Steam Cloud
Steam Cloud enables you to synchronize configs and pak/pkz files to Steam Cloud to be used on another computer or as a cloud backup.
With Steam Cloud active for AQtion a second game directory is loaded
[AQtion-install-dir]/SteamCloud/<SteamID>/action
New files genereated by the game, such as configs, screenshots and demos will be stored in this folder.
The following files will be synced / backed up to cloud whith Steam Cloud active
*.cfg, *.pkz, *.pak, *.menu
cfg-files from all sub-dirs of [AQtion-install-dir]/SteamCloud/<SteamID>/action is synchronized. For the other files just files in the root directory gets synchronized. There synchronized files cannot exceed 100MB, and total number of files synchronized cannot be more than 1000, and total file size for all files cannot exceed 1GB.
Enable/Disable Cloud Store
Steam Cloud is enabled by default, but you can disable it if you don’t want to use it. Steam Cloud is enabled if it’s enabled in BOTH your global steam settings AND for AQtion.
Toggle Steam Cloud for specifically for AQtion
Toggle Steam Cloud globally in Steam
How to start the game with Steam Cloud
For AQtion to load the Steam Cloud directory at start, Steam must be running and Steam Cloud must be enabled (see above); if you don't want to start the game from Steam, you can also launch aqtion.exe in the install directory. If you start q2pro.exe, the Steam integration won't be loaded and Steam Cloud will not work.
NOTE: When Steam Cloud is active, this folder is used as your primary game directory, meaning all new files created by q2pro will be stored there. Files such as demos, screenshots, condumps and config files will reside here.
Folder structure
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Which files gets synced?
Not all files inside the Steam Cloud directory gets synchronized to the cloud, only files placed inside SteamCloud\<SteamID>\action\ with the following extensions gets synced to the cloud.
*.cfg files in SteamCloud\<SteamID>\action\ (5), including sub-directories *.pak files only in SteamCloud\<SteamID>\action\ (5) *.pkz files only in SteamCloud\<SteamID>\action\ (5) *.menu files only in SteamCloud\<SteamID>\action\ (5)
File size and file count limitations
- Files cannot be larger than 100MB (*)
- The total cloud storage provided is 1GB
- Max amount of files are 1000 individual files (pak and pkz files counts as one each no matter how many files they contain)
(*) For this reason big map and texture packs should not reside in your Steam Cloud directory, place them in the original action directory (2) instead
Deleting files from cloud store
Unfortunately, deleting files from Steam Cloud is rather inconvenient. If you want to know why in detail see here, but if you just want to delete a file that is stuck or gets re-synchronized after you deleted it, do the following:
Deleting config-files
To delete a config file, start the game with cloud sync enabled, alt-tab out of the game and delete the files, tab back to the game and quit it. The files will now be deleted from cloud store.
Deleting .pak or .pkz files
To delete a pak or .pkz file, open powershell and run the following two commands
cd 'c:\path\to\your\AQtion\SteamCloud\<SteamID>\action\' clc the-file-you-want-to-delete.pkz
Then start, and quit your game. Now you can also delete the file from your directory.
If you are on mac or linux, use this command instead
cd /path/to/your/AQtion/SteamCloud/<SteamID>/action/ :> filename
Why is it so hard to delete .pak & .pkz files from cloud store?
Steam does not have a user interface or tool to manage the files that are synced to their cloud. It uses the following logic
- When you start the game
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- Have any files been changed since last run?
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- If a file in the cloud is newer than a local one (you have played on another computer) it downloads the new file to your computer
- If a file on your computer is newer than the cloud one (you have made local changes or played offline) it uploads the newer file to the cloud.
- If a file is missing in either the cloud or locally, it gets re-synced to or from the cloud.
- When you quit the game
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- Have any files been changed since you stated?
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- If a file on your computer has changed since the start, it gets uploaded to the cloud
- If a new file on your computer has been created since last start, it gets uploaded to the cloud
- If a file have been deleted on your computer, it also gets deleted in the cloud
Therefore you can simply delete .cfg-files while the game is running and they will be deleted after you quit the game. This does not work for .pak and .pkz files however, since they are locked by q2pro while the game is running there is no way for you the delete them during that time.
Running the "clc" command on a file you want to delete, simply flushes the its content and make it a zero byte file. When such a file gets synced to steam it will delete the file with the corresponding name in the cloud. When a sync has been triggered with this zero byte file, you can also delete the file from your computer. This is a inconvenient workaround, but it’s unfortunately how it works.
Cross platform info
Quake2 have always had the odd behavior of saving the default config as q2config.cfg on windows and config.cfg on linux (inkl. mac). This imposes a small problem for cross platform synchronization of files via steam cloud. The files will get synced between your systems, but only the corresponding file for your operative system will get executed at initialization. If you use an autoexec.cfg this is not a problem for you since they are handled the same on all systems. But if you are not using that and relying on the default config to work (ie with aq2pro installed), then you might need to make some adjustments. Creating an autoexec.cfg with the following code would probably solve your problem
// Autoexec.cfg execute windows default cfg also on linux systems exec q2config.cfg
or even better, create a read only-file on your secondary system executing the other systems default file
// config.cfg, execute linux/mac default config file if i'm running this game on windows exec q2config.cfg
or
// q2config.cfg, execute windows default config file if i'm running this game on linux/mac exec config.cfg