CnCNet Killing Map Transfers - Fix & Cause Found

[Nuclear Kommando]

I was on with @bbglas007 the other day and were looking to play some "McPwny: Einstien's Daydream"

And what do you know, the map "uploads" / "Upload Complete Successfully" but on the receiving end it fails.

So we started doing some testing:

First we took turns hosting - Not the problem
Then I started testing different variants with the map name, as I had a feeling that I might find something and what do you know.

The problem was with the colon ( " : " ) in the name  "McPwny: Einstien's Daydream"
Removing that from inside the map under 

[Basic]
Name=

Fixed the problem, however this is still a problem for those who don't know about this fix, if they are trying to play any legendary old maps that happen to have the colon in the name.
And yes we tested picking a random map and adding a colon and that replicated the issue mentioned above.

 

Finally we played this map a year ago, and it was working fine since release up until at least a year ago when we tried to play it.

Could be something to do with one of the database updates
Since windows doesn't accept colons in file names, data base might be trying to pull the name into the file name and causing it to fail

Perhaps it can be updated to generate the file names with the colons removed.

 

@burg93@Devo1929@Grant @McPwny

Edited September 20, 2022 by Nuclear Kommando

[McPwny]

oh wow holy crap thank you guys. i had all but given up on fixing it and had just kind of accepted it as gone forever.

i think in a recent update they changed the way that map filenames are stored from being an incomprehensible string of letters and numbers to having the name of the map visible in the filename, which would mean that any map with name having any characters that windows cant display in a filename will be broken, and that its not just limited to ":"

[bbglas007]

Yes, that is my theory also, however I could not find the specific update to specify in this post.

Glad we could help bro, hope the devs can have a look at this and give some kind of backwards compatibility or character replacement logic to the database and file handling

 

1. The forbidden printable ASCII characters are:

   • Linux/Unix:

       / (forward slash)
     

   • Windows:

       < (less than)
       > (greater than)
       : (colon - sometimes works, but is actually NTFS Alternate Data Streams)
       " (double quote)
       / (forward slash)
       \ (backslash)
       | (vertical bar or pipe)
       ? (question mark)
       * (asterisk)

2. Other rules

3. Windows:

   Filenames cannot end in a space or dot.

4. macOS:

   You didn't ask for it, but just in case: Colon : and forward slash / depending on context are not permitted (e.g. Finder supports slashes, terminal supports colons).

 

Source:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1976007/what-characters-are-forbidden-in-windows-and-linux-directory-names

Edited September 20, 2022 by bbglas007