What is going on with X3AP and Steam?

RLHDLW · Post by **RLHDLW** » Thu, 6. Dec 12, 00:38

Two hours later...file verification=new download worked, game running again.

Hrodeth · Post by **Hrodeth** » Thu, 6. Dec 12, 07:25

Alan Phipps wrote:Sorry to hear that, but it is difficult to look into an issue that 99% of users are just not seeing. I have seen just four post-update issue reports including your two.

Something's going on. I played AP for about 5 hours this afternoon. Just got home from work and an "Update" has launched in steam. It states approx download time will be 8 hours. Downloading at 200 kb/s.

No mods. Clean install as of 2 weeks ago. Going to try putting steam in offline mode & playing.

Stephen_Garlick · Post by **Stephen_Garlick** » Thu, 6. Dec 12, 07:27

HOLLLLYYY CRAP I've been on this forum for the past hour and didn't notice my steam account has been reloading/updating the WHOLE damn game 6.1G of it in the back ground. wut is going on?

Hrodeth · Post by **Hrodeth** » Thu, 6. Dec 12, 07:29

Are you in mountain time zone also, by chance? Someone mentioned the denver-server for steam...

Stephen_Garlick · Post by **Stephen_Garlick** » Thu, 6. Dec 12, 07:52

no not I'm in mountain zone....
-anyway going at 500kbs+ so won't take too much longer, I've opened up my complex calculator I'm getting so excited.

Hrodeth · Post by **Hrodeth** » Thu, 6. Dec 12, 08:04

Stephen_Garlick wrote:no not I'm in mountain zone....
-anyway going at 500kbs+ so won't take too much longer, I've opened up my complex calculator I'm getting so excited.

LoL. Making me jealous here.

Think this is the internet's way of telling me to study for finals instead of conquer the universe. Just praying I didn't lose my savegames..had no backups.

For anyone who is curious - tried launching manually from the steamapps/common folder.

The error message is IMGDLL.dll is missing. I forget if un-modded goes above .03CAT and DAT. That's all that's showing.

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Thu, 6. Dec 12, 10:48

OK that is 7 reports now. Just a wild theory follows:

I know that a fair while back Steam replaced all Steam gamefiles with files of a different format to 'make Steam more efficient'. That was meant to be done as a background activity while in another application with the Steam Client open or while playing a Steam game not being updated at that time. Naturally, a lot of download was required.

I wonder if those now seeing the mandatory big downloads before play are people who for some reason did not receive or prevented that X3 file format update and so are now having to play essential catch-up before the new X3 and Steam Client updates can take effect?

Rumslinger · Post by **Rumslinger** » Thu, 6. Dec 12, 17:58

I am on the east coast, though not sure what that matters. Same as the others having this issue, it started right after the steam big picture update. I tried validating both games and they both validated as okay. AP is dependent on TC to run, But AP gives no errors, it just doesn't start, but when I tried to run TC I get the missing executable error. So I browse to the the TC folder and guess what... It's empty. all the files except the serial file are gone. I verified both TC and AP separately, stopped and started the steam client... noting happens. It does not try to re-download as suggested. I Rebooted machine... nothing happens. I DID put a support ticket into steam, even before I posted here and guess what... I received the initial confirmation got your ticket message, but have not heard any else from them since. It has been over 48 hours. That's no support at all. At least a few people here have been responding to the posts with suggestions.

I have never had issues with steam before and therefore never needed support, but now that I know there is none, I do not feel comfortable purchasing anymore software through the system.

It just so happens that I had installed the game on my work laptop for traveling. So last night I copied all the files from the TC folder on that machine to my gaming computer and voila! everything is working again.

There is an option to backup your steam files, so i just tried it and it never finished. It got down to 1% left and just stopped running. Oh well.

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Thu, 6. Dec 12, 18:46

@ Rumslinger: Thanks for the info. If and when Steam get back to you, I would consider asking them at least these 3 questions:

1. Why did the recent Client update delete all my X3TC gamefiles and not replace them?
2. Why did a Steam verify gamefiles cache then run on X3TC say all files verified when the game folder was empty?
3. Why (after reinstallation) does a Steam backup of X3TC fail to complete?

