In the past two weeks, I have been working on gm_mount2, an adaption but also totally rewrite from scratch of this addon for GMod.

My intention first was making it mount games automatically if you install it serverside (the way it is in that link needs heavy modifications to make it run) and an easy integration into GMod’s default mounting-menu.

This was done really easily and I started thinking about “why can’t garry make GMod mount L4D?”. I took some more deeper research into it and found out, that L4D and L4D2 don’t use GCF-files to store their models, sounds and everything in – They use VPK files which are unsupported for mounting in the OrangeBox version of the Source-Engine where GMod runs on.

Luckily it rushed into my mind that Nemesis, the coder of GCFScape, has a library called HLLib which allows reading from VPK containers. It took me around 2 hours to figure out how HLLib works and I made my first successful attempt in reading from VPKs.

But now the torture began: How shall I tell GMod to read from VPKs? My idea was overriding default FileIO functions of Source which are stored in the interface IFileSystem and IBaseFileSystem. My idea was using MS Detours which is known to be detectable by VAC so I searched different ways for about 3 days before I got told “VAC in GMod is active but does not ban” (yet).

So the plan was clear: Detouring the methods of the interface and intercept if a file within a VPK is requested. It was all so clear and easy in my head but I got beaten down by reality really fast again. The methods of the interface I have to hook/overwrite are virtual, which makes them a pain in the ass to hook. It took me 2 days with the help of mainly Jinto before I was able to hook those. If any developer is interested in, you can find my VDETOUR script here.

Hooking now worked but I first had to figure our a fast and efficient way of tracing opened files so I can tell it’s either a file within a VPK or a “normal file”. This took me 3 more days.

Today I had my first successful attempt reading a file from within a VPK in GMod with GMod’s lua function file.Read but it just read about 500 letters at max – how silly.

Recapitulation: It was a pain in the ass to implement. Especially because my lack of knowledge of GMod’s internals. It could have been so much easier to implement if I’d be the mod-coder.

Update:

Today I made the successful attempt in loading a model of L4D in GMod using my module. It works flawless! No crashes etc. Now I only have to implement some minor stuff like file-searching and the lua-interface. Maybe one ore two more days and I can release it!

I’m currently busy as always with University. In about 1 week I have my first exam of 6. Once this is done, I’ll have time again for “work” – In two ways.

I’m working at my Institute where I did my Bachelor-Thesis. It’s a mini-job with max of 400 € (Just needs me to work for about 28 hours a month. This costs me about one day in the week – and I love my job!

Another thing I’m on is a Trillian plugin which allows chatting with Steam Friends (while Steam is running in the background). It uses Open Steamworks.

One more thing is a new mount-plugin for GMod which shall allow mounting third-party games easily. I know there are about 2 plugings already around, but both have messed up code (They are a sourcemod-plugin and a lua-plugin at once which is shit-code) and are not really userfriendly. My plugin is meant to work easily on clientside and is also meant to mount all available games it finds serverside if you host a dedicated server.

And of course I have to finish #45 of Stargate: The very long expected new release to my famous stargate-mod for Garry’s Mod. I can understand when/why people are unable to wait for #45 (its over one year ago I did a major stargate-release). But all other topics (University and side-projects) eat up all my time so far. I hope I can work out #45 this year and before April.

My sister has latelty destroyed our microwave-cap, which is supposed to be put over the dishes in order to keep the microwave clean.

Well, she was lazy and put the dishes onto the cap, which was upside down. This resulted to the plated heating up and melting the plastic of the microwave cap. Well, this was the result.

Savegames! They are stored in C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Local\Rockstar Games\GTA IV\savegames and not how you could guess in the games-folder or (what is also just dumb) in your My Documents-Folder.

Seriously: Why do game-developers make so shitty shit? I have my PC configured to have 3 Partitions: System (C:\), Data/Programs/Games (D:\) and Media (E:\). I do not install any app to C:\ nor do I use My Documents. I put all my data to D:\ and Media such as MP3s,eBooks and Videos to E:\. The best way for the developers putting savegames is in the game-folder directly! This will give users the chance to backup their games including all savegames at once.

Now I had to reinstall my Windows (putting back a TrueImage backup) and now my savegames are gone – Even with a full backup of my “My Documents”-Folder where you have a “RockStar/GTAIV” folder in (which I suspected to be my savegames).

I will now stop playing GTA IV. I can’t be arsed to play every fucking mission I did before again (I had about 30-40%), except someone gives me a savegame which I can use (Right after your original house got burned down my Dimitri and his guys).

Edit:

I just found a website, where you can download savegames. But sadly, GTA IV disallows loading savegames not made with your own Games for Windows – Live account. Seriously, what the fuck?

Now I will use a program called “XLiveLess” which removes the Games for Windows – Live and Rockstar Social Club bindings out of GTA IV. This is some sort of a crack. But hey: If they are so stupid disallowing adding savegames, put savegames to arbitrary folders which are getting easily lost after a Windows reinstallation and add copy-protection like SecuRom,Games for Windows – Live and Rockstar Social Club to the game – what do you expect?

Unluckily, XLiveLess disallows me using the Multiplayer mode (the coder intentionally added it to disallow cheating). But I can get around this. I simply have to remove one file out of my GTA IV folder to make it able to play online again (but which will block loading my savegames).

tl;dr Version:

Just a big fuck you at Microsoft and RockStar Games for their inability to make games easy and not full of nagging copy-protection shit which only annoys legit buyers.

