Conan exiles download mods

This tool is designed to allow manual syncing of specific versions of a mod-set to Conan Exiles players. It is designed to be configured by a Dedicated Server host; then, clients (players on the server) can download the .NET client and run it to patch.

What problem does it solve?

This tool solves the problem of players and the server having different mod versions, which will be incompatible and players get errors joining the server.

If you have players always download the latest version of the mods from Steam Workshop, players may have an inconsistent version because, basically, Steam absolutely sucks at mod version management and sometimes is very delayed in getting players an updated version, and occasionally even corrupts the files when patching them! Also, each patch would require a restart of your game server, which bumps everyone offline.

Instead, you can manually control when you want to update mods (like, when you see a new feature your players want, or a bug fix that's important to you, in the changelog), rather than allowing mod authors' rapid fire releases to dictate your update schedule.

This only works, however, if you ensure that your players have the bit-exact same versions of every mod that your server is running. Steam doesn't allow you to install old versions of mods, so the only way a player can use an older mod is if we install them out of band (i.e., not using Steam).

How does it work?

1. The person(s) GMing/administering a Dedicated Server with mods will configure the appropriate server software (see "Server Setup" below.)
2. (Optional) For convenience, bundle a file called conanpatcher_config.json along with the client software in a zip file and host it for your users.
3. Your players will download conanpatcher.exe (along with its other dependencies) as per the Releases page on Github or your own custom distribution.
4. Players will launch conanpatcher, point it at the correct config file if it isn't bundled, then click the "Patch!" button. They very rarely will need to modify any of the settings.
5. The patcher will automatically use the algorithm to download the player's mod data correctly for Conan. The download comes from your server, not Steam, allowing you to control exactly when the players will receive a new version of the mods and ensuring that any corrupted files are fixed, while minimizing the amount of data that has to be transferred (good for slow connections).
6. The patcher will also, if a modlist.txt is specified in the json file, overwrite the player's Conan Exiles modlist.txt with the one you supply. This makes it virtually impossible that the player will get this file wrong.

Switching from Steam Workshop to manual mod version management

Migrating from the old Steam Workshop style mod distribution is easy:

1. At your option, instruct players to unsubscribe from your mods on the Steam workshop using the Steam UI.
2. Have them run conanpatcher and click Patch! No further explanation is needed if you bundle a conanpatcher_config.json with the download.

Warning: At present, mods pertaining to other servers will be deleted without warning when running this patcher. Make sure your users know this!

Client Info

• Should be compiled with .NET 4.0 for maximum compatibility with older systems (e.g. Win7)
• A 64-bit operating system is required at this time - not a problem since Conan is 64-bit only
• If you bundle the client with a file called conanpatcher_config.json with the appropriate config, your users won't have to do anything except launch the executable click the Patch! button.

Server Setup

• Currently the "server" is a series of scripts based on steamcmd. The scripts are given in the server-tools directory. First follow the setup instructions to get steamcmd on the command line (I'm assuming your server is hosted on Linux): https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamCMD
• You need to run an rsync server to make this work. It should have all your mod files in a common place labeled "files" by the rsync daemon. rsync should run on Windows, Mac and Linux, but it's really designed to run best on Linux, so you should host your patch files on Linux even if your game server is hosted on Linux (they don't have to be on the same box).
• If you're hosting this, you need to change the rsync server URI (rsync://something.com:port/path) - mine is only applicable for the server I'm playing on right now.
• You can keep your server-side mod files up to date using steamcmd and update.sh. You should run update.sh at the same exact instant as you're updating your mods on your Conan game server.
• conan_steamcmd.txt is the list of commands sent to steamcmd.
• 440900 is currently? (or permanently I hope) the Conan Exiles steam app ID
• The other numbers are the Steam workshop IDs of each mod in my particular server. You can get these numbers from the steamapps/workshop/content/440900 folder.
• conan-rsync.sh is the daemon script. Set this to launch on system startup using your favorite init daemon.
• Run update.sh whenever a mod updates.
• These scripts assume steamcmd.sh exists and runs steamcmd in the current working directory and ~/conan is where you have all this stuff.
• For example client deployment usage see here

JSON Documentation

Example JSON config file:

• ServerName: Required. The user-friendly server name displayed in the patcher GUI to end-users. Should be short enough to fit in a small drop-down box.
• ModPath: Required. The relative path where your mods are located compared to the Conan Exiles base directory. Usually this should start with . Several things to note... First, all backslashes must be escaped by typing TWO backslashes. Second, this is NOT relative to modlist.txt, it is relative to the Conan install folder. Lastly, you should make this folder something unique that other servers are unlikely to use. Don't just chuck all your mods into , please! It's bad manners and will increase the likelihood of conflicts if the player plays on multiple servers that use this patcher.
• GameID: Optional. The Steam Game ID of Conan Exiles. This shouldn't be changing, but it might if they "re-release" it in the Steam backend for whatever reason. If you omit this, the source code will default to using 440900.
• GameName: Optional. The Steam Game Name of Conan Exiles. This is so we know which folder to look in in the user's folder.
• ModlistUrl: Optional. The URL of the modlist.txt to download. This gets installed into the user's folder, overwriting whatever is already there. You can use something like raw file direct links from Github Gist or Pastebin if you don't have a webserver.
• RsyncUrl: Required. The URL of the rsync server where the files are being hosted. You'll need a host, port, and share.
• RsyncArgs: Optional. These are the custom arguments fed to the rsync process to describe to it how to process the files and download the patches/new files. The default recurses subdirectories, deletes unneeded files, does a checksum on the files before downloading, and applies server-side compression to all downloaded deltas.

License

Legal Disclaimer: This tool is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Valve Corporation, Funcom, Microsoft, or any other corporate entity. This program is free software developed by a private individual citizen of the United States of America. It is intended for, but not exclusively limited to, entertainment purposes for working with the 2018 video game Conan Exiles for the PC platform. This tool does not compete with or in any way interfere with the Conan Exiles product, and only interacts with it in ways that are explicitly supported for hobbyist game "modification" purposes by the developers/publishers of Conan Exiles.