[VersionCheck]
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API_URL=" https://your-api-server"

Hello, thank you for your guide on how to set up a heroku app. I've set one up but I'm not sure how to add this to the GUS.ini entry.

API_URL=" "

Am I correct to assume it has to be within quotation marks? When I added it without quotation marks I noticed the URL vanished after the restart. With quotes I've yet to see an update notification even though there have been a few updates. Thanks you :)

How to host your own.

http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/discussion/898754545/1692659769956574700/

I've pushed it to Heroku.

To continue using this mod, you can set your API_URL to

https://arkmods-versionchecker.herokuapp.com/api/v1/versioncheck

Thank you!!!

@jslay can you reload the mods source and info to the git? The link isnt working and when i tried to navigate to it this mod isnt listed anymore. I want to try and get it working again because i have a dedicated server that i could easily put a webserver up on.

When did this get Discontinued? Does this mean no more updates for it?

Can you send steam messages from a mod? :P

Mods cannot restart servers.

You can use the log output to build a watchdog to restart the server for you.

Can you add an option to auto-restart when an update is detected? Maybe give a configurable-duration warning that the server will restart in x minutes. Would be nice when using -automanagedmods

Thanks for the quick reply. Now I just need to figure out why logs are not being created while the server is running. Attempted to log on 4 seperate server instances in the last 5 days and to no avail.

server logs

mods cannot write to any file on their own, we have to pass the log to a function, which handles writing to server log.

When the mod writes the LogMessage does it write it to its own log or to the servers log? I have a script I wrote for another game a while back that checks to server updates and if update needed shuts down and reboots the server.

Yes. :)

Would it be too much trouble to add a bool that lets us *choose* to leverage it? :)

Not only. Some people define mods IDs in the startup command, which it is not possible to pull those IDs. So it also doesn't use those IDs to help reduce confusion.

It doesn't, so that you can choose which mods you are concerned about. Sometimes, you may want to include additional IDs, or excluded certain IDs.

Any chance this could be changed to leverage the ActiveMods= config option that already exists for modded servers?

Well yes, if you update it before you are notified, and it has been checked immediate before it has updated, then the cache is going to be out of date if the server comes back up before the cache has expired, and will provide old data on boot, and then notify shortly after with the new time, thinking there is an update.

But if you are updating based off the notification/server log produced by this mod, then you are obviously not going to get a false notification coming back on restart, as you will have gotten past the 10m expiry.

Is that the issue though? I was just speculating. Is that the only solution to the problem? It's a pretty rare occurrence, so I don't plan to build my own cache and poll more often for it.

You can setup your own API and define the cache time (if any) there.

The one being provided publicly, will always be a 10 minute cache, as to not flood Steam, and conserve resources on the server itself.

Slight bug where this detects that a mod is out of date, but the server is started with the current version of the mod. It happens if a mod is updated, and the server started with that updated mod, but Mod Version Checker's cache hasn't been updated yet (if I had to speculate).

Anything we can do about that?

Runs just fine in the devkit with those IDs. Must be something with how its being setup, or something with the host.

FYI, I removed the NotiMessage and LogMessages sections from the INI and it still crashes. The only areas I've modified, at all, are the ModIDs, NotiMessage, and LogMessage sections. So the issue must lie within the ModIDs.

@jslay Okay, I just got around to trying it again.

Using:
ModIDs=680481868,833379388,800058338,679529026,731604991,719928795,708807240,893834064,879894972,749466101,764755314,899250777,538418918,834667662,932816570,942185438,566887000,751991809

It's still crashing upon startup and immediately creating a dump file without starting the server. So, effectively, nothing has changed. This wasn't the issue.

Nice - website rolled through it, just fine, and gave perfect JSON. (And honestly... if you keep that page up, I just might bookmark it. It's invaluable to have a place to easily turn an entire ModID list into readable names - I've been meaning to do something, myself, for that. Will let you know if I run into any problems later on, but I don't expect to. :)

I also added in some better error handling on the backend, to just ignore invalid id's and roll through with the rest.

https://versioncheck.arkmodding.net/

I just built this for you. You can check you string against it.