Xen is a very powerfull virtualization program, which also allows using techniques like AMD Pacifica or Intel Vanderpool to run the virtualized OS directly on the hardware of the machine without any emulation. This makes it very powerfull and fast compared to an emulated OS. But it actually is a pain in the neck if you want to install it and are a newbie concerning virtualization.

This tutorial now shows you how to compile the necessary Xen-Kernels and how to set up some example VMs running Linux itself again and Windows. Read more…

How you can see, I have updated the whole website’s design to this cool one. It took me half the day because this wasn’t the only thing to do. I had first to update all my wordpress addons and wordpress itself and then I needed to modify this design and fix nasty bugs.

Anyway, it is done now. I’d also like to announce, that our Teamspeak 3 server is available now.

When Steam had his amazing holiday-sale off, i bought GTA IV for about $7 and I was happy I got a game that cheap. But quite just a few moments later I realized why I was boycotting this game in the earlier days: It is “copy protected” by SecuRom and you have to register this game to “Rockstar Social Club” (RSC) and “Games for Windows – Live” (GWL) so the torture began.

I started the game for the very first time and that RSC-Window popped up, nagging me to register. So did I. I logged in to my account on RSC and started the game. Everything seemed to work but then the game simply kept hanging at “Changing Language” all the time. It nearly made me rage. After about 10 restarts of the game, I googled that specific error and found out, that I have to press POS1 on my keyboard (it never told me to do that within these 10 starts) to make the GWL-popup appearing. So one more freaking service I have to register to before I can play. So I turned off GTA IV, went to the RSC-Website and logged in there. There was an option I remembered seeing before which was about “linking Rockstar Social Club to Games for Windows”. I pressed this and got referred to a website which allowed me to register. I did and activated all. Then I hoped being able to login but I wasn’t! This dumbshit RSC referred me to “Windows Live” which is not “Games for Windows – Live” – What the hell.

Anyway, after I figured that out, I wasted more than one hour making that game run. And that just because of motherfucking DRM. Seriously. I play a game which is already protected by Steam but now also needs SecurRom installed (why? I have no disc I could copy) and being registered to “Rockstar Social Club” (why? That game is already registered exclusively to my steam account) and “Games for Windows – Live” (same why question as for RSC).

This is the kind of shit, why other people actually pirated games: To get rid of these nagging shit. (The game itself is fun of course!)

Finally, after a really really long downtime (sorry guys), my server and website is back and running again. The reasons for the downtime were various. First of all, our old hoster set our server offline because it got hacked. Additionally, after we were going to buy a new and faster one, we had billing issues which I do not want to discuss in detail now. Also many members were busy and so the server kept offline.

Anyway, now we have a new server. It is hosted by hetzner.de. It has a Core i7-920, 12 GB RAM and 3 TB harddisk. The connection is 100 MBit/s wide. Various virtual servers run on it (for now two Linux servers and one Windows) which are virtualized by Xen (I will probably write a post about Xen in the future because installing out of source it is not really easy).

My gameservers are also back. You can see their details on the right. Have fun

Steam: Verify E-Mail

Today, during a party of L4D’s new campaign “Crash Course” my pal Stealthrider suddenly disconnected. Well, I thought he just doesn’t want to play anymore but: It was worse. Some idiot hacked his steam-account. They switched his password and E-Mail. He now has to contact VALVE fixing it. Another strange thing was Zidane’s account just got hacked ten minutes after Stealthrider’s. And the frightening part now is: We all three played on the same server at the same time when all this happened. I suspect this server to cause havoc with our clients and read out the PW somehow (e.g. by downloading the ClientRegistry.blob, which stores all account relevant data such as autologin signatures)

After both got their accounts hacked (Zidane got his back, because he acted fast before the hackers could change the E-Mail. This made him able to reset the changed PW), I switched my login password and made my account verified. This seems to be a new feature of VALVE/Steam to verify an E-Mail address. After you did that, your account is bound to that Mail and if someone (or yourself) tries to change the Password,Mail or Security-Question, a Mail is first sent to your address. In it, you’ll find a link you have to click before the actions take place. This is a very good security feature in my opinion. So you all better do this soon! Right click on the Steam-Try-Icon and go to Settings/Account/Verify email address. This should keep the idiotic crackers out.

I lately wrote about me destroying my old PC’s motherboard. So I have bought a completely new PC. It’s really cool and fast. (Asus P7P55D Pro, Intel Core i5-750, Muskin 2×2048 MB DDR3, 1 TB Seagate Harddisk, HD4890 overclocked).

How it looks like, my graphic card has been overclocked a bit too harsh. I bought it at www.edel-grafikkarten.de, who generally tune cards and add additional fans. I bought this one, because it has a super silent fan and also is overlocked. But sadly, the overclocking now forbids me playing any games. After a short period of time, the game simply stops and windows tells me about a recovered graphic device. I checked the temperature of both CPU and GPU, but this doesn’t seem to be the cause. All around 40° C. So it has to be the harsh overclocking.

I think, I have to send the card back and order another one. Luckily edel-grafikkarten grants warranty on their models.

Inside of my new PC - Look at these coolers! Keeping the shit below 50°C on heavy load!

Edit:

I slightly took the overclocking of the card back. Instead of hilarious 950 MHz compared to the default 875 MHz, I have set it to 925. So far, it is stable. The ram is not OCed anymore. I fear damages on it. And 975 to 1000 ist not that much or worth for overclocking video-ram.