General Updates
- Fixed player ragdolls not rendering.
- Fixed vote menu map list being empty (backported to 24.12.1)
- Fixed crash on player spawn on Linux servers (backported to 24.12.1)
- Fixed "Failed to prepare map" error dialog on custom maps downloaded from server.
- showtriggers_toggle can now only be ran from the server.
- d2_coast_10: Removed black screen fade when someone falls into the water.
- Updated all Half-Life 2 EDT files to be more robust in the face of future Half-Life 2 map updates (Thanks Balim)
Steam Networking: Phase II
Game Client
The Synergy game client will now connect to all internet servers using the Steam Datagram Relay (SDR) by default.
This will:
- Keep your IP address hidden from servers you connect to.
- Encrypt all server network traffic (incoming and outgoing).
- Possibly lower ping times.
Connecting to a server via a LAN IP address will remain unchanged. It will always connect via local IP directly and bypass the SDR as it would otherwise increase ping times by going over the internet instead of staying within the LAN. However, connecting to a server on the LAN via a SteamID (e.g. connect <steamid>) will use the SDR.
If you wish to instead connect to servers with your IP address (how it worked before) then disable this ConVar:
cl_sdr_prefer 0
cl_sdr_prefer 0 will not work when trying to connect to a Dedicated Server using an anonymized IP address (see below) or when connecting via a SteamID; the SDR will still be used in those cases.
Dedicated Servers
Synergy Dedicated Servers will now use anonymized IP addresses by default.
This will:
- Keep the server's public IP address private.
- Remove the requirement to port forward the server to display in the Server Browser.
If you prefer to continue displaying your server's real IP address in the server browser then add the following startup option to keep previous behavior:
-nofakeip
Clients will still attempt to connect via the SDR by default even with -nofakeip. If the server has -nofakeip and the client has cl_sdr_prefer disabled, the connection will not use the SDR - as it worked by default before this update.
Due to a possible Steam bug, servers using an anonymized IP address will not show up in the Steam Client's Server Browser, but it will show up in Synergy's in-game server browser. -nofakeip can be used to workaround this.
Listen Servers
Listen servers are unchanged and will work as they did in the previous update (i.e. connect <friends-steamid>). UI updates are still in progress to make playing with Steam friends easier.
Happy New Years!