Most of the original Battlefield 1942 maps - and some of the expansion pack maps - came with 'briefing' images. These images are normally only shown in single player mode.

The briefings are useful because they give specific names to map features, particularly spawn points.

I extracted all available briefing images from the map files and posted them in the 'Files and links' section of the site. Here's a direct link: http://jdrgaming.com/geeklog/staticpa...pbriefings

UPDATE: A reader pointed out that some of the briefings were actually for other maps. The duplicates have been removed. Thanks!

There are sixteen players on TPU right now, which I believe is the most ever. Apparently the CKUA server is down and everyone has switched over to TPU for now. The team rules are apparently out the window as well, as they are playing on both teams. I wonder if they realize that one team is bigger? Anyway, it's interesting. I just wish BF42 had a spectator mode.

We are experiencing intermittently slow Internet connectivity. This has been going on since late yesterday. I worked with Shaw technical support this morning but they were unable to resolve the problem. I will take the cable modem to Shaw this morning and get a new one. Hopefully that will resolve the problem. TPU will be down for about an hour while this is happening.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

UPDATE 2012Jun21 9:26am PST: Everything should be back to normal now.

Thanks to an awesome individual who goes by the handle Tuia on bfmods.com, I have just patched the BF1942 server executable so that the current map no longer restarts when the second player joins.

Tuia is the same person who figured out the patch to prevent one of the hacks that was being used to mess up BF1942 servers a while ago. If you have any interest in server-side modding for BF1942, I strongly recommend that you head over to http://bfmods.com and do some reading.

I will be monitoring the server to make sure the patch isn't causing any new problems. If you see anything weird going on, please let me know. And if you notice the server restarting when the second player joins (which I'm sure it won't), let me know.

A few months ago, when BF42 servers everywhere (including TPU) were being hit by a nasty exploit, I discovered this web site: http://bfmods.com

Several of the site's contributors are adept at patching the server software, and they came up with a patch to prevent the hack. I applied the patch to the TPU server and the hacks stopped.

There's plenty of other useful information on the web site, including server-side modding, as well as modding tools. Check it out!

I'm taking the TPU server (Hubie) offline to reinstall that heat sink. Hopefully it won't take more than about 30 minutes to complete. With warmer weather upon us, I just couldn't put it off any more.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

UPDATE: and we're back up. Went faster than I expected, given that I had to remove the motherboard and fire up the soldering iron.

The TPU rules have been updated. Some of them were out of date, others needed clarification. A few few new rules have been added. Please take a few minutes to read them:
http://jdrgaming.com/geeklog/forum/vi...howtopic=3

If you have any comments or concerns about the new rules, feel free to comment on this post or contact me via email.

Many people who've tried EVE Online report that playing it feels less like playing a game than it does struggling with an Excel spreadsheet. Indeed, some hard-core players apparently don't even bother to look at the cool space visuals, choosing instead to concentrate on the overwhelming multitude of lists and displays the game presents.

My own first impression was not that negative, although I can certainly understand why people are turned off by the game's complexity. Later, when I learned more and eventually joined a useful corporation, I began to appreciate and (gasp!) even enjoy playing. Recently I joined the ranks of the nullsec ratters, by which I mean that I locate and destroy the many server-controlled bad guys infesting asteroid belts in most systems. Kill 'em and salvage their stuff: fun, if repetitive.

But there's just one problem: even in systems owned by - and heavily populated by - people in my corporation, there are always hostile human players hanging around, waiting to pounce on unsuspecting players; particularly inexperienced players. No mercy is shown at all, ever. Your ship will be destroyed, your escape pod destroyed, and all your stuff taken. Even the smallest mistake is often rewarded with this extreme form of punishment.

Hostile human players that lurk in enemy systems, waiting for these kinds of mistakes, are so common as to render safe travel in nullsec space essentially a long-forgotten dream. Often, these hostile players are cloaked, so even if you can round up a gang of other players to go after them, they are essentially impossible to find. Yes, of course, we are all warned about this, and to a large extent I expected it.

But the thing I just realized is that this behaviour - in any other multiplayer game - is known as 'griefing'. A griefer is someone who plays online with one goal in mind: to disrupt the game for other players. On most multiplayer game servers, griefing is not only strongly discouraged, it results in a swift and often permanent ban. That certainly goes for the servers I run. But in EVE Online, this behaviour is simply accepted. The EVE universe is so hostile, so unforgiving, and so relentlessly nasty, that I'm starting to wonder why I even bother. The answer is simple: despite this major failing, it's still a very cool game - for those who enjoy the 'blowing things up in space' genre - as I do.

Still, I'm going to have to re-evaluate my subscription. My own servers are for co-operative play only, with human players teaming up to kill computer-controlled players. This type of server has none of the abuse and name-calling so common on other servers. People who exhibit nasty, uncivil, or unsportsmanlike behaviour are simply eliminated, permanently. This can never happen in EVE Online. Do I really need this kind of stress and abuse? If I did, I would just go to work.

The TPU stats process has been failing recently. Thanks to Sisko for pointing it out. Some stats are getting through, but not all of it. I've located the problem (a corrupted DCFinal log) and dealt with it. I'll check what happens after the next stats update about an hour from now. Stay tuned...

UPDATE: the 3am stats run failed. I finally tracked the problem down to the fact that some of the BF42 event log files are getting really big, and the Java run-time was choking on them and crashing. I increased the amount of memory available for the stats parser and that seems to have solved it. All pending logs were processed. Some of the data is actually from a few months ago.

I recently took the TPU server offline briefly to blast out all the dust that had accumulated in its fans, heatsinks, vents and so on. While I was in there poking around, a heatsink fell off one of the motherboard's main chipset chips. It's a fairly large, metal heatsink that was held on by two springy metal clips. I was unable to reattach it, because one of the loops on the motherboard to which the clips are supposed to attach appeared to have fallen off.

At the time, it looked to me like the heatsink had never been attached properly and had simply been held in place by a large bundle of wires nearby. Some web research revealed that this particular motherboard has a design flaw whereby the loops on the motherboard are made from a material that doesn't hold solder very well. The result is that after a lot of heating/cooling cycles, the clips tend to pop out.

Meanwhile, I left the heatsink off and fired up the server again. It doesn't seem to be having any overheating problems, but I want to reinstall that heatsink as soon as possible. Although running the Battlefield 1942 server software doesn't really put much of a strain on the server, I just don't think it's a good idea to run it like this.

I have a solution to the heatsink attachment problem, but it will involve taking the server off-line for up to an hour. This has to be done while I'm awake (for obvious reasons) but I want to avoid interfering with TPU players as much as possible. So here's a question (answer in the comments): what do you think would be the best time to take the server off-line for an hour? Make sure you include time zone in your reply. My 'awake' hours are typically 5am to 9pm PST (yes, I know, I'm weird).