Fresh install of empires

Discussion in 'Closed bugs' started by ViroMan, Nov 3, 2013.

  1. ViroMan

    ViroMan Black Hole (*sniff*) Bully

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  2. JustGoFly

    JustGoFly Member

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    Viro - yes that was very helpful. But what I ended up doing was following that list and borrowing one file at a time,from a friend, based on the error list. It took forever, until I decided to just add every GCF file - and all worked. So I thought a list of the files needed in addition to the error codes would be useful. There are some in my list that are not in yours, and I can't know if they are necessary or not.

    Candles mentioned there is a different LAUNCH work around that he recommends, but I didn't find that. Maybe someone should post a new thread with the recommended fix and keep first post up to date.
     
    Last edited: Dec 15, 2013
  3. Candles

    Candles CAPTAIN CANDLES, DUN DUN DUN, DUN DUN DUN DUN.

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    It's on the front page of the website. You should visit it sometime.
     
  4. ViroMan

    ViroMan Black Hole (*sniff*) Bully

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    who would visit the front page of the website when we have the forums in our bookmark?
     
  5. JustGoFly

    JustGoFly Member

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    As to be expected with this game no support can come without snide comments.

    I did visit the web page, followed the LAUNCH advice, which did not work. I then resorted to the Forums which pointed at PUBLIC rather than any specific thread. After some searchs, I found Chronos post, which may have referenced ViroMan, and stumbled onto the solution.

    Good luck with your tech support. I will remove my attempt to be helpful from these bug threads, you have it covered.
     
    Last edited: Dec 15, 2013
  6. ViroMan

    ViroMan Black Hole (*sniff*) Bully

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    I did not mean it as a snide remark, I was being serious. How many people who regularly visit the forums actually go through the web page first?
     
  7. JustGoFly

    JustGoFly Member

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    I went to Google to find a solution. It pointed me at the forums not at the web page. I checked the web page after talking to Candles but it didn't solve the problem so I resorted to the forums again. I would think a sticky post with keywords as is in your list of errors post would be appropriate. That should reference the Web Page rather than ridiculing people for not checking a static web page. Your list of errors should also be on that web page and a simple explanation of why this happened and why it is not easily fixed.

    Good tech support answers the question you ask then the one you might ask as a follow up. The web page almost does that but fails by simply referencing the forums when the Launch solution fails. Also I don't read every single post here, so expecting everyone who plays to do that is unreasonable.

    Do a google search to find out what 90% of your players are finding when they run into "MountAppFilesystem() failed". EmpiresMod.com is no where in that search and it is not referenced in these threads (that I have found), but it should be easily found?

    Type in "MountAppFilesystem() failed empires mod" and the EmpiresMod.com web site will still not be found. I think someone needs to update the :
    <META NAME="Keywords" ...>
    <meta name="rating" content="General"><meta name="robots" content="ALL"><meta name="revisit-after" content="7 days">

    This tells web crawlers to come back once a week. The more links to EmpiresMod.com you put in the forums will help seed the web crawlers to add that to their regular round of web search gathering of keywords and links.
     
    Last edited: Dec 15, 2013
  8. complete_

    complete_ lamer

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    you sure because its the second result for all things mount error
     
  9. JustGoFly

    JustGoFly Member

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    Maybe I'm not being very clear.

    First Google search result is the Forums.EmpiresMod.com, Second is a steam link, the www.empiresmod.com is not on the list and that is where the post is for the Launch fix. My refering to EmpiresMod.com should have said www.Empiresmod.com.

    Scar ran into same issue as me. No 2007 Source SDK installed, so launch fix does not work. Mine is a new install as of about 3 months ago on a new Win 7 PC. It's worked without issue since then until a few days ago.

    I talked to Candles during a game tonight to explain the issue to him. Scar echo'd that he has to fix it the same as I do by unzipping the GCF files. I tried turning off Steam Updates and Empires updates but every time I restart they are turned back on again and a restart of Steam deletes the GCF files. I unzip the saved ones and am back working again - no don't restart Steam (since it would just delete them again).

    I hope this is a bit more clear, and might explain why some people are still having the problem even though the launch fix is posted.
     
    Last edited: Dec 16, 2013
  10. ViroMan

    ViroMan Black Hole (*sniff*) Bully

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    The fuck? Restarting steam deletes your gcf's?! Ok so, atm you still do not have 2007 sdk installed? What other source games do you have installed?

    Not having the sdk "installed", steam might be removing files it thinks are extra. I duno.
     
  11. JustGoFly

    JustGoFly Member

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    Yes - everytime I start STEAM it deletes most of my GCF's - not all. I will look tonight to see what other games are installed that run off of HL base.

    I bought a new machine about six months ago. Installed Win 7 and fresh copy of Empires via Steam install (not backup recovery). It did not install the 2007 sdk. I asked Scar last night, who has the exact same problem as me, and he is setup the same way.

