IT'S TIME TO BACK YOUR MODS UP PEOPLE

[Stormy]

I think they are moving all of their games to the common folder and discarding anything that isn't used by their code. So custom models and textures sitting in, say, ep2 will be deleted. Maybe if you are working on a compiled mod you won't be affected, maybe. In any case backups are never a bad idea.

[Generalvivi]

This happened to me while I was working on a hl2 dm map recently. I had just finished a test, shut down, restarted to play with another friend, steam updated and changed my directory...

it was ok though, they put everything I had in a new folder structure called "downloads" or something.

I didn't have any custom content, but it seemed to work just fine.

[ScarT]

I just updated to the SteamPipe beta yesterday, and I didn' lose anything. I checked and our latest release still works perfectly even though everything was moved (Source SDK Base 2007 still uses the GCF files, so some of the old base ones are not deleted).

[SM Sith Lord]

Oh man, so they are going to move my CSS folder but not my gigs and gigs of addon content? That's no good.

Information links:
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamPipe
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7388-QPFN-2491

Looks like Source engine assets are no longer shared, which means... my source-based game launcher might finally be able to launch Counter-Strke: Source and other Source engine games! Before SteamPipe, I would get a "Only one instance of the Source engine can run at a time" which I assumed was due to resource locking of shared files. /me crosses his fingers

Haven't been able to find instructions on how to update my mod to use SteamPipe yet. Can't find it in the beta opt-in menu either. Curious to see how this changes things for Alien Swarm SDK mods.

[Gambini]

I have been dismissing this for some reason. But I should haven´t.

This is so sad. They seem to have broken the game´s code somehow. After publishing a mod for other game I went back to my hl2 mod just to notice many things are broken:

Momentary_rot_buttons get stuck and dont return. Striders behave like shit, they shot from their eyes and barely move, they simply turn to face you but dont adopt an attack position. This is happening in my mod at least and those were things that worked flawlesly last time i tried them (like 5 months ago). How someone can find the will to finish a mod if it´s going to get broken this way?

Well, this rant assuming these things are related to their "update"

[SM Sith Lord]

Just so I'm clear, when people say it is breaking their mods, do they mean mods that they compile from the source code, or like mods that are scripts, models, and maps that you drop directly into the HL2 folder?

[Gambini]

The latter. I did some further tests and the momentary_rot_buttton thing is random but the striders are fucked all around.

[Stormy]

Yeah I'm pretty sure it only removes the custom content you have in your valve games folders. For instance I compile all my stuff to ep2 so if they move that I would lose like... 4 years of models. I think if it's a mod you have created from the base it will be in the sourcemods folder anyway so it shouldn't be touched. Doesn't matter, back it up anyway.

[[Steve]]

Everything updated okay for me, however the biggest issue is that everything now uses VPK2 which is currently not mountable in any of my swarm branch mods , Lets hope they add vpk2 support to swarm one day!

[ErikKiller]

the striders are fucked all around.

Including the final strider in Episode One? Can you check it out as well?

[Gambini]

I´m talking of ep2. Should check ep1 but i havent used it in ages. The striders at the sawmill level are tied to sequences and is not noticeable. But the one i have in one of my maps doesn´t do things right.

Also more stuff I´ve been finding: Many many NPC voices report as "missing" and now even weapon sounds are missing and seem to make the game crash.

I don´t know if these things are something happening only in my end, but the game worked well before this and the linux update. I have no clue if these things are connected, but I havent touched my HD ever since and all these changes seem suspicious. The only folder moved to "common" is Half life 2 and has only a savegame on it. Yet, all my HL2.exe files are either removed or updated. WTF

[ErikKiller]

Ahhh wait a second, I think a lot of the voice acting in my Episode 2 was missing!

[Gambini]

I´ve been googling and trying to find as much info as possible about this. I know this is not related to the game being moved to another folder, but I really hope anybody has a clue about what´s happening:

I´m having an important loss of performance when playing my mod. I´ve lost about 5/10 fps of average framerate. Even playing the same maps in the same condition than when i left them.

hl2.exe has been updated recently and it seems all dll files inside my bin folder did too. WTF?

Besides that Steam didnt move my files.

[Aazell]

This has been driving me nuts.

So Ep2 breaks and all the dialogue can't be found. Characters stand around looking dumb when they should be talking.
In the SDK I lose all potential dialogue from EP2 severely limiting what Alyx can say and do when building my mod.

My mod: http://www.moddb.com/mods/half-life-2-deep-down

So on the advice of a few online, I upgrade to the Steampipe version of EP2.

BIG MISTAKE!

This update moves all content for HL2 games over to the VPK format (like Left 4 Dead 2 etc..). This is all well and good (its easier to package mods and a more efficient format) however the old SDK can't access the VPK files. So that's it, if you upgrade you'll lose all access to the SDK tools.

HL2 hasn't been updated to allow for vpk addons either. So you can add an addon folder and put your VPK mods in it, but there's no way to activate them. We're left somewhere in limbo.

For TF2, DOD and CS:S they've released a Beta version of the SDK and you can find those tools in the bin folder within the game directory but that update has not happened for the HL2 games.

It sounds weird but I'm so utterly depressed about all this. I was about 2 days away from releasing a project that I've been working on for over a year now. I didn't realise how dependent I was on HL2 mapping until it's gone.

LOL This is not healthy.

[Armageddon]

Yeah Valve sucks.