Team Fortress 2 Forum

I've been trying to connect to a private server for the past 2 hours, but after it loads, and I get to the objectives screen, I only get the border graphics [everything but the objectives] and it crashes. Some info that might clarify anything:

My ping was at 98.
The person hosting set the maximum ping at 150 [I should definitely be good to go there]
Before I brought the problem up, they were using a MOTD graphic or something. She took it down, but I still can't connect.
The Language is already set to english.

I can connect to games with very high and very low latency's, but this is the only one that's been giving me a problem. Any thoughts on this would be helpful.

It might be the map. It might be any custom graphics or effects in use in the map.

Those are my only guesses right off the bat.

I get this same issue -- it's the MOTD crashing things (i.e. the screen before the objectives); the MOTD never works (shows a black box), but on some servers, it actually causes a crash (see http://games.internode.on.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1716032).

Easy fix:

Just install IE 6.0 into your bottle. Presto!

I had this problem too trying to connect to internode servers.

Installing IE 6 breaks a lot of Steam functionality for me; the Community and Store tabs don't work and the interface itself takes quite a bit longer to load.

Yes this is the same for me. I didn't install Steam to look at the Store or Community tabs, but is there a better way to stop this from happening without losing the Steam html functionality?

EDIT: I've tried installing the CrossOver HTML engine included in the application list without installing IE 6.0. Doesn't do anything.

I've found something that supposedly fixes this issue in Wine for Linux. Since CrossOver is based on Wine, I was hoping this could lead to a better workaround than installing IE 6. I've tried this to some extent on CrossOver Mac and no change, but I wasn't sure how to set the permissions properly. I know this is not a very urgent issue, but I would like my Steam friends functionality.

"Based on workarounds for similar bugs, I believe the following will work around 
the bug for TF2 users. In any case, I've done it and haven't had issues since. 

In the directory .wine/drive_c/Program Files/Steam/steamapps/<account 
name>/team fortress 2/tf, create a file called motd_temp.html that's empty. 
Change it's owner to root and make it unreadable and unwriteable to anyone 
else."

Now when you connect to a server that has an HTML motd, it should just show a 
black box where the motd should be. But it won't crash." 

This was on the WineHQ bugs repository here

I don't know if this workaround really works around the crash, but you can use it with CrossOver (Games). All that is different is the location of the drive_c folder. On Linux, you can find it in ~/.cxgames/<bottle>/, on MacOS in Library/Application Support/CrossOver Games/Bottles/<bottle>/

I'll try the workaround starting tonight and see if the number of crashes goes away. I do know that installing IE6 definitely helps the problem since TF2 is trying to access it, but it messes with the community and store pages and does not render them correctly (CrossOver HTML works fine, but doesn't help the crash). This workaround actually might make sense, because in theory if you prevent any custom server billboards from loading, then you won't have to worry about crashing.

Anyone else who has Crossover HTML and not IE6 may want to give this a shot and report their results. I'm using a Mac.

Okay I've tried using this workaround extensively in Leopard, but no hit. I've tried making a motd.txt, download.htm and motd_temp.html file and they're all no good. Unless there is some other way of locking access to the file other than using Get Info (I've made all access to all users [including admin] read-only and locked the file.) For instance, I know in Linux some people are using 'chmod' in a terminal window to make it read only, so what's the equivalent to performing this to a file on a Mac in Terminal? I'm not sure exactly the process to chmod in Terminal. Is this different to what I've already done in 'Get Info'?

I'm thinking that this issue may be caused by something Crossover Games does when rendering HTML, since fixes are working unanimously in Linux and Wine. There is another way to fix this issue in Linux by changing the URL path in the registry for 'Gecko' in Wine (check the games.internode link posted.) I've tried this and it doesn't work. Another thing I've noticed is that regedit isn't saving my changes when I restart Crossover Games is this normal? But I'm assuming the Mac version doesn't use Gecko in any form anyway. Is this true?

So what would CrossOver Games for Mac use for rendering HTML and how can we disable that?

Is there some way I could make a crash report to send it into CW?

McBanjo wrote:

For instance, I know in Linux some people are using 'chmod' in a
terminal window to make it read only, so what's the equivalent to
performing this to a file on a Mac in Terminal? I'm not sure exactly
the process to chmod in Terminal.

It's the same as on other *nix operating systems: "chmod". 😊

You can do something like this: chmod a-w /path/to/file

If you drag-and-drop the file onto the Terminal window, it will auto-type the path to the file for you.

McBanjo wrote:

Is this different to what I've already done in 'Get Info'?

Maybe. Depending on what you did in the Finder, it might have used an ACL (Access Control List) rather than modifying the more ordinary Unix permissions. You can do "ls -le /path/to/file" to see the Unix permissions and ACLs.

McBanjo wrote:

I'm thinking that this issue may be caused by something Crossover
Games does when rendering HTML, since fixes are working unanimously
in Linux and Wine. There is another way to fix this issue in Linux
by changing the URL path in the registry for 'Gecko' in Wine (check
the games.internode link posted.) I've tried this and it doesn't
work. Another thing I've noticed is that regedit isn't saving my
changes when I restart Crossover Games is this normal? But I'm
assuming the Mac version doesn't use Gecko in any form anyway. Is
this true?

So what would CrossOver Games for Mac use for rendering HTML and how
can we disable that?

CrossOver Games does in fact use Gecko for rendering HTML, just like Wine. It is possible that we're shipping a version of Gecko that's somewhat behind what Wine's using, although CrossOver Games is not all that far behind.

What you report about regedit not saving changes is concerning. That is not normal. Did you perhaps mess with the permissions of other files within the bottle?

If you make changes to the launch options of a Steam game, are those properly saved across restarts of CrossOver Games? Because those are also stored in the registry.