Improving Loading Times (v5.92)

This update introduces a new way to distribute Client-side Lua making loading faster and preventing server freezes

There is upcoming system maintenance

Saturday 6th December 08:00 We are releasing the new website. Downtime is expected to be no more than 1 hour.

Sunday 7th December 07:00 We are performing a major migration for our back end systems; downtime is expected to be a few hours while this completes.

Garry's Mod
Garry's Mod
New Feature
Client Side Lua now transfers over FastDL rather than the Source Engine networking system.

As logged in https://lambda.tf/dev/1/issue/9

Due to the amount of Lua files we have in our code base, the Source Engine was starting to struggle. The Source Engine networking channel can only transfer a maximum of 64kb at a rate of 1 Mbit/s, with over 1,500 Lua files, new players joining causes the server to lock up and freeze while the server tries to read and send all files over the network channel, due to the Source Engine's single threaded nature.

Today we've introduced a new method of transfering the code from the server to the client.

Upon server startup, the server will now collect all client side Lua files and then pack them in to a BSP (Map file). When the clients join, this fake BSP is then downloaded (Not as a map, but in to a data directory) via FastDL, therefore avoiding using the ancient Source networking tech. A client is only ever sent 1-2 files which handle reading and loading the code within the fake BSP.

As a result, loading times are now much faster for new players and this no longer effects players currently in the server.

Added
CS:GO Content via Workshop

You can now download CS:GO Materials and Models only via the Workshop.

Collection is available here to subscribe to both: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3569274044

Materials: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3568884909

Models: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3568890575

You can also access these in-game via the content menu.

There may still be some issues as the mounting system in Garry's Mod does a lot of work to ensure different games don't conflict with each other, which the workshop system does not do, so we still reccomend using Lambda Game Utilities to obtain CS:GO, if you have already done this, then we reccommend sticking with this method.

Removed
Cleaned up a lot of legacy code and systems.
Improvement
Merge some Lua Files

To reduce the total count, some libraries have either been merged together or removed if they are not in use.

Service Manager
Added
Server Configuration System

Building our game servers is mostly automated. We have a tool, aptly named "Lambda Deploy" which deploys addons, gamemodes, binary modules and maps, it also utilises SteamCMD to automatically obtain game server files.

One of the pain points recently was the migration of servers and more recently, the switch to Linux. Having to keep backing up server.cfg files and restore them.

Service Manager has now received an update to automatically write server configuration files and these are stored against services (Game servers) and will update the server config upon every restart.

This makes life easier.

Navigation
Improving Loading Times (v5.92) - Change Logs Navigation