Stupid question about custom sign downloading.

[whynotsimple]

Hello,

I have a probably stupid question about custom signs on a dedicated servers.

We made a few maps which have custom advertisements, you know, the huge Nadeo and Maniaplanet ads. The blocks are skinned by an url like http://www.mysign.com/file.dds

When I play the map offline, it downloads the sign perfectly fine. But when I join the server, where the sign is made to be seen it doesn't download the custom sign.

We searched a lot and also enabled p2p_download and p2p_upload on the server, but it doesn't work.

Do we have to put the signs onto the server too? If yes, where (because the signs are not stored locally, they only are linked to on a webserver)?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[TMarc]

Did you use the locators along with the signs?

[steeffeen]

Did you use the locators along with the signs?

as they are defined by an url and not through local files that's not needed

Do we have to put the signs onto the server too? If yes, where (because the signs are not stored locally, they only are linked to on a webserver)?.

that's not needed as well, (i would think the server doesn't download them anyways, only the clients are doing so, correct me if i'm wrong)

what do you mean with playing it "offline", did you open a lan game?
did you try to put the files into the appropriate folder + correct locators and specify the images then?
(Documents\ManiaPlanet\Skins\Storm\Screens\3x1\)

[whynotsimple]

We did all that.


The thing was that at first the signs didn't download at all.

At later tries one sign downloaded but the second didn't.

Another try later (without any changes to map or server or gameserver) no sign downloaded.

At the next try one sign downlaoded again. Second sign did not.


The funny thing was that the bigger sign (600 kB) downloaded after 2 or 3 seconds (if it downloaded at all) and after waiting 4 or 5 Minutes and even suiciding and respawning a few times the smaller sign (300 kB) did not download. So I assumed it was broken, because the bigger downloaded in seconds and the smaller one not at all in 5 minutes.

If I didn't accidentally idle on the otherwise absolutely empty server for about 13 minutes (doing absolutely nothing and having Maniaplanet minimized) I wouldn't have seen that the second sign finally loaded when I maximized Maniaplanet again. But I don't know if it was after 6 minutes or 13 minutes.

The whole thing is a bit dodgy.

[TMarc]

Did you use the locators along with the signs?

as they are defined by an url and not through local files that's not needed

did you try to put the files into the appropriate folder + correct locators and specify the images then?
(Documents\ManiaPlanet\Skins\Storm\Screens\3x1\)

Do you want to confuse us? Why are locators needed now?

[TMarc]

The whole thing is a bit dodgy.

yeah

Did you try to clean the cache of your local game? Just in case you already have some other custom signs in the cache which might prevent further download?

[steeffeen]

Do you want to confuse us? Why are locators needed now?

there are two different ways to specify the images, either entering the URL directly (= no local file) or selecting an image located in the local folder (which will need an additional locator)

[TMarc]

ok, this I understand, thanks for the clarification

[whynotsimple]

I cleaned the cache every time I started the game.

Now it doesn't work at all again.

Every setting checked, URLs checked in browser, everything done exactly as before when it worked 50% immediately and 50% after 10 Minutes ... now nothing.


Don't get me wrong, I love Shootmania, but as others have stated it seems that Nadeo should focus on cleaning stuff and properly implementing the existing features (i.e. fix them or make it at lest understandable how to do things or why stuff doesn't work) instead of adding more and more features and bringing the next Maniaplanet version before even a second game (after Canyon) is available as final version.

[zargono]

Not sure about this but I had the same problem when trying to use multiple PNG images with URLs. The size of each file was about 400 KB and some images were displayed IG but not all.

I think when the file size is too big, the game doesn't wait enough when loading map to finish the download.

I've been using JPG files instead, around 50 KB each, and they seem to load properly. I have a map with more than 15 different signs and they load fine.

Hope that helps.