I've tried all sorts of search paths and AppIDs. I'm fairly certain that Empires is unable to mount .vpk files because it's on Source 2007 and VPKs are from 2013.
2006 and 2007 are also vpk Start steam then under tools You will see source sdk base 2006 and 2007 Install them. If you have them already then do a fresh install. Old in stall was under your user name. New install places them in the common folder. The new install has vpk C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Source SDK Base 2007\vpks To install sdk 2007 steam://install/218 Then run 1 time steam://run/218
Do you have any GCF's with "Source 2007" in your steamapps folder? If you do, then it's mounting and getting the content from those and avoiding the VPKs entirely. Source 2007 was converted to use VPKs, but the codebase for Empires doesn't support VPKs because you need the filesystem code from the 2013 engine to access them, while Empires is on 2007.
No GCFs...In steamapps all I have is folders and acfs appmanifest_218.acf - Is sdk 2007 Other mods that have had this issue have fixed it by changing the gameinfo.txt I think it might be the launcher that is messing up empires. As running it in sourcemods (without launcher) works fine. Also a fix for some mods was adding AdditionalContentId 218 to the gameinfo.txt https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Gameinfo.txt The AppID of the game the mod is to be based on. The mod will have access to all of this game's content, and will not be playable unless it is installed. Tip: For most mods this will be either 215 (Ep1) or 218 (OB), both of which point to different versions of the Source SDK Base. AdditionalContentId <int> (MODS ONLY)
I know but is is a way for people to get in game until it is fixed. It also 100% confirms that the GCFs are not needed and Empires as is can use the new sdk vpk. lol
It didn't work for me yet. Did what you said and it is now downloading empires again. Looks like it is going to show up as two empires installs. edit: Didn't work. both installs fail. Steam empires same error... mod empires: Code: Setup file 'gameinfo.txt' doesn't exist in subdirectory 'C:\Program'. Check your -game parameter of VCONFIG setting.
With about a half hour of fucking around with the steam install I figured out the exact files needed to run it and the error ID's The following list is the files Steam empires is looking for(other then what it installed) and the error code it gives when that file is missing. 17741 Ver 0 = empires_content.gcf 17742 Ver 0 = empires_base.gcf 17743 Ver 0 = empires_scripts.gcf 206 Ver 8 = source materials.gcf 207 Ver 4 = source models.gcf 208 Ver 4 = source sounds.gcf 215 Ver 1 = source sdk base.gcf 216 Ver 82 = source 2007 binaries.gcf 305 Ver 5 = source 2007 shared materials.gcf 306 Ver 0 = source 2007 shared models.gcf 307 Ver 0 = source 2007 shared sounds.gcf 218 Ver 0 = source sdk base 2007.gcf /me takes a bow edit: ohh btw... that is also the order that empires looks for the files.
Since all the the GCF are / was free. Would there be a problem if Empiresmod.com hosted them or allowed people to posting links to where you can download them ? All combined are about 6.14gb or about 1.7 zipped
To expand, yes. There would be a problem if we distributed them. Although they are easily accessible to anyone, it's still Valve's content and Valve still holds all distribution rights for their content. Having no legal or contractual authorization to distribute their content could potentially put us into serious legal consequences if we were to host and distribute it anyway.
But what about mini GCFs. They only list content but do not have any in them. Like the Empires GCFs. As all the content could be just extracted from the VPKs. Just trying to help as I know converting to 2013 will take about a year. That is a long time to go with not having new people able to easily install and run Empires.
We'd still have to either distribute the content directly or post instructions to everyone how to extract the content. That's not curing the problem, that's putting a bandage on the symptoms. Plus, I tried extracting all the content on my end and having it mount empty GCFs, still no dice on getting the game to work.
I have the new broken GCF's, all content from the Source VPK's extracted and symlinked so that Empires can find it. It just straight-up crashes.