We would interested in any replies you get, but maybe in your own thread here since you are the only one (I think) with the verify/backup not working.

Rumslinger · Post by **Rumslinger** » Thu, 6. Dec 12, 19:07

Sure thing. I will ask those questions and post if/when I get some answers

RLHDLW · Post by **RLHDLW** » Thu, 6. Dec 12, 20:57

"The error message is IMGDLL.dll is missing" -> got the same message after the unsolicited Steam update. Savegames were unaffected.
Maybe I should consider myself lucky that the download rate was 1MB/sec. from here in Germany

Seriously, I think a simple notification by the Steam client that an update is available, and some orientation on the total size of files to transfer and the estimated time to download would be great - with an option to schedule the update for a convenient point in time (e.g. overnight). Starting a 6GB file transfer without asking for permission is pretty intrusive. Or has Steam been taken over by Apple lately?

Hrodeth · Post by **Hrodeth** » Fri, 7. Dec 12, 02:48

RLHDLW wrote:"The error message is IMGDLL.dll is missing" -> got the same message after the unsolicited Steam update. Savegames were unaffected.
Maybe I should consider myself lucky that the download rate was 1MB/sec. from here in Germany

Seriously, I think a simple notification by the Steam client that an update is available, and some orientation on the total size of files to transfer and the estimated time to download would be great - with an option to schedule the update for a convenient point in time (e.g. overnight). Starting a 6GB file transfer without asking for permission is pretty intrusive. Or has Steam been taken over by Apple lately?

For what it's worth, you can disable updates on a game in steam. Right click it in your library. Then 2nd or 3rd tab, "keep this game up to date?"

Alan your theory may be right. I had an update for file format conversion last week. But it only converted Skyrim so i figured that was game specific. Im back up & running. Save game file unaffected... Phew.

JnMNM · Post by **JnMNM** » Fri, 7. Dec 12, 20:54

Well, include me in the "few that have this problem" camp. East Coast, USA.

Steam updated yesterday, now I'm currently downloading all 6.2 GB's of the game files...again.

You know, some ISP's charge extra for bandwidth overages... just sayin'

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Fri, 7. Dec 12, 21:07

@ JnMNM: You probably need to take that up with Steam over their changing their overall gamefile format I think. You would have had to use that download amount for the Steam changeover whether done earlier in the background as intended or just now in one go while waiting to allow the next lot of updates to install (or so I believe - could be totally wrong mind as I do not have knowledge of Steam operations).

The total reports of this issue here is now up to 8, but I fully expect there are more either not reported or yet to be encountered.

The recent Egosoft game patch changes themselves were actually minor in size and download terms.

JnMNM · Post by **JnMNM** » Fri, 7. Dec 12, 21:26

Thx Alan,

I know Steam is to blame. No worries... getting a solid 2.7 MB/s ...almost done.

Anyhow, recent game patch went smoothly, and I played AP shortly after updating. This is Steam's doing, I was just voicing frustration.

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Fri, 7. Dec 12, 21:34

One things occurs to me for those who keep Steam gamefile backups. It is probably worth backing up (again if nec) after all the Steam file format change downloads are complete.

grbaker · Post by **grbaker** » Sat, 8. Dec 12, 03:28

+1 and rant... dang Steam and the horse it rode in on.

cyber-whelk · Post by **cyber-whelk** » Sat, 8. Dec 12, 11:12

I'm getting the same issue with AP on Steam. I've made no changes or added scripts or mods to my installation. I start AP last night and it said update required so I thought early xmas present. This morning I tried opening AP and I get nothing. I tried verify integrity of game cache and now it forcing me to download again!

I'm worried that it will do just the same again once the download is finished, my connection speed isn't the greatest where I am.

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Sat, 8. Dec 12, 13:23

No it shouldn't do it more than once. It is changing the format of all the gamefiles and then should be OK after that. Any subsequent issues solved by verify should be down to individual files and not the whole lot again.

Well, that is 10 reports so far.

cyber-whelk · Post by **cyber-whelk** » Sat, 8. Dec 12, 13:45

It's at 80% downloaded now. I've raised a call with Steam as well but had no response. Once it has finished the download are there some non-steam related checks I can do or should it just work on first launch?

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

What is going on with X3AP and Steam?