Left 4 Dead 2 Server Acting Strange

[Kelwing]

I have a Left 4 Dead 2 server installed on a Debian machine. CS:S is also on the same box, but for testing, I don't have them both running at the same time. It's an Intel Core 2 Duo with 8GB of RAM on a 100mbps dedicated line. The CS:S server runs fine. The Left 4 Dead 2 server however seems to run fast? When I join, the bots move extremely fast and quickly pick up weapons and a health kit. I move at normal speed (which I kind of expect), but I pick up items, reload, and am able to melee extremely fast. This is a stock server with no mods or addons. Freshly installed with the updater from steampowered.com. Zombie's also move extremely fast. There seems to be some frame skipping as if the client can't keep up with the server. Anyone have any ideas?

Adding a few things:
Install command: ./steam -command update -game left4dead2 -dir .

Start command ./srcds_run

[Dragineez]

Did you borrow the cfg from the CS server? Just speculating here, but there might be cvars set that are incompatible with L4D2.

[Kelwing]

No, grabbed it from here: http://blog.theevilpc.com/2009/11/left-4-dead-2-dedicated-server-setup.html and modified it to fit my needs.
I've used that same config on a L4D2 server running on an Arch Linux box and it worked just fine.

[Dragineez]

I was playing a custom map (Dead Before Dawn) just yesterday and ran into a temporary glitch that sounds like what you're experiencing. There's a weird scene when a zombie drives up to a gas station. You're supposed ask him for a ride. Suddenly, the dialog sounded like the chipmunks and everything sped up. The zombie car did a doughnut around the gas pumps, then everything returned to normal.

Short answer, I have no idea what may have caused it. I put it down to being a custom map/campaign.

[Kelwing]

I wish I could blame it on custom content, but I'm using a completely stock server.

[jakko]

(04-02-2011, 01:35 PM)Kelwing Wrote:  I have a Left 4 Dead 2 server installed on a Debian machine. CS:S is also on the same box, but for testing, I don't have them both running at the same time. It's an Intel Core 2 Duo with 8GB of RAM on a 100mbps dedicated line. The CS:S server runs fine. The Left 4 Dead 2 server however seems to run fast? When I join, the bots move extremely fast and quickly pick up weapons and a health kit. I move at normal speed (which I kind of expect), but I pick up items, reload, and am able to melee extremely fast. This is a stock server with no mods or addons. Freshly installed with the updater from steampowered.com. Zombie's also move extremely fast. There seems to be some frame skipping as if the client can't keep up with the server. Anyone have any ideas?

Adding a few things:
Install command: ./steam -command update -game left4dead2 -dir .

Start command ./srcds_run

Getting EXACTLY the same problem here. Just setup a L4D2 server on ubuntu 10.04 64bit.

I've set this up on a dedicated server yet when connecting ping shows as 800 and everything is extremely fast. The bots zoom around very quickly, meleeing is super fast.

Have you found a solution for this yet?

[Kelwing]

Sorry, I did not find a fix for this. My suggestion, (which I have not tried yet) is trying a non Debian based distro since that seems to be the only common denominator. I tried this on a different machine with identical hardware running Arch Linux instead and had no issues. Arch Linux is for advanced users though, so it might not be for you. Let me know how it goes.

[jakko]

(04-19-2011, 05:25 AM)Kelwing Wrote:  Sorry, I did not find a fix for this. My suggestion, (which I have not tried yet) is trying a non Debian based distro since that seems to be the only common denominator. I tried this on a different machine with identical hardware running Arch Linux instead and had no issues. Arch Linux is for advanced users though, so it might not be for you. Let me know how it goes.

bump

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After doing some research and experimenting for some time I've still been unable to resolve it, and there only seems to be a couple of others with this issue who have been unsuccessful.

The server seems to think time is moving 4x quicker than it should. Almost as if host_timescale is set to 4 (but it isn't of course). All the animations, zombies and bots move around extremely quickly yet movement speed is normal for the players.

Because of this I get kicked for "player timed out" a lot of the time almost as soon as I start loading. When I do manage to connect successfully my ping is somewhere between 700-900 though the server is on my Local network.

EDIT: Also, pressing ESC ingame to goto options or opening developer console instantly sets me as "idle", the console shows "Player has paused the server" and when I close it "Player has unpaused the server". sv_pausable is set to 0. The server does not pause when this happens, I become 'idle' and get kicked after a few seconds

I've tried removing all L4D2 and Steam files and starting from scratch, no difference at all.
I've played around with the server.cfg to no avail, this currently looks like this.

Quote:hostname "testUK server"
rcon_password "***"
sv_gametypes "versus,survival,coop,realism,teamversus,teamscavenge"
sv_steamgroup_exclusive 0
sv_allow_lobby_connect_only 0

sv_alltalk 0
sv_cheats 0
sv_clearhinthistory 0
sv_consistency 1
sv_pausable 0

sv_lan 0
sv_region 3

sv_log_onefile 0
sv_logbans 1
sv_logehco 0
sv_logfile 1

sv_minrate 20000
sv_maxrate 30000
sv_mincmdrate 10
sv_maxcmdrate 33

sv_voiceenable 1

I've experimented with different configs and commands to no avail so I suspect this is not the problem.

I've read all the linux l4d2 setup guides I could find which are all the same thing with slight modifications.

I'm creating a seperate user (left4dead2) to setup the server (left4dead2@hostname: /hlds/left4dead2), downloading hldsupdatetool.bin, installing/updating steam, then ./steam -command update -game left4dead2 -dir .

I've tried various parameters when launching the server, which seems to make no difference at all.

currently looking like this:-

./srcds_run -game left4dead2 -ip 192.168.0.105 +hostport 27015 +map c1m1_hotel

The server appears to load up fine in the console
I get a lot of errors similar to
"Couldn't find any entities named fire_ballroom_02-sound, which point_template fire_ballroom_02-template is specifying"
and "Failed to load Steam ServiceServiceStart: failed to startConnection to Steam servers successful."

but as far as I'm aware this is perfectly normal.

I've found some people suggesting this is a problem caused by fps_max 0, but after some further research it appears there is no such command for left4dead2 as fps_max is preset and cannot be changed.

Eitherway, I've tried the commands -fps_max +fps_max in the startscript with various values to no avail.

I'm completely out of ideas and can't find anything about this anywhere.

Feel free to post some suggestions and thoughts on this.

Regards,

Jakko


EDIT: The server is up and running so feel free to jump on and take a look for yourself

ip: 62.31.83.74:27015
rcon: "test22"