Six Updater: Install/Update mods, missions. Delta patching. Server browser, and more!

[doveman 7]

Hi Doveman,

Both SU and PwS auto activate mods of the server you're trying to join.

So you only need to direct them to the software and joining your server through there.

To more easily facilitate this you can use the supported url handler sixupdater://server=ip:port http://www.six-projects.net/Six_Updater#Commandline%20parameters

Also, for more fine grained control you can setup a SU Custom Repo: http://www.six-projects.net/Six_Updater+CustomRepos_Setup

For PwS we have more up our sleeves in regards to sharing presets and such, but more about that later.

Hope this helps

Oh really, so SU or PWS can "interrogate" the server to discover which mods it's running and auto-install/activate them just by the user clicking on a link to sixupdater://server=ip:port ? That's interesting.

That sounds like pretty much all we need then as we don't require any custom mods as such, although players are free/advised to use some others such as STHUD, WarFX, JSRS, etc. I guess the tricky thing will be enabling players to activate their chosen mods as well as the required mods, as clicking on the server shortcut will only launch with the required server mods. They could edit the Startup parameters in PwS to include a folder with their chosen mods in, named @Server1 but then those mods will be enabled whichever server they join and will probably prevent them joining other servers.

Any ideas on how to deal with that?

---------- Post added at 03:07 ---------- Previous post was at 02:59 ----------

This is whats interesting to me, considering CoWarMod is not like a normal mod where it has lets say like 20 files that if i make an update all configs in the

files would change, rather the mod is but a collection/compilation of many addons/mods /files, so your saying if I found an addon that is causing a bug,

or not making another addon/mod not work, or even crashing the game, if i were to remove that file, then those users

who have the mod, when the network updates, then on their end that file causing the issues would be removed/deleted because its synced to the network,

or is it when they apply the "patch" changes I made?

I think the difficulty with hosting CoWarMod on the Six Network is that it is designed to be customised by each user, by moving files around, etc. So if users sync it with the version on the Six Network, it will undo all their customisations and make it identical to the hosted version. Maybe I'm wrong though, Sickboy will clarify I'm sure :)

[sickboy 13]

Another SU hotfix was deployed to address a crash issue for some users, and dealing with the DayZ Namalsk/Taviana compatibility situation https://dev-heaven.net/issues/70639

http://www.six-updater.net/2013/02/six-updater-hotfixes-released.html

---------- Post added at 11:50 ---------- Previous post was at 11:48 ----------

Coming weeks we'll be preparing the migration of SIX Updater to Play withSIX,

news about Play withSIX is no longer posted to six-updater.net, also the old six-updater pages will probably be redirected to the withSIX.com domain in a short while.

http://www.six-updater.net/2013/02/play-withsix-news-and-info.html

[Gunter Severloh 4052]

Hi Sickboy,

Question for you, considering SU is being moved and or integrated into PW6 soon, i'm wondering if i should even bother to

submit my COWarMod and other WarMod compilations to SU, i will be doing PW6, but should i submit to SU?

I got PW6 workign btw, i got that hotfix for the .net framework and it fixed it, so all is good to go.

[sickboy 13]

Oh really, so SU or PWS can "interrogate" the server to discover which mods it's running and auto-install/activate them just by the user clicking on a link to sixupdater://server=ip:port ? That's interesting.

Most def ;) It's also the case without using sixupdater:// or pws url formats.

Both softwares handle required mods for servers fully automatically. Unless the option is overridden in the Settings.

Also Custom Repo's can override the server required mods, but irrelevant unless you use a Custom Repo that is configured as such.

Hi Sickboy,

Question for you, considering SU is being moved and or integrated into PW6 soon, i'm wondering if i should even bother to

submit my COWarMod and other WarMod compilations to SU, i will be doing PW6, but should i submit to SU?

I got PW6 workign btw, i got that hotfix for the .net framework and it fixed it, so all is good to go.

Hi,

There are only multiple applications at this time (Play withSIX and SIX Launcher/Updater (+older Suite)). The network is only a single shared one.

Adding a mod to it will make it available to all the applications, including 3rd party ones :)

There are in essence also two API's that are synced with eachother, but only for backwards compatibility, the newer API will replace the older completely once SU has been phased out at some point in the future.

Hope this answers your questions.

[swat.tr 6]

Six updater Virus? Eset 5

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8379/8452370873_cc2f157e41_h.jpg (992 kB)

[sickboy 13]

Six updater Virus? Eset 5

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8379/8452370873_cc2f157e41_h.jpg (992 kB)

Can't imagine. Perhaps infected after the install, looking into said virus name to see if there's anything about that.

