[TheAchievementServer]

I was suppose to edit the other post. Sorry.

[Drixevel]

you should think about making a version of the jukebox for L4D2. Try to make it compatible with it's system?

[SirLamer]

At the moment I don't think there is a way to make Jukebox work with Left 4 Dead 2. L4D2 won't load a webpage with embedded applications. If I can't stream MP3s using the MOTD browser and HTML, then I have to make each client download all the MP3s when they connect, which is not practical.

[DontWannaName]

Perhaps L4D2 uses webkit to render websites instead of IE since they are switching to that in Steam and the overlay. Maybe webkit offers a player of some sort.

[Drixevel]

Well you could make like another plugin just for L4D2 where it loads another motd panel in the background for use with the jukebox plugin and doesn't show up at all. Ive seen this multiple times on GMOD with LUA, and other games. :/

[SirLamer]

I can't do that. Gmod is special because it has the Lua engine, which other mods do not. I cannot just make a MOTD panel for Left 4 Dead 2 because none of the users will have it installed with their games. The game has to include it already so that I can exploit it.

DontWannaName is right that the best way to do it is to figure out how to get the webkit browser to load embedded players, if it will at all. The big problem with this, though, is none of the Windows media players support webkit by default. In Chrome and Opera, for example, you have to download and install patches to make Windows Media Player work in them. Well, there is no way to do that with the Steam browsers.

However, if the L4D2 browser is the same as the beta Steam's browser, well that one plays videos within itself all over the place so maybe there is a way to make things embed.

Edit: Oooh... the beta Steam player includes a "view source" feature. How nice! I'll see what I can find out. Already I see that Valve uses a lot of Javascript in their beta interface, which the old Steam did not support.

[DontWannaName]

By making it compatible with webkit it will be usable in future games that Valve developes and may even be added to OB.

[Drixevel]

meh i tried, hope ya get it workin. It'll be the best plugin ever! It already is the best plugin ever but it'll be better. ^_^

[SirLamer]

I will more deeply investigate the plausibility of L4D2 support after the next major release.

Here's a quick progress update for everyone.

Track looping is fully implemented, and is being tested on Roadwolf's server.

The game server playlist features are almost finished. It's possible to make a playlist from currently played tracks, re-order tracks, remove one or all tracks and even rename playlist, all from within the game. Admins can also make any playlists available in the public library, but otherwise the playlists remain private for use of the users that create them. This is a huge addition to Jukebox, adding about 15 kB to the size of the compiled plugin, but so far it is working really well.

"Play on join" and "play on map change" are the next features to be added to the plugin.

The admin website updates are about half done, with only the playlist administration pages left to add. It is all ready for the "play on event" feature.

I estimate the work toward the next release to be about 50% complete.

[Narwhal]

So I finally got around to installing this. Everything installed fine without any headaches. I've also loaded in several songs successfully.

However, there exists notable client-side lag issues on my server. Everybody experiences about a 10-20 second long lag spike each time a song begins. I say client-side because I know at least the game-server isn't lagging. The CPU usage doesn't jump, and only people listening to a song are affected. For example, a play-to-all makes everyone's ping jump. But, a play-to-self only makes the listener's ping jump. My ping normally sits around 70ms, but climbs up to around 200ms over a few seconds when I begin a song, rests there for awhile, then falls back down to normal. I don't have errors logged anywhere.

Would this be some issue with my web server perhaps? Or is this just normal behavior? Any workarounds? A brief lag spike I could live with, but I don't think I can take a 20 second disruption of game play each time a song begins .

• TF2 Server
• I'm running MetaMod 1.8 and SourceMod 1.3.1
• All custom plugins (including this) compiled from source
• Running on the typical rented Windows SRCDS @ 256fps

• Typical web-server (LAMP install on some unknown machine)
• I use the MYSQL database here for this and my other plugins
• One difference is that my MYSQL database is referenced at a subdomain ('mysql.labcoatgamers.com' instead of 'localhost')...dunno if that affects anything or not

• Fresh install of version 0.5.4.2 on both game-server and web-server

Thanks for all your work on this. This is definitely one amazing plugin, lag or not.