    The solution posted via LAUNCH options is for those that have installed the 2007 sdk. Candles mentioned that it was supposed to automatically install but that obviously is not working. So you need a recommendation of two fixes ways to fix this. I know you guys can't give out the GFC files, but others not associated with development might be able to do that.

    Candles said the GFC's contain all zero's. If that is true, then creating the files from a utility to write the files of the proper size is all that is needed. But somehow I doubt they can be all zeros.

    Are there any Steam logs I can turn on that might help debug this issue?
     
  12. Lazybum

    Lazybum :D Staff Member Moderator

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    Out of curiosity, did you bother to install source 2007 sdk yourself? It's in the tools list. If steam doesn't install it along with empires you might have to do it yourself.
     
  13. JustGoFly

    JustGoFly Member

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    Is this a solution I should try or might this put me into a different failure mode ?

    I restarted steam while watching the folder and while it did it's update it again removed most of the GCF files.

    I checked the installed games to see if any others are based off of Source SDK 2007 and have no way of knowing if a game is based off of Source SDK 2007.

    My common folder has:
    Arma 2
    Arma 2 Operation Arrowhead
    ArmA Armed Assault
    Empires
    Left 4 Dead 2
    nmrih
    PlanetSide 2
    Source SDK Base
    Source SDK Base 2007
    War Thunder
    Wargame Airland Battle
    Wargame European Escalation

    Note the Source SDK Base is empty and the Source SDK Base 2007 looks to be incomplete or mostly deleted. I never deleted it, so maybe an update removed it.
     
  14. Lazybum

    Lazybum :D Staff Member Moderator

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    Ummm I honestly don't know. I thought if you installed one of the source mod games from steam, like empires or dystopia, it would also start the download for the source sdk base. The 2007 one if that engine required it. Could be I was doing something so that's why all my source sdk things are installed though.

    Honestly I don't think you would hurt anything if you installed the 2007 sdk. If you don't currently use them when you do the gfc fix, I don't think it is going to make more problems. It might give you the chance to use the other fix, the one where you launch empires from the sdk.

    I do think nmrih uses that source 2007 base and while l4d2 uses the orange box engine I'm not sure if it uses the sdk base.

    You should wait for Viroman or candles to respond. I could be absolutely wrong because steam does some wonky stuff occasionally.
     
  15. Candles

    Candles CAPTAIN CANDLES, DUN DUN DUN, DUN DUN DUN DUN.

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    Just want to point this out, the first step on the front page *does* say that you should install Source SDK Base 2007.

    Well, they're not all zeros. There is still some header data in there, magic numbers, directory info. You know, the usual stuff. But if you download the files in Vicki's "Fix For MountAppFilesystem() Error" thread, they're like 2.3MB and expand to a couple GB when they're decompressed. Only thing I know that does that is a long string of zeros with some header data, unless someone invented quantum data compression.

    However, that was specifically referring to the Empires GCFs. As far as the Source 2007 GCFs are concerned, I don't know if they're corrupted or contain long strings of zeros. I think it's a mix of both, actually.


    Anyway, here's the run-down on what's happening. Steam is trying to mount GCFs for Empires that it doesn't need, and it's trying to mount the Source 2007 content. Source 2007 uses VPKs and Empires uses loose files now, which is causing the MountAppFilesystem errors and the console\startup_loading errors. The solution that we're doing is to put the launch options -game "../empires/empires" for Source 2007 and run Empires through Source 2007 directly. From what I've gathered through testing, this works because Steam doesn't try to mount the GCFs for a mod when launched this way, and because the code for mounting VPKs already exists in some fashion in Source 2007. "../empires/empires" should refer in most cases to the person's gameinfo.txt file for Empires, unless they have Empires installed on a different drive.

    Now we don't completely know how to deal with the GCF issues, we're still trying to contact Valve about that. But we do know that fixing the VPK issues requires an update to Source 2013, because that's what has the updated filesystem mounting code.

    Following the instructions on the front page should work every time except in the cases where someone has Empires and Source 2007 installed on different drives. I doubt that we're going to find any better fix until we're done with the porting.
     
  16. JustGoFly

    JustGoFly Member

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    Yes - it does - and I will do that. Thank you.
     
  17. ViroMan

    ViroMan Black Hole (*sniff*) Bully

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    well I did I test zip of all the needed gcf's and it comes to about 5mb if you use broken gcf's. My backup had uncorrupted gcf's and they do not compress much. That was a week ago. Somehow I lost my backup files. :(
    I have another set of them on a HD that isn't connected however, they are the broken gcf's since they are from my corrupted hd(its was failing so I got a new one but kept it for some reason). Using the broken gcf's do allow empires to work though.
     

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