The XBox 360 has a feature that lets you 'install' a game to the hard drive. My immediate reaction upon learning of this feature was no doubt the same as everyone else's: "Awesome! Now I won't have to keep swapping discs whenever I want to play a different game!" If only.

Click "read more" for the rest of the story...

Next Wildcard Wednesday (September 14) TPU will be running a new (well, new for TPU, anyway) mod: Forgotten Hope. This is another realism mod with a load of new maps. Of course none of them have been tweaked for TPU, but it should be fun to explore this mod.

You should be aware that Forgotten Hope has some significant differences from classic BF42, particularly in the area of user interface. Tanks, for instance, have multiple views for the commander/driver, and only one of them has an aiming reticle. Press F9 to switch views.

There's a good overview of the mod here: http://forgottenhope.warumdarum.de.

You'll find download links for the Forgotten Hope client files (there are three of them) on the Files and links page.

See you on the battlefield!

UPDATE: Battle of Foy removed from the rotation due to repeated server crashes.

At 3:38am this morning, TPU started being flooded with Gamespy traffic from a single IP: 75.102.34.20. The IP is a server in California. It may be just a misconfigured server tracker, or it could be part of an organized DDoS. In any case, I've blocked the IP at the router and notified the person who manages that IP/server.

UPDATE 2011Sep05: The flood from 75.102.34.20 finally stopped, but in the past two days there have been several more, from these addresses:
64.237.43.195
64.79.109.136
71.211.32.58
70.139.49.87

UPDATE 2011Sep06: And more flooding from:
78.46.36.6
72.21.81.63

2011Sep08:
64.79.109.136 (repeat offender)

Wow. I thought Ubisoft was bad. EA's new Origin gaming service - which you'll need to use if you want to play any of EA's new games (including Battlefield 3) - wants access to everything on your hard drive. If you install one of the new games, you agree to the use of Origin, which means you also agree to its terms of use, one of which allows EA to root around in your computer, using what it finds in any way it chooses.

Let me think about this for a moment... it seems I have a choice: play EA games and give EA access to my computer, or stop buying EA games. Seems like a no-brainer to me. I'm officially boycotting EA games (for PC/Windows) until they come to their senses (unlikely).

Here are the details:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/2011...data.shtml

Several TPU regulars have pointed out that TPU is reverting to the DCFinal Berlin map when there are no human players. The server manager software (BFSM) may be initiating this, because when it happens I see these two messages:
"Server is idle, changing to idle map combo berlin GPM_COOP dc_final."
"User operator at console changed the map to berlin GPM_COOP dc_final."
I'm looking into this and will hopefully have it sorted out soon.

UPDATE: Mystery solved. According to the BFSM log, on 8/24/2011 at 19:22:42 one of the admins "changed the idle map to berlin GPM_COOP dc_final." I'm sure it was just a slip of the mouse; no harm done.

I cleared the idle map so things should be back to normal.

The BF1942 dedicated server software running TPU has been patched to prevent the hack that was being used to disrupt the server a few weeks ago. Let me know if this causes any problems.

UPDATE 2011Aug25: Sisko reports that trying to switch maps from DCFinal to BF1942 after the end of the DCFinal schedule last night was having unexpected results. This may have something to do with the patch, so we're keeping an eye on it.

The server that hosts this web site was down this morning. I reported the problem to the provider (A Small Orange) and they fixed it.

The new TPU Monitor (top of the right-hand column) is showing team numbers that are not quite right. I've identified a bug in the PHP code and am working on a fix. I hope to have it working properly in the next day or so.

UPDATE: It's still not quite right. Sometimes it fails to count all players. Working on it...

A few announcements:

[1] Wildcard days are now Wednesdays. We'll stick with DCFinal on wildcard days for now, but there's been some discussion of changing to BF1918 soon, to see if that generates any more interest.

[2] Meanwhile, Tuesdays are now dedicated to DCFinal.

[3] There was a problem with stats processing on Tuesday, but it is now fixed and the missing stats should be on the stats page.

[4] There are some problems with the AI on a few of the BG42 maps. In particular, on Omaha Beach, the Allied bots don't seem to want to move off the beach. I'm going to start a new forum thread about AI problems in general. One thing we have yet to determine is whether we can make changes to the AI on a map without forcing clients to download the changed map.

[5] There are a few misbehaving maps in DCFinal: Bocage (day one?) doesn't run and when voted for, sends you to a random map; also the server seems to get stuck on Mimoyecques. I'll be taking a look at those issues today.

UPDATE: I tried DCFinal Mimoyecques on TPU and it seemed to work fine. Not sure what it was doing earlier since I didn't see it for myself, but perhaps the problem fixed itself. As for Bocage, the first one definitely doesn't run. I'll fix or remove it.

UPDATE: Unable to determine why DCFinal Bocage doesn't run on the server, I removed it from the DCFinal map rotation. There are still two other Bocage maps in the rotation.

UPDATE: DCFinal Market Garden was also acting weird so I removed it.

Thanks once again to the efforts of DarkRyda, a bunch more BG42 maps have been given the TPU touch. What does that mean? It means you won't spend much time walking, because there are rides aplenty.

Here's a list of the maps updated today:
4508-yamashita_treasure [okay]
4504-crossing_the_spree
4212-tebourba_breakthrough [fixed]
4504-volkssturm [okay]
4504-seelow_heights [okay]
4503-cologne_trainstation
4301-stalingrad_winter
4106-battle_of_brody
4104-thermopylae
4104-battle_of_keren
4103-koufra_raid
4011-kalamas_line
4005-stonne
4005-kornwerderzand
4005-hannut_steel
4005-grebbeberg [okay]

Most of the maps have just had their tank and plane spawns bumped up, but these deserve special mention:

4504-crossing_the_spree has two new tanks for each side, a flamethrower for the Russians, and some other new units.

4212-tebourba_breakthrough - changed a lot of the cars to tanks.

4508-yamashita_treasure - changed the cars to floating tanks and boats, added small ships (destroyer type, landing craft and subs), changed the tanks and support vehicles to much stronger units.

Should be loads of fun.