How to patch the sim and update your .ini files (if you have the old ones).

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by meplay

Hi Blackdog_kt

Im going to give this a whirl, i am getting some stutters after installing this patch so hopefully if i do it this way, it will help. Do i need to have my steam cloud on to get the patch from steam or do's it still work without?

Thanks S!

You don't need to keep Steam cloud enabled. As soon as the patch is beyond the beta stage it will get incremented with a new version number and will be out on steam for automatic download.

If you have automatic updates enabled you will get a notification in the steam interface and it will begin downloading. If you prefer to keep the updates off, once the patch is released you can right-click on your CoD icon in steam and go to properties, there you can set auto-updates to on and let it update and then set it to off again.

What the clouds does is transfer settings between your currently used pC and steam, it doesn't have anything to do with patching. The initial .ini files are in your game folder, then they get copied over to the documents\1c softclub folder upon installation/first run of the sim and whatever you edit gets saved there (or in both, not really sure).

What the cloud does is upload a copy of them to steam and if you fire up the sim from a different PC with the same account and cloud enabled, it's supposed to download your .ini files so you are up and running fast.

The confusion comes from the fact that i don't really know which set of .ini files it uploads to steam and which set takes precedence (eg, people have enabled the cloud only to have steam overwrite their configs with new, blank files). So i just keep it off and do it the old fashioned way: copy anything i might need to a separate backup folder.

In any case though patching is not tied to the cloud, so if you find the description of what it does confusing you can keep it turned off and not care about it

Originally Posted by Tiger27

This is a peice of great advice, I have been through the files and they are quite different from previous ones, only problem I am having with this and the last patch is I cant save or load my controller settings, so I have to keep redoing them

This is an issue with the latest beta patch and already brought to the developers' attention. People report that going to the "plane" menu from the main loading screen and setting loadouts there works: they can be properly saved and selected for the flight during the mission pre-flight screens.

However, something got broken in the "player plane" menu which alters your personal loadouts, this is found on the map pre-flight screen right before you spawn. People report it works in multiplayer though.

The temporary workaround is to save loadouts in the plane menu and assign them to your entire flight for offline flying.

Originally Posted by Blackrat

Nice post, reposted on syndicate forum too, hopefully it has sorted out my crossfire issues, so far so good. Also it seems processaffinity has gone from the conf.ini file and is incorporated in the main core as I still get all four cores being used.

In game when you set up your controls there is an option to save them, this then creates a control file in your documents section for COD which you can backup elsewhere and just copy back when you upgrade.

Yep, the affinity mask setting was withdrawn.

Also, the ability to save just the keybindings and controls is very useful. My one main worry was that my personalized mycontrols.ini file would be incompatible with the new conf.ini, but thankfully it worked just fine and i didn't have to remap everything from scratch.

Originally Posted by 335th_GRAthos

Thanks for the post!


Does anybody know what may have changed between the old and the new conf.ini files?


~S~

There were a lot of legacy parameters in the initial config files that were not really used by the sim, leftovers from previous builds during development and so on. At least that's what Luthier said when the sim was initially released and that's why he told us it's possible to horribly break the sim if we just went around and started changing values
The new conf.ini has a lot less parameters, so i guess they simply cleaned up all the unnecessary leftover values.

[meplay]

ah thanks Blackdog_kt, yeah i saved my ini files in separate folders on desktop and on my memory stick so im just going to leave my steam cloud turned off

Thanks

S!

[timholt]

So if I don't download the beta patch and wait for Steam to be updated, do I still need to delete the old ini. files or will Steam do it automatically?

[TUSA/TX-Gunslinger]

I'd like to add another few small items to Blackdog's excellent list. There is nothing in the checklist that I personally have not been doing - I love his list because it is coherent and one of the only pieces of structured guidance for beta patch setup that exists in our forums here.

I have installed and tested each of the release and beta patches since the beginning - saving and documenting results for each iteration. There have been many improvments since the beginning - but overall frame rates on my system when properly configured average around 42 fps - with min in low 20's - max in the mid 90's.

I got home late last night, so I was quite tired when I ran down the "Blackdogs Checklist". On my first TBD track benchmark - my average frame rate was around 21 fps. After checking my Catalyst, Game settings, configs and system to ensure all settings were consistent with my standard testing. I re-ran the benchmark after rebooting my system. Low frame rates again!

I gave up, went to bed and realized after I woke up, that I'd forgotten to clean out my 1C Softclub/Cache directory. Stupid me. Cleaned the cache, restarted CoD then ran TBD track for the bench. Crap! Back to 21 fps again. Went to work.