False positive is possible too, but lets analyze. Better safe than sorry.

What interests me the most is that it appears only to report on the MSI, and not on the actually installed SIX Updater files (which come from the MSI)..

What is the checksum of the MSI file C:\Users\Patrick\appdata\local\downloaded installations\{5059A31E-5896-493C-B346-372AC350E179}?

It should be:

File: Six Updater.msi

CRC-32: 35ee2489

MD4: f049f26e4204823ec49f5e7ab84b3e0b

MD5: 381fa9631186f3521ecfaf120555b9c8

SHA-1: 8f3aae88f9756d484868dca48822137a0879065b

---------- Post added at 14:52 ---------- Previous post was at 14:52 ----------

I've submitted the MSI from my system, and this is the result:

https://www.virustotal.com/file/15317bd09058b3094468c16a26b4428664c7130231a62c4cb87d53f29ad93978/analysis/1360244642/

All clean, except "Rising" gives status: "Suspicious"

Can you please do the same with the MSI on your system?

---------- Post added at 15:17 ---------- Previous post was at 14:52 ----------

Running my Downloaded Installations folder through the Eset Free online scanner does not yield any infection results whatsoever:

http://www.eset.com/us/online-scanner/

Edited February 7, 2013 by Sickboy

[doveman 7]

Most def ;) It's also the case without using sixupdater:// or pws url formats.

Both softwares handle required mods for servers fully automatically. Unless the option is overridden in the Settings.

Also Custom Repo's can override the server required mods, but irrelevant unless you use a Custom Repo that is configured as such.

OK, but what about the optional mods that users might want to enable and will vary per user? How do we allow them to enable them as well?

Another complication is that the server uses different mods on certain days, so on Tuesdays it's mostly just CBA, Thirsk, CWR2 and a few others and on Fridays we disable CWR2 and add ACE, Lingor and a few others. Now if the users have played before on both days then they'll have these mods installed, so using the URL will just enable the appropriate mods which are running on the server that day but if they're new to the server they might not have any of them installed and will have to wait until the server's running with them to use the URL to install them and then wait a while depending on which mods they need. Ideally we'd be able to put two links on the website that would launch SU/PwS and install the required mods ahead of time.

[sickboy 13]

OK, but what about the optional mods that users might want to enable and will vary per user? How do we allow them to enable them as well?

Another complication is that the server uses different mods on certain days, so on Tuesdays it's mostly just CBA, Thirsk, CWR2 and a few others and on Fridays we disable CWR2 and add ACE, Lingor and a few others. Now if the users have played before on both days then they'll have these mods installed, so using the URL will just enable the appropriate mods which are running on the server that day but if they're new to the server they might not have any of them installed and will have to wait until the server's running with them to use the URL to install them and then wait a while depending on which mods they need. Ideally we'd be able to put two links on the website that would launch SU/PwS and install the required mods ahead of time.

You could use a Custom Repository (only hosting configuration not actual content) for that.

Regarding same ip+port, but different modset, I would call that generally bad practice and would simply suggest to run different configurations on different ports, solving multitude of problems :)

I see now that it's not a dedicated or at least not a permanent server? That makes things a little harder yep. The custom repo and separate port option should work fine though.

[doveman 7]

You could use a Custom Repository (only hosting configuration not actual content) for that.

Regarding same ip+port, but different modset, I would call that generally bad practice and would simply suggest to run different configurations on different ports, solving multitude of problems :)

I see now that it's not a dedicated or at least not a permanent server? That makes things a little harder yep. The custom repo and separate port option should work fine though.

I don't actually admin the server so it may well be that they already use a different port on different days but I doubt it as I don't suppose that would serve any purpose when not using SU/PwS.

In fact, I can't see that it would serve any purpose anyway, as there's only one server so having two shortcuts with different ports wouldn't work I don't think as it's only going to be running on one port at any one time, meaning the other shortcut won't connect anywhere.

I'll have a look at the Custom Repo. It's fairly straightforward to setup in SU, it's just the hosting that someone else will have to get their head around as I don't admin the web server.

We don't actually restrict which mods users can run, as we're a small community and rely on the users to play fair, so there's probably no point in specifying allowed mods. I still don't understand how even with a Custom Repo it will allow users to enable their own additional mods though, as SU/PWS will just launch the game with the specified mods won't it? We could still use it to install/update the mods but then users would have to make their own shortcuts or use something like ArmA II Launcher to make a profile including their additional mods to launch with I think.

---------- Post added at 19:13 ---------- Previous post was at 18:15 ----------

There's a few mods we use that I can't seem to find on Six.

