Files are basically the engine of GameCreate, Files define exactly what will be written to create your servers. During server creation, on each startup of the server, all files that are within the Files tab for your server are created by GameCreate at the time the server is started, any existing information in this files on the host will be lost so it is important that if you are going to make changes to any file that it be done within GameCreate.
The files system uses several dependancies, and file changes can be made at several parts within the system. By default, all files are derived from the files made available by the system itself. Domain owners can change what files, add files, remove files etc from either the Game Page, where they want the file changes to effect all servers within a server group, or within the server specific file page, which will only affect files for that specific server.
Its important to add that changing files on a per sever basis is not a good idea, since everytime this is done it reduces the usefulness of the change within GameCreate, and means that it cant be brought across multiple servers without copying the server, which then means that files at a game type level become quickly redundent. This results in the system not being able to efficiently able to cope with changes.
Any changes that you plan on making on a regular basis should be defined as a Property, made a variable, then it becomes a simple configuration option for every server for that game type.
Files are extremely powerful where you wish to define a lot of settings across many files, an example of this is Battlefield 2 which can have upto 10 custom files being generated per server, with use of simple count mechanisms we can define port, BF2CC port, and Demo recording on a per server basis automatically by the system itself.
Options available within the server files page are
Add File - This adds new files to the given server.
Name: Descriptive name of the file. This name is used to identify the file within GameCreate - it has no effect on the servers.
Default: Multiple files may be entered into GameCreate, each sharing the same filename. Of the files with the same filename, only one can be used for the game server. Within this collection of files, one file may be the default for permanent servers, and one may be the default for temporary servers. The default file is the file used for the server unless a different file is explicitly chosen for the given game server, or game type.
Copy: Allows you to copy the file and define another name, multiple files with the same file name can exist in the same gametype, each individual server will allow a drop down selection for you to chose which file is more appropriate to run.
New: Some files are derived from a subset of files within the GameCreate infrastructure, if you would like to modify the existing file, select new.
Delete: Will delete the file from the GameCreate system for your domain Warning If you delete all files, the system will not be able to create the config file for your server, which will break the game server.
A file path can exist multiple times within the Game Files list for all games. This is useful in the instance where you would like multiple different defined settings and would like to select from an available list. Where there are more than one file available with the same File Path all files will be available from the dropdown selection. The file that is viewed in that dropdown is the file that will be used when GameCreate creates the files for the server on server startup.