After I came home, I restarted my system - checked everything again - recleaned the cache. Still 20-21 fps. Restarted CoD and ran a second time and BANG 42 fps!

Why? **The 1C Softclub\cache has to rebuild itself after you delete the files. So CoD has to be run at least 1 time and closed again for this to happen.

Here are some additional steps:

1. Delete all files in /My Documents/1C SoftClub/il-2 sturmovik cliffs of dover/cache
2. Start CoD
3. Playback "The Black Death" track - you can stop it after a few seconds.
4. Exit CoD
5. Restart CoD
6. Conduct testing

While I'm on this point, maybe it's good that I add this part.

1. Play "The Black Death" Track once all the way through, looking for anomalies or bugs - but don't use this benchmark.
2. Keep the benchmarks from the second and subequent playbacks, and report them together.

Why? On the first track playback, the track is loaded from disk to RAM. You'll find the second playback much more stable than the first (if you conduct enough benchmarks to be statistically significant), because of the random access loadup.

This way, random access storage is removed from the equation, and we are isolating the CPU/RAM/Video sections of each system. This makes the FPS results, much more comparable and non-dependent on the variables of storage, thus giving a better picture of cross-platform relationships and dependencies.

You can always report the first load, sometimes I do - but I keep these results separated.

In summary, if your not making multiple, full track benchmarks and not saving results to files, your results may not be all that usable, and most importantly - you can't see what is really occuring in your system, patch-to-patch.

S!

Gunny

[Blackdog_kt]

Useful extra bits of info there Gunslinger

I don't usually benchmark in the true sense of the word (i just fly some missions and see how things go over a variety of terrain) because tracks recorded on previous versions might give different results on newer ones (like it was in IL2) but it's good to know anyway in case i decide to start doing so.

Originally Posted by timholt

So if I don't download the beta patch and wait for Steam to be updated, do I still need to delete the old ini. files or will Steam do it automatically?

Unless they incorporate this step in the automatic patching process you will still have to do it yourself.

However, this is a one-time deal unless they decide to change the .ini files again, which i doubt will happen soon...maybe in the future when new features get enabled they will just add new parameters, but i guess the basic structure will remain the same for now.

In other words, it's not something you need to do every time you download a new patch, just once if you had an early version of the sim initially installed on your PC.

[SEE]

EDIT:

I misunderstood (or should I say I'm being a wally!), you have to launch Clod and it creates the missing ini files in the 1Csoftclub folder ( I thought steam did it!). I will leave the question intact in case someone else has the same problem.





Thanks Blackdog_kt, may be you can help me suss why this doesn't work for me. I must be doing something wrong but can't see what.

I checked my ini files and they are dated March and April 15. (I disabled cloud as I had it enabled), moved the ini files to back up folders on my desktop, ran the verify cache option and Steam downloaded exact copies back into the Steam directory but none into the MyDocs installation folder.

[335th_GRAthos]

Can sombody be kind enough to post his conf.ini (new version)?

Mz conf.ini is sacred, I do not dare to let anyone (e.g. Steam) touch it thus I will do the update manually.

Thanks in advance!

~S~

[ChiefRedCloud]

4) Run the steam file verification tool . This will spot you are missing the .ini files (since you moved them to another location) and download the new ones. I have opened and compared the old and new files and their structure is different, so i can confirm this will give you the new files without having to mess with steam cloud settings, just keep the cloud thing off altogether.

I've looked in Steam but cannot find this. Help!

[Tiger27]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tiger27 View Post
This is a peice of great advice, I have been through the files and they are quite different from previous ones, only problem I am having with this and the last patch is I cant save or load my controller settings, so I have to keep redoing them
This is an issue with the latest beta patch and already brought to the developers' attention. People report that going to the "plane" menu from the main loading screen and setting loadouts there works: they can be properly saved and selected for the flight during the mission pre-flight screens.

However, something got broken in the "player plane" menu which alters your personal loadouts, this is found on the map pre-flight screen right before you spawn. People report it works in multiplayer though.

The temporary workaround is to save loadouts in the plane menu and assign them to your entire flight for offline flying.

Thanks for the advice, but in my case it is the controls config menu where I cant save, so I cant backup or load my saved control file, although the apply button works thankfully, strange because I have reloaded everything and it is still there, but I dont know of anyone else with this problem, as it is I just redo my controls each patch, it's a pain but doesnt take to long.