Dateiliste

Beginning with version 3.0.78.0, D3Server3 automatically extracts objects contained in hosted mission files.

Missions (levels) with custom objects have always been an issue in Descent 3 in multi-player games. They cause random server crashes in the middle of games with messages like "Could not load filename.oof".  If the server doesn't crash during the game, it crashes at the end of a mission when the level/mission is supposed to roll over to the beginning again.

Descent 3 servers usually do not crash when these object files are extracted from the missions and placed into Descent 3's main folder (C:\Games\Descent3 or C:\Program files\Descent3).

When looking for an object, Descent 3 first searches for the file in its main folder.

Object files are stored as .oof files (oof = Outrage Object Format) in a mission file (.mn3). There are several tools available to extract these files.

In theory, all that's required to prevent server crashes is to extract the oof files from a mission and place them in Descent 3's main folder. Unfortunately, this is not the real life.

It sure does prevent server crashes, but many level designers used object file names shared between mission. Imagine an object with a file name of box.oof for one level/mission in which the object is a big blue box while it is a small green something in another one. Both level designers decided to call their object file box.oof. Many missions use altered objects from the original Descent 3 distribution but with the file names unchanged. If these files are extracted into the D3 main folder, Descent 3 will find and use these objects instead of the original ones.

D3Server3 tries to prevent these issues by extracting all objects from a mission before a dedicated server is started. As soon as the server is stopped/removed again, the object files are removed too.

The object files belonging to a hosted mission are removed from Descent 3's main folder by D3Server 3 regardless of whether they had been there before the dedicated server was started. When hosting a server ceases the software removes all object files found in this server's mission file (mn3). Object files found in other, still running servers, are not deleted at that time. They are removed when the last hosted server that uses these objects stops.

The server tool does further not check whether existing objects with identical file names are different from the extracted object files. If the file names are identical, it assumes that the files require to be treated as being the same object. This can cause funny effects or even issues when two missions that use different objects but with identical file names are hosted together at the same time by the same host machine.