I found a trick to avoid alot of your launch problems

i didnt say people do not notice empires, i said the way it represented is not good enough

 

what thread? i didnt find it, can you direct with link?

also some users dont have the empires booting issue. yesterday i talked during game to a few players , and they were'nt aware of any problem with empires client.
so its kinda, not strict for everyone

 

http://forums.empiresmod.com/showthread.php?t=17958

If you still have GCFs then Empires boots fine. If you do a fresh install of steam or delete the GCF's Then it will not boot.....Well unless you know what your doing.
I have a few tools I use that will acquire the GCFs threw Steam. I am sure the devs don't wan't the tools posted here. But since they work that means the GCFs are still hosted on Steam's content servers. Maybe a certain coder...(Candles) can make / find a program to download them using Valve approved methods.

 

thanks 101010

 

It is very likely that the ones who didn't have any problems have been active and had empires installed for a couple versions now, like myself. I have not had issues with launching empires in this version, though I do recall some minor issues I had directly after the version before this one was released.

 

I didn't have any issues with Empires until I tried fixing other people's issues by breaking my installs. Even though it doesn't seem like we're doing anything about it, not a day goes by where I'm not thinking about the issues and the solutions.

 

no one said you dont do anything. i think most people in forum knows your intentions of fixing this.
but just out of curiousity, is the main problem here is knowing why it happans in the code, contacting steam\valve, or just coming up with a programmed solution? im just curious.

 

[adccidental double post]

 

probably a combination of coming up with a solution plus seeing if valve can get off their tush to push the upload button.

 

I also did several fresh installs of Empires on different computers and it always worked fine for me.

 

What download location do you have steam set to ?
Also what other source games do you also have installed ?

 

If someone does a fresh install and it works, I want to know two things:

The first is that if the empires GCFs are in their steamapps folder, because that's the first MountAppFilesystem error.

The second is if they have *any* other Source games, and if so, what are they and when they were installed. Also, if at all possible, because this is incredibly unlikely for them to know, the last time they updated Source SDK Base 2007. I have a computer with me that I can wipe and reformat as much as I want for the next two days, and I just did the freshest possible install of Empires on it. No dice.

EDIT: Also, if you're certain that they didn't have the GCF's before and that they got installed along with Empires, tell me what they have their download server set to.

 

(Five hours later...)

So, did a fresh install of Empires. Installed Windows, ran updates, installed drivers, installed Steam, installed Empires. The absolute freshest install I could possibly do. Launch Empires from Steam, MountAppblahblah for the Empires GCFs. Run the launcher directly, can't find console\whatever.vtf.

So from here I split into two branches. The first one, I try and tackle running from the launcher directly, because I feel like it's bypassing the GCFs and would have a better chance of working. I throw in the "AdditionalContent 218" line, and put "|all_source_engine_paths|vpks" into it. No dice. So I try "|all_source_engine_paths|vpks\depot_206_dir.vpk". Nothing. I pass it the direct path to that VPK, "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Source SDK Base 2007\vpks\depot_206_dir.vpk". Still can't find it. I'm fairly certain that settles the question of whether or not Empires can mount VPKs. Hint: It can't.

So at this point, I say "fuck it" and extract all the VPK's to "C:\Temp". Then in the gameinfo.txt, I put "C:\Temp\hl2" into the Search path. It successfully finds the texture files! Or, at least, it doesn't error out on me. It loads up the background, the little Steam overlay pops up in the corner, and the window goes black. Cursor is there, nothing is happening, everything is black. Blacker than black, but not blacker than how my soul feels at the moment. I try copying the broken GCFs into the Steamapps directory now, the Source and the Empires ones. Still gives me a black screen. So I call it a dead end on that train of thought, for now at least.

So I go back to my other option. First, revert the changes to the gameinfo.txt, move the GCFs out of Steamapps and then I'm back to where I was. First step, put the Empires GCFs in. To absolutely no surprise, it fails trying to mount the nonexistent Source GCFs. So I put them in and it works, kinda'. This is where I get confused as shit. It launches and gets to the menu, meaning it found the startup_loading file. Going back to the GCFs, the one in the Source 2007 one is corrupted, but the one in the Source 2006 isn't, so it looks like it's loading that one up.

Now we get more confused, hurray! I open up the options menu, and it's fucked something weird. Everything is shoved into the upper left corner for every menu except for the multiplayer options and the Empires-specific controls menu. Same thing with Create Server, all in the upper left, but I can see the scroll bar and read it a bit. I look at the Find Server option, and it's like normal, except there's no servers. Not even empty servers, zero servers showing up. Not even the ones I have favorited. I pop open my console log, and for the sake of everyone's sanity, will have it attached at the end. But, in short, it says the .res files are broken as fuck.

Anyway, I put "map emp_arid", and Empires crashes. Memory access exception. Beautiful. So I put the extracted files back into the SearchPath and try again. Fails again, same error. So I try one more thing: I launch Empires from Steam and then use the Steam Server browser to join a server. It actually chugs along, loading things up. Then it fails, "Model models/Gibs/wood_gib01e.mdl not found and models/error.mdl couldn't be loaded". I checked, and they're definitely where I told Empires to find them, but it wasn't loading them. So I put the error.mdl model directly into Empires models' folder, try again, and it just crashes with the standard memory access exception. At this point, I just call it a night for trying to understand this.

So there are three log files in the attached .zip. The "EPIC" one is from trying to connect to EPIC, same goes for VIPER, and the "options" one is the output from opening the options and create server menus.

 

So empires has even more duct tape than ever imagined?

Maybe if empires code goes public, we can benefit from coders having a real life example of what absolutely not to do.

 

We already discussed that on the forum and came to the conclusion that humanity isn't ready for such a shock yet.