Lingor Units - http://www.icebreakr.info/lingor/download/?answer=1337

Desert Mercenaries and Black Ops - http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?80944-BlackOps-and-desert-mercs

Moschnyi Island - http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?127948-Moschnyi-Island-%28GSEP%29

PRADAR - http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=15334

In the Repo Manager, when entering the host does this have to be the full path to the server file, i.e. http://website.net/server.yml or just to the main website address, i.e. http://website.net ?

It's very buggy unfortunately though and it keeps showing 0 mods in the required/optional lists, even though the .yml files still look correct.

[hellstorm77 2]

i would like a bit of help if i could. i watched a youtube vid on how to do a repository on six updater when i had finished doing what the vid told me to do i used this link sixupdater://repository.dedicatedrejects.com/Bravo.yml

and it came up like this in the sixupdater

[Kerc Kasha 102]

i would like a bit of help if i could. i watched a youtube vid on how to do a repository on six updater when i had finished doing what the vid told me to do i used this link sixupdater://repository.dedicatedrejects.com/Bravo.yml

and it came up like this in the sixupdater

http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/8816/image001is.png

That's because the GUIDs you have currently are for the default public repos while on your repo you've only done one revision, hence the GUID is 1. If you just update it'll fix itself and everything will go green.

[hellstorm77 2]

install or update mods in the updater actions you mean?

Edited February 8, 2013 by hellstorm77

[sickboy 13]

@doveman, actually all the requested mods are already on the network:

@Lingor_units

@bb_mercs and @bb_mercs_oa

@blakes_pradar

@gsep_mosch

(Thanks to Kllrt for collecting these)

btw, the place for these requests is http://getsatisfaction.withsix.com/withsix/topics/mod_update_or_addition_requests

[doveman 7]

@doveman, actually all the requested mods are already on the network:

@Lingor_units

@bb_mercs and @bb_mercs_oa

@blakes_pradar

@gsep_mosch

(Thanks to Kllrt for collecting these)

btw, the place for these requests is http://getsatisfaction.withsix.com/withsix/topics/mod_update_or_addition_requests

Thanks, although the @Lingor_units on the network seems very different from the one in that link I gave and I think when I added it before (or maybe I converted the installed mod), it created a load of other mods as well, @brg_africa, @ibr_civilians, @ibr_plants, @mbg_buildings2, @csj_snake, @chn_crocodile.

I've noticed this with a couple of other mods too, such as @CLAfghan which I just converted and now SU has created @opx_objects, @mb_objects and @razmisc.

I imagine you've done this because other mods share the files in these additional folders too. It just makes it a pain when using ArmA II launcher as I have to now go through all my presets that use @Lingor_units or @CLAfghan and add these additional folders to them as all those files moved to the new folders are no longer in those original folders.

The Repo Manager is rather confusing because it seems to show mods I have on my HDD first, all capitalised, then the mods on the network in lower-case but if I have a network mod also on my HDD it only shows it in the capitalised part so I have no idea if it's actually available on the network.

[sickboy 13]

Yep, well I wouldn't mind investing in PwS so that you don't need to use 'dumb' launchers. (I realize that might sound wrong, but I am really referring here to the same as used for Phones; Dumb phones and Smart Phones :) in reference to not being dependency aware and such)

[doveman 7]

It's not so much about the launcher used as it is about the version on the network being different to the version available to download from the author's website (at least I presume this is the official website):

http://www.icebreakr.info/lingor/download/?answer=1337

Obviously that's going to cause problems for users who've downloaded it and then start to use SU/PwS.

Likewise with Moschnyi Island, where the network version is different to that made available elsewhere by the authors: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?127948-Moschnyi-Island-%28GSEP%29

[sickboy 13]

No there should be no incompatibilities with the official releases. Why do you believe otherwise?

A mod on the network could at most be outdated. In that case we gladly hear about it over at http://getsatisfaction.withsix.com/withsix/topics/mod_update_or_addition_requests

[doveman 7]

I'm testing my two .yml files I've made for the two different server setups we use but one issue I've found is that SU gives the presets the same name, which it seems to be getting from the server, rather than using the name specified in the server.yml. This is a pain as I'd like to be able to maintain two different presets in SU but at the moment that's not possible as loading one overwrites the existing one.

[sickboy 13]

As stated before, if you want that to work that way, you should run the two configurations on different server ports.

Otherwise you'll have to live with the fact that they overwrite eachother, at least until full SU Custom repo support is ready for PwS.

I don't see an issue with the overwriting though. If people want to play with modset one, they follow the one yml link, if they want to play with modset two, they follow the two yml link again,

both operating on the same Preset seems only a cosmetical issue?

