How many times have you sat around waiting to download a custom map from a server? Better yet how many times have you been in a server, ready to scrimmage and you’re waiting around for someone on the other team to download the league map. Nobody likes waiting and unfortunately the rate at which valve based servers upload maps and such is painfully slow. Luckily valve has implemented a little server cvar (sv_download url) to improve this situation, using this cvar improves download speeds considerably.

We give our customers two different options to implement this cvar to their servers, first and foremost we already have many of the required league maps uploaded to our FTP server. To gain access simply open a ticket, this service is free at no additional charge. Second is for customers who run public servers or have a large list of custom maps, you can purchase our $1 web hosting add-on which will give you access to upload whatever maps or files you like.

How-To: Sv_DownloadURL

First you will need a bzip2 compression program which is used to compress the map bsp files. You can locate a free program on download.com. I recommend using the bzip2 compression format on all of your bsp map files which will make them smaller in return shorter download times.

The most important aspect about sv_downloadurl is keeping everything in the proper format and directory structure. Let's say for example your website is http://yoursite.moreal.us, the first step will be to create the directory "cstrike" then under that directory you should create a subdirectory called maps and also a subdirectory named materials. When you’re done the directory format should look like the screenshot below, as such some maps may have other files such as decals, sounds and so on.



Now go ahead and upload your maps and material files, if you intend on running bots be sure to upload the .nav file to the maps folder as well. Once you have uploaded all of your files, you now must create resource (.res) file which is a critical step as it tells the server where your files are located, below is an example for the map de_dust2 which would be saved as de_dust2.res.

"resources"
{"maps/dust2.bsp.bz2" "file"
"maps/dust2.nav" "file"
"materials/de_dust2/decals/whatever.vtf" "file"}

Alternatively you can download an example resource file. The resource file must be uploaded under the cstrike directory as shown in the screenshot below.



Once you have created a resource file for each map and uploaded the needed files to enable this on your server simply add the following cvar to your servers configuration files and restart your server.

sv_downloadurl “http://yoursite.moreal.us/cstrike/”