Mission download fails on occasions

[At0mic]

I apologise if this has been brought up before but a search failed to show anything, so here I am. I have noticed that occasionally I'll have one of two issues that will, at times, manifest separately with the in-game mission downloader (TDM 2.01, but I recall this happening earlier too):

• When starting the download, the game will lock up at 0.0% done and needs to be killed at this point (and as it turns out the download never actually starts, so no partial files exist).
  
• When finished a download, the game will lock up at 100% done and again needs to be killed, but at this point the mission has been unpacked successfully and so the next time I run the game, it appears in the mission list.
  

These are mostly just an annoyance, but they happen a bit more than rarely so I'm just curious if there's anything I can do. I will say my modem/router is a piece of shit at times and occasionally when just doing regular net browsing, you might click a link to a page and the browser will immediately bomb out with a "page not found" error, but when you reload the page, it will load fine. This might be related to the first issue, but I don't understand how it could affect the second. Anyways, just something I've noticed.

[Lux]

Yeah, I don't see anything on google search either except for your post and the one where they were bringing up TDM 2.0.

 

I've never experienced this issue. Has it always had this behavior for you or is it something that started after a while?

 

I don't have any exceptions for TDM in my firewall so it can't be that.

 

Have you run TDM update lately and are you on the latest version of the game?

Edited April 5, 2014 by Lux

[At0mic]

I'm definitely on the latest version (2.01) according to the updater. As far as I know I've always had this behaviour, but it's not really that serious or common enough to cause that much grief. This is a fairly clean install too, so I don't think I've corrupted anything, but again it could be related to a download immediately timing out due to my fickle modem and the game not having a provision for dealing with that. I don't have a firewall enabled so it's not that.

[SteveL]

Hmm mysterious. Could it be a file problem rather than a network one? Just trying to think, what would be happening at 0% and 100% but not in the middle? If the downloader is falling to create, delete or overwrite a file that might explain the pattern.

[Xarg]

Try finding out which mirror the game is attempting to download from when that happens, there might be a slow/unresponsive mirror. I've had that issue as well back when 2.00 came out and I was re-downloading all the missions, though with some reporting it was all sorted eventually.

[Blackadder]

This problem is happening constantly for me now. I tried to download several missions, but it just flat out locks up and has to be killed via task manager. How do i figure out wich mirror its trying to download from?

[nbohr1more]

Have you upgraded to 2.02?

[Blackadder]

yeah sorry i forgot to mention that. I am running 2.02.

[Blackadder]

Update: It seems to be limited to the mission "Thomas porter 0: Mandrasola" now. I've tried downloading several missions and they worked just fine, but every time i try that one the game hardlocks. Weird, i could swear i tried other missions earlier and it bugged out. Might be a mirror issue since its just that particular mission that crashes.

[SteveL]

Cool... I'm not one of the resident experts on mission downloading so I can't say how to fix it but if you wanted to dig a bit further you could access this page: http://missions.thedarkmod.com/get_available_missions.php

 

And see the list of sites that the downloader is trying to get that mission from. Maybe your firewall or ISP is choking on one of them, or maybe something has gone pear-shaped at the server end and you're the first to report it. You also have the option of downloading a mission manually using any of the URLs on that page. To install a mission manually you just download and drop the linked .pk4 file into the "fms" folder in your TDM install folder then launch the game.

[Blackadder]

Ah okay. I'll try that. Thanks!

[taaaki]

I updated libcurl and changed from openssl to polarssl in 2.02, so I'd like to investigate if I broke anything with the in-game downloader. My testing didn't pick up any issues though. If you have any further info to help debug this (OS & version, 32bit/64bit, etc), I'd appreciate it. I'll also have a look at that mission you mentioned when I get some time.

[Lux]

I just tested on Win7 64 by deleting Mandrasola from my FMs folder and then accessing it in the download menu of the game.

 

It sat at 0.0% for 10 or so seconds and I thought... hmm... I'm having the same issue with this mission. Then it kicked off and downloaded complete in the next 10sec.

 

So its working for me at least.

[Lex]

It happened to me a few times as well . A mission load locked up at different rates (including 0%, 100%, 65% and some other). This happened to different FMs. I believe it's either due to the lack of free space on hard drive (I for certain reasons have been having less than 1gb lately) or it's some minor issue of 2.02 since it happened only after the update. Can't say for sure.

Btw, on 2.0 the missions were downloading very slowly on nice connect, about 2-5 minutes per mission. I thought it was supposed to be so, but now they download in just a few seconds, definately less than a minute!

Anyway, neither of this bothers me much.