And just like that, we've got another Minecraft update. version 1.7.7 was released in a big hurry yesterday, apparently to fix some server crashing problems. This time there is a post on the Minecraft Tumblr page, but it doesn't say much of anything. The Mojang blog post about version 1.7.6 was updated to include this: "We have released version 1.7.7 with an important bugfix to fix some server crashes."

The JDRGaming Minecraft server will be updated to version 1.7.7 later today.

Version 1.7.6 of Minecraft was announced yesterday. The new version fixes some bugs, and makes some changes that will eventually allow players to change their player name.

The version 1.7.6 client is not compatible with earlier versions of the server. This is mostly due to changes in the player profile format. Player profiles should be updated to the new format automatically by version 1.7.6 servers.

The JDRGaming Minecraft server will be updated to the new version later today.

See the Minecraft page on this web site for more details.

No, it's not your imagination. Last night I finally witnessed a bizarre phenomenon previously reported by a couple of players: tanks falling from the sky on the bf1942/Tobruk map.

Next time you're playing bf1942/Tobruk on TPU, watch the skies. Eventually, you may see one or more tanks appear way up in the sky and fall to the ground. The falling tanks often contain bots. Usually these tanks are destroyed when they hit the ground, but sometimes they survive, and rejoin the fight.

So far I've been unable to determine a specific set of circumstances in which this occurs.

My assumption at this point is that there's a bug in the map source for Tobruk, possibly introduced along with the vehicle spawning changes made for TPU. Either that, or there are simply too many units on the map now.

The people at Curse like a good joke, and a post on the Minecraft forum earlier today definitely qualifies. The headline (Minecraft Gets New Developer, Sells to EA) is calculated to shock and terrify Minecraft enthusiasts, but anyone who actually reads the post will recognize it as a joke.

Note that the joke only works because everyone hates EA, and the idea of having their favourite game purchased by EA is viewed as a worst case scenario by most gamers.

Version 1.7.5 of Minecraft was released on February 26. The JDRGaming Minecraft page will be updated later today, and the JDRGaming Minecraft server soon after that.

The new version was announced on the main Mojang blog (https://mojang.com/). Unfortunately, the Mojang blog is also used for updates to other games, so there's a lot of noise there. It remains to be seen whether the Minecraft developers will be diligent in posting update information to the Mojang blog.

The Internet connection used by TPU is having some problems. We're experiencing cold weather, and the same thing happened last time temperatures got this low. The problem fixed itself when the temperature rose, but I want a permanent fix, so I called Shaw and they will send someone out next week. Hopefully the connection will be mostly up in the meantime - at least during the day. I know that doesn't help for you nighthawks, but there's not much I can do. If the connection goes down and stays down I'll call Shaw again and see if they can expedite a fix. The connection is up right now. Temperature is -8 Celsius.

Remember when SimCity 5 came out, and the gaming community uniformly rejected it? The game's problems included the lack of legitimate modding, and no way to play the game offline.

Well, EA has now fixed all those problems. EA has made some changes to SimCity 5 that they hope will boost its sales, but are in fact generating even more scorn. First, they've made modding possible. With caveats. Lots and lots of them. So many, in fact, that the only legitimate mods are changing the surface appearance of buildings. In other words, you can do all the modding you want, as long as it's boring and worthless. Second, despite earlier saying that offline mode is 'impossible', EA is enabling - guess what? - an offline mode for SimCity 5. Amazing that it took them so long, when it took only a week for someone else to do it after the game was released.

Here's a piece of advice, EA: fire all the lawyers and business school grads who run your business, and hire people who understand the software business, and gaming in particular. You are, after all a GAMING company.

It's a new year, so the stats for TPU have been reset. You can still access stats for 2013 and earlier years by clicking the links at the top of the left sidebar.

TPU is currently down for maintenance and will remain down for up to an hour. It should be back up by 11am PST.

Anyone wishing to play on the JDRGaming BF2 server must first install both the FH2 mod and Coop Patch C. Both of these files are available in the Files and Downloads section of this site.

Unfortunately, despite the name of the server including "COOP Patch C", it looks like people are trying to join the server without first installing Coop Patch C. Normally, when you do that, your client will crash and the server won't be affected. But for some reason, when some players try to join, the server also crashes. In an attempt to avoid this, I have now added a password to the server. The password is "cooppatchc".

I'll publish the password in a couple of other places (GameTracker, XFire) to make it easier to find. I'm not trying to keep people out of the server, just trying to make sure they understand that there's no point joining if they don't have Coop Patch C installed.