Stuck in Steam Auto Update / Validation hell? Turn off Auto Updates and Don't ...
 

If you are having issues with your steam bought version of King's Bounty Crossworlds, you may want to try this.

Issue: You fresh install King's Bounty Armored Princess, then install Kings Bounty Crossworlds. Steam then either doesn't let the game play, or you're not seeing the content to Crossworlds. The issue being that Steam goes into some kind of a loop of validating KBAP's content, then Steam validates KBCR(crossworlds) content. What I believe is happening is that because both KBAP and KBCR are installed in the same folder, they are both downloading files that are used by both of the games but which are not exactly the same, so when steam goes to validate KBAP it downloads all the files that were added by KBCR, and when steam validates KBCR, it sees all the files are not the right ones that were downloaded in the validation of KBAP. Thus it can go into a continuous loop between the game and it's expansion, and unless stopped by the user, or steam or whomever, will just continually invalidate what steam downloads for those files that failed validation on KBCR during it's validation of KBAP and visa versa.

The simplest solution is to

1. Download fresh copy of KBAP, and then validate it. Then turn off the option to update KBAP automatically in steam (right click name of game, and choose properties then turn off the auto updating)
2. Download fresh copy of KBCR, and then validate it, it may or may not find failed files, depending if steam ran validation for KBAP after you installed KBCR. If it found failed files, go ahead and download them.

Now as long as you keep the auto updating turned off for KBAP, and don't manually try to validate the files for KBAP, you should be good to go.

My belief is either that Steam has somehow messed this up, or that KBAP and KBCR should not be installed into the same folder structure if (*IF*) they are using the same files for each game, but those files are different and thus found to fail the validation when steam trys to validate all the files for KBAP, after KBCR has been installed. But this is my guess only.

It could also simply be that Steam has screwed something up and is not validating the two programs correctly when it should be. As megakill is aware of the issue, he will be checking with Steam, but in the meantime if you have an issue of losing the expansion pack (i.e. can't see the new main menu screen, it still looks like KBAP's main menu, then you may be experiencing this issue with Steam and KBAP, KBCR) then validate KBCR and do NOT try to play KBAP, only play KB Crossworlds until they have a fix for this issue.

Hope this helps anybody else that might be experiencing this issue too and I know there are a few at least.

cc: reposted to Steam forums

Crossworlds needs its own Steam appID and subfolder in the ..\steamapps\ structure. Otherwise, steam client functions for things such as verifying the GCF (game cache files), and probably (I'm not about to test this theory) "delete local content" will not function correctly in several situations. And so far, this cost me the time it took to redownload parts of either game 4 times.

They - that is, Valve, 1C, whoever - really needs to set up Crossworlds so that it doesn't step all over Armored Princess. At the moment, someone that purchased either of the bundles through steam can only play one of the games with the correct installation files. This isn't difficult to do - and I can say this with some confidenece because every other base game and expansion pack and stand-alone expansion pack installed in my Steam library does it as I describe.

Why is this game different?

More info from Steam client logs:

Yep. Same problem here. Stuck in the endless downloading hell auto-update cycle. :(

After automatically downloading files for 1 hour for Armored Princess, and patiently waiting, I was finally able to disable auto-update... and then went through another 1 hour of downloading for Crossworld.

After those long 2 hours, I was then able to start clicking on the Orc banner and playing the new Orc campaign... But the game is starting a new Armored Princess game from the beginning! WTF? *confused*... Do we have to start again all the way from the start? I thought we were supposed to be able to continue from a save game? *confused again*.

And then I quit the game to answer the phone... and by mistake I click on the Armored Princess button in my Steam list instead of Crossword and then *gasp* it start AGAIN to update it from 0% !!!!! *confused* *pressure rising*.

And I DISABLED auto-updating in BOTH games! So why is it auto-updating again?!?! *more confusion*

Sigh. I think we will have to wait for monday morning before playing. *Looking at Armored Princess at 14% and waiting... again...*

Why do they ALWAYS do this on a friday, just before leaving?

It's a mess.

How do you people have problems with steam auto-updating? i had no problems whatsoever, no errors, nothing... perhaps you didn't listen the advice that you have to have clean install of AP? because i havent encountered any of these problems and steam is same globally so it means there must be something you're doing wrong.

Don't assume anything rancor.

My version of both Steam and KB Armor Princess were fresh, new, clean installs this morning since I mistakenly wiped out all my games when I uninstalled Steam from my computer.

And as far as advice goes... Unless it's in the installer telling users, we can't assume nor should we even expect them to go to some forum to see if there is some special instructions. One should not need special instructions to install an expansion pack.

Anyway, this is an issue between Steam and 1C, they really should not have the expansion in the same folder as KB, as it will go through a continual validation back and forth unless somebody fixes it at steam and or 1C, or until we the users stop it from happening.

Saying you had no problems whatsoever, is as useful as the person that says 'my computer never crashes with such and such game'.

I don't believe we've done anything wrong, but I do believe that the developers didn't know how to deal with this expansion on steam properly, and or Steam did not instruct them properly.

Anyway, there is the work around to prevent the problem and that's all that really matters for the moment.

I'm just saying i didn't have any problems with the game updates and such and propably 95% of the other people are the same... there's always someone in every game ever released that has a some kind of problem but that doesn't mean developers failed when few people have some problems. What else can i do than assume? if we both did the same and i have the game working and u dont i cant see how it would be developers fault? It's something about your equipment or the things you did different than me.

Do you have steam set to keep KB updated automatically? I know before I wiped out Steam and all my games, only 2 or 3 out of the 40 of them were set to automatically update, the rest were set to manual or do not auto update.

That could be the difference too. I know many power gamers that have their steam games set to not auto update because they may not want the latest update as soon as it comes out due to more problems that some developers patches sometimes cause, not saying I'm a power gamer, I just like control over what is going on, on my computer and at the very least knowing or acknowledging what is about to happen before hand, so I just turned off auto updating but didn't after reinstalling Steam and AP this morning.

New problems with Steam, as I can see in the morning... Oh well, I will see what can we do here assuming that Steam is on skeleton staff on the weekend. But this is some sort of nightmare and never happend to any of other 34 games we have on Steam before...

I were offline on steam until i was sure the game was unlocked (i had already AP and CW installed) then i went online on steam and i had auto-update on so the steam started to update CW immediately as i went online. After it was done i verified the game files just in case and after that played and i haven't had any problems.

Not sure if this data point is of any use but I had a steam copy of AP (from when it first came out). Pre ordered KBC; installed it Friday 5PM EST without any issues. Started a game (orc campaign) without any issues.

Region for me is USA in case that matters.