[berni]

I always found it annoying, having to compress files everytime I upload a new map/texture/sound to my server manually. That's why I started thinking about if it would be possible to compress files on the fly while the client is downloading it.

And yes, it's possible

I've spent some hours writing a PHP script and filed it out allot.

Requirements:

• Apache2 webserver running on the server machine where the gameserver is
• Apache2 mod_rewrite
• PHP 5

Features:

• On the fly bzip2 compression of any files (you can specify the allowed file extensions in config.inc.php)
• File caching (so already compressed files don't have to be compressed again)
• Simultanous file sending to clients (clients don't have to wait for the first client to be finished)
• Multiple server support
• Specify allowed file extensions

Installation

1. Simply unzip and upload the attached directory to your webserver directory.
2. Edit config.inc.php to match your needs
3. Set chmod of cache to 0770 (rwxrwx---)
4. Change the sv_downloadurl of your gameserver(s):

Example: sv_downloadurl www.your-domain-or-ip.tld/bzip2_onthefly/configname

Put this line into your cfg/server.cfg file.

Enjoy

Note: Doesn't work for TF2 (and other orangebox games ?) atm.

[Chris-_-]

Whoa!

[busy.orange]

looks awesome

[Dragonshadow]

Why does it have to be running on the same machine as the gameserver? Wouldn't that kind've negate the whole purpose of fastdl?

[berni]

Originally Posted by Dragonshadow Why does it have to be running on the same machine as the gameserver? Wouldn't that kind've negate the whole purpose of fastdl?

Show me how you want to zip a file without the source file ! difficult eh
What's the purpose of fastdownload for you ? Well a webserver can give you faster download rates than the gameserver.
Well, if you have your gameserver running on a 3 Mbit Box, I wouldn't recommend you to use this.
The webserver just needs access to the files of the gameserver over the local filesystem, but if both servers are in the same network and you can mount the server over the local network it should also work, never tried that tho.

[berni]

Updated

• Fixed wrong path description in the config file (Path has to include the gamedir)

[busy.orange]

I tested today on TF2 server.
TF2 client can't open bz2. (winrar opens normal)

define("BUFFER_SIZE", 4096);

Attach maps downloaded on my server

[berni]

I need more details how you configured your server, can I message you somewhere ?
TF2 should be able to open bz2 compressed maps like Hl2dm too.

[berni]

I'm not able to get this working for TF2 atm.
Orangebox seems to use a different bzip2 compression, unable to decompress the generated files.

[Dragonshadow]

I just compress everything into bzip with 7zip since I use a external webserver lol.