How to Force download of multiple files with one http connection

Cooltad · **Author**

Basically, I have over 10 custom sounds and though they are small..I want to make the download process for the user easier by doing this:

Packing them all in one .bz2, and then unpacking them for future use, that's it.

However I am not sure what method would correctly do this.

I was thinking spoofing the download by:
adding the bz file to the download tables under the name of one of the mp3's inside the download, and thus after unpacking it, the game will accept what it has downloaded because it had the file inside of it as one of the files.

I am not sure if that'll work though, any suggestions?

miniman

I dont think thats possible the unpacking rules and unpacking itself on the client side I never heared about packing some files that client automaticly download and install all maybe Im wrong

Cooltad

It most likely is possible, I just need to know how to accomplish it via a plugin.

Kigen

Its how the client's game handles it, this means it really is outside the realm of a server-side plugin. The only way I think it'd be possible at all is to pack all the sounds into one .bz2, but I'm not sure if the Source engine would even interpret it correctly as the Source engine is surely only expecting one file to be in the .bz2.

asherkin

I think, like gzip, bzip2 only handles one file anyway, that's why tarballs are used.

Cooltad

Got it. SO, is there a way to force the engine to extract a zip file?

Cooltad

Even if it normally cannot be done..surely it's possible to make an extension that will command the user's computer to extract a zip file.

Greyscale

I doubt it. It's handled on the client, server extensions can't modify what the client does.

recon0 · *Last edited by recon0; 03-06-2010 at 17:43.*

It's surely not possible. Imagine what would happen if we could extract random zip files on client machines...

You could try something like pakrat (you'll probably need the older tool, BSPZIP), but that's a really crude solution.

naris · *Last edited by naris; 03-06-2010 at 20:09.*

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cooltad

Packing them all in one .bz2, and then unpacking them for future use, that's it.

1st, a .bz2 files can only have 1 file in it. (to have more than 1 file, you 1st have to tar the files to create a .tar file and then bzip that). This is true of ALL compression methods that come from unix (such as bzip and gzip).

2nd, the engine only supports .bz2 files that contains 1 file, and there is no way around that.

3rd, this is a really bad idea and would not actually make anything easier for anyone.