, even while Left 4 Dead is currently running.
- Addressed a crash when two mission files with the same name are installed.
- Steam Group Servers now will now correctly offer download links when running add-on campaigns.

Server:
- The server will now warn if the public or private tags exceed their limits.  Public tags are limited to 63 characters.  Private tags used for matchmaking are now limited to 1024 characters.

SDK:
- The VPK tool can now handle campaigns larger than 500MB.
- You can now drop an add-on a VPK file onto the VPK tool to have it extract it for you.
- Detail.vbsp and lights.rad have been added to the distribution.

Note that the Linux Steam objects have been renamed.  This shouldn’t cause any issues.

Jason

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Counterstrike 1.6 server update (15th July)

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

Again, catching, an update for ‘old’ CS 1.6 servers :)

An optional update for Counter-Strike/Condition Zero is now available.  Please run hldsupdatetool to receive.  This update was previously available as a beta.  The specific changes are:

Half-Life Engine
- Added -sys_ticrate command line option to allowed forced override of ticrate
- Prevent more cases of server redirection

CS/CZ
- Added -nobots option to allow forced override of bots on servers

Jason

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TF2 update (15 July)

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

Catching up on the updates here guys. Here was one a few days ago for Team Fortress 2 servers.

A required update for Team Fortress 2 is now available.  Please run hldsupdatetool to receive it.  The specific changes include:

Linux Dedicated Server
* Improved connection logic to help servers that aren’t automatically reconnecting to Steam.

Engine
* Fixed seeing error dialogs if the “-nocrashdialog” command line parameter is present.

Team Fortress 2
* Added an optional per-map particle manifest called <mapname>_particles.txt, which should be located in the maps directory, so map authors can load custom particle files.
* Fixed minicrits resulting in reduced damage for weapons at close ranges.
* Fixed the Cloak and Dagger not regenerating at the correct rate.
* Fixed setinfo exploit that allowed restricted convars to be set while connected to a server.
* Fixed tournament mode being interrupted if mp_timelimit hits before both stopwatch rounds have been played.
* Fixed “jointeam unassigned” exploit.
* Fixed being able to respawn during the chat time before a level change.
* Fixed “sensitivity” ConVar not capping the upper value which sometimes caused a server crash.
* Prevented some exploits based on mat_dxlevel being changed in-game.
* Updated ripple effects for water drips to improve performance.

Jason

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