Left4Dead 2 Break on 04/28/13

[eumoria]

::WINDOWS ISSUE::
(steam distribution/cloud issue)
Windows 7 x64 SP1
Core2Duo E8400 / Radeon HD7700

Wondering if anyone else has had anything like this happen to them:
Attempted to open Left4Dead2 tonight and it appeared to open, displaying the default loading splash screen but when it came time for the menu and default selection to open it just crashed back to desktop.

NOTE: Prior to loading it gave me a "Cannot connect with steam cloud" error message. I hit the "OK just play anyway, you bastard" selection and that's when this crash occurred.

I then:
- Deleted all local config
** - Opened, same '"Cloud Error" message' same crash.
- Deleted all extracted files (del directory: <username>\left 4 dead 2)
** - After doing this it decided my game didn't exist, (even though the left 4 dead 2 client.ncf, left 4 dead 2 common.ncf and all other compressed directories remained untouched) I then asked it to verify the game files at which point it found that 100% were OK, however then proceeded to re-download the entire damned game!!

Anyone see what could have happened / what I missed? I guess a severe file corruption due to memory or hard disk problems could be the cause but I ran stress tests on my hardware and they all report back OK... if it's the cloud that destroyed my installation...... That's a pile of COW PATTIES

DoubleNote: I have been switching between clients from several locations and on different platforms (win32/win64/linux_x86-64) but Left4Dead2 worked fine on all windows scenarios and l4d2 isn't even an option (for me) in Linux so I don't think that has anything to do with it directly. Maybe something to do with different client locations as the "Cloud Error" preceded this whole mess?


Did the cloud break my entire installation? HELP?

[Stevo]

The game files are stored in Steam\steamapps\common\left 4 dead 2, so if you deleted that, you deleted the game.

[eumoria]

I didn't realize that... with Team Fortress 2 and all GoldSrc [HL1] (and most Steam engine) games the directories and files are extracted from the gcf/ncf compressed directories from the root <install>/steamapps folder so then *if* the extracted directories (located in <username>/<game dir>) are damaged/deleted Steam would just re-extract the files from the source compressed directories.

I have done this before in most other Valve games to date but have not in l4d2, Left4Dead2 is different?

[eumoria]

For a simple reference if I backup all those compressed directories then format re-install: putting them back in the installed directory post-format I don't have to download anything except what configuration needs to be synced from the cloud.

On second thought you're mistaken.

[Stevo]

L4D2, and soon the rest of the Valve games, store the files in VPK format instead of GCF. I don't know what NCF files are, but mine add up to only a few MB. Anyway, I don't what caused the crash, but it looks like you deleted the game files and that is why you had to redownload the game.