Edited February 8, 2013 by Sickboy

[doveman 7]

No there should be no incompatibilities with the official releases. Why do you believe otherwise?

A mod on the network could at most be outdated. In that case we gladly hear about it over at http://getsatisfaction.withsix.com/withsix/topics/mod_update_or_addition_requests

I believe otherwise because when converting some mods, namely Lingor Island/Units and Moschnyi Island (I think it was just those two) from the versions I'd already downloaded and installed, SU deleted files from the exisiting folders and created new folders which it downloaded those files into. You can look at the page for Lingor Island where it lists the included .pbos and see that the network version has moved many of them into separate folders as I've listed in #941 http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=10792

[sickboy 13]

I believe otherwise because when converting some mods, namely Lingor Island/Units and Moschnyi Island (I think it was just those two) from the versions I'd already downloaded and installed, SU deleted files from the exisiting folders and created new folders which it downloaded those files into. You can look at the page for Lingor Island where it lists the included .pbos and see that the network version has moved many of them into separate folders as I've listed in #941 http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=10792

You're assuming that the modfoldernames / file locations make up compatibility.

But the location of the files has no relevance to being compatible or incompatible. For the game it doesn't matter where the files are located. As long as they're loaded at least somewhere.

Compatibility instead is dictated by bisigns/bikeys, and having all the needed files loaded (no matter their location).

Edited February 8, 2013 by Sickboy

[doveman 7]

As stated before, if you want that to work that way, you should run the two configurations on different server ports.

Otherwise you'll have to live with the fact that they overwrite eachother, at least until full SU Custom repo support is ready for PwS.

I don't see an issue with the overwriting though. If people want to play with modset one, they follow the one yml link, if they want to play with modset two, they follow the two yml link again.

Even if we did run on a different port on Fridays though, if SU is asking the server for the name and using that as the preset name it's still not going to let me have two separate presets is it, as the port isn't part of the name?

I just think it's nice to be able to see both presets quickly and check that they're up-to-date without having to go to the website and click on the link to swap between them but yeah, it's not a major deal. I presume once imported into SU, it checks the server.yml for any changes at certain points (when loading SU, when doing "Install/Update Mods"?) so that it doesn't matter if the user doesn't go back to the website and click on the link regularly?

[sickboy 13]

Even if we did run on a different port on Fridays though, if SU is asking the server for the name and using that as the preset name it's still not going to let me have two separate presets is it, as the port isn't part of the name?

You're assuming that the preset or server name is relevant to uniqueness of the records, which isn't the case. It's the server record that makes it unique, which is a different record when either IP or Port differs.

But yes, twice the same preset name isn't all that helpful either. You could consider adding a tag like WW2, ACE, or whatever to the server name based on the active mods and you'll get more meaningful preset names.

You can also override the server name within the yml, you need to add a bool to force overwrite the name, see the fully commented example, linked in the docs.

so that it doesn't matter if the user doesn't go back to the website and click on the link regularly?

Yea if you update/replace the server.yml that people import, it's fine. Edited February 8, 2013 by Sickboy

[doveman 7]

The location of the files has no relevance to being compatible or incompatible. For the game it doesn't matter where the files are located. As long as they're loaded at least somewhere.

Compatibility instead is dictated by bisigns/bikeys, and having all the needed files loaded (no matter their location).

You said "No there should be no incompatibilities with the official releases. Why do you believe otherwise?" when I'd never mentioned the word incompatibilities in my posts, so asking me why I believed there were "incompatibilities" could only logically be read to mean that you were using the word to refer to what I'd actually said, that the versions on the network are different from the official downloads available elsewhere and asking me to explain why I believed that.

As you mention it though, SU is very much incompatible with Arma II Launcher and no doubt other programs as it moves files from where they should be (according to the mod's authors) making it impossible to play missions requiring those mods anymore (without working out where SU has moved those files to and adding those folders to the modline).

[sickboy 13]

Okay, so I was assuming you meant they are incompatible or edited versions.

While in fact what you seem to mean is that if you want to use PwS/SU edition of mods, you might have to update a couple of shortcuts, or launcher configurations.

If you feel that makes SU incompatible with ARMA 2 launchers and other programs, then I fear we have a different opinion on incompatible.

To me incompatible would suggest you can't use the mods anymore with shortcuts or other launchers, or you're not able to join servers with them,

while you in fact can. It is also all handled automatically for you if you launch through PwS/SU (which also supports generating shortcuts for you if you prefer that).

Edited February 8, 2013 by Sickboy