Ah. That is/was the ModID for Ragnarok. When I setup the server (only a couple of weeks ago) the mod page was still alive and so we used the ModID at the start of our list. (I copied the whole list over to the [VersionCheck] area, without even thinking about that. Apparently ARK doesn't balk at using an invalid ModID (presumably since modIDs can go invalid at any point, I suppose.)

Did it happen to work with the rest of those, or did you just happen to notice this not working on your first check? I'll try to turn this mod back on, tomorrow, and see if it resolves it without the Ragnarok ModID in the [VersionCheck] section.

Thanks for looking at it, @jslay.

776464863 doesnt exist.

Yeah, it doesn't act like it's hanging. It's clearly crashing as there's a .dmp file every single time I start the server - and rather quickly, as well, since the server normally takes about 10 minutes to start up. (I get the DMP in less than 3)

Well, if the are blocking it, should just result in a connection timeout and not hang anything. The only time we ever had any issue with it getting stuck, was when the text parser was. Dealing on a special char, causing an infinite loop. But that has been addressed.

That actually makes me further curious if the host might have something preventing mods from accessing the internet, and the mod doesn't account for this failure and crashes?

i just added the numbers not the rest of ini all i added was ModIDs= and the mod numbers nothing els have 33 mods on server and all is fine

Yeah, I figured, which is why I gave the ini info. Hope it helps :)

I'll run it through the devkit later tonight and see what happens. Probably another special char or some encoding issue.

Our settings were:
[VersionCheck]
ModIDs=776464863,680481868,833379388,800058338,679529026,731604991,719928795,708807240,893834064,879894972,749466101,764755314,899250777,538418918,834667662,932816570,942185438,566887000,751991809
NotiLoopDelay=600.0
MaxConcurrentNotiCount=0
NotiMessage=A mod (%modname%) has been updated! Please notify an admin!
LogMessage=ModVersionChecker!! A mod needs an update. ModID: %modid% ModName: %modname%

(I tried ModIDs with, and without, 898754545, thinking that may have been an issue. It didn't change it crashing.)

Attempting to use this mod causes an access violation crash (according to the .dmp file) for our server if, and only if, using this mod. The dmp didn't appear to give any further useful information.

Our host's software doesn't detect the crash, because it sits there at a little over 2GB Memory usage and 0% CPU thinking it's running, but it has crashed, and created a .dmp file.

The only thing changed was adding this mod, and it was fixed, immediately, by removing this mod.

(Next comment will have our settings.)

my server been running this mod fine for months and i use 35 mods

Nice!

That was the whole reason of open sourcing it, was so others could integrate it into their existing projects.

That´s right!
But my VC-Api is not only for ARK Survival Evolved or better said for Steam's Workshop.
This Api can control the ClientVersion of ARK Dev-Kit and some other GameClients (UT99, L2-Ertheia)

Nice.

Keep in mind, you only need to define things in GUS if you want to change the default (which is what is shown in the mock INI settings). If you aren't hosting your own API endpoint, then you don't even need to define anything for it in INI.

@Hoolio @jslay OK. I think I've found a solution so that the server URL does not delete the API URL value. The API URL value must be placed in quotation marks.

eg. API_URL = "https://versioncheck.arkmodding.net/api/v1/versioncheck"

Tested. - all URLs must be set in quotation marks.

@Hoolio. I have this problem also and can confirm this. The game server cleans the ini file at server start and removes the API URL variable (value).

Thanks man.

@hoolio, Ill check it out. I admittingly didnt test any of it, as its pretty straight forward code, and figured chars would get passed in correctly. I'll report back if there is an easy work around, or if I need to push an update to address the issue.

no, that is where the mod will inject the mod name it gets from steam API into your message. Same for the id in the log. In case you wanted to build your own custom log string to catch with a watchdog.

Hi there
NotiMessage=%modname% has updated! Please notify an admin!

LogMessage=ModVersionChecker!! ModID: %modid% ModName: %modname%

with $modname% and %modid% must i manually add the name of all the mod and must they be exact to the folder name of each mod?

Server wont save the api link in config only api_url=https and nothing more.

thanks & great work on this "Sensei's"
Ninja Apprentice - out