This morning I changed the 'server bandwidth limit' setting for TPU from 'no limit' to 2048 Kbps. This setting is just under the actual upload bandwidth limit for the Internet service I'm using. Please let me know if you notice anything different - good or bad.

According to Sisko, the regular BF1942 Battle of Britain is still causing the server to crash repeatedly. I've played that map myself on TPU recently, so I know it's not happening all the time. I had previously assumed that the problems were caused by the B17s, which led me to remove them from that map, but clearly there's more going on there. Any additional observations?

Is anyone else having problems with the regular BF1942 Guadalcanal map on TPU? Whenever I try to join TPU when that map is running, my game client crashes. The server keeps running fine, though.

This Techdirt article summarizes the much more reasonable approach to 'piracy' being taken by some of the more enlightened game developers:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/2011...hing.shtml

A notable quote: "If the game gets pirated heavily, if it's a good game that people really like, they're going to either buy it eventually or they're going to tell other people about it. Either way it's just going to come back to a sale."

Exactly!

Reports from players and my own observations show that some of the DCFinal maps are a bit flaky. In particular, Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima are causing client crashes. I have removed both of those maps from the DCFinal rotation. If anyone notices any other problems, please let me know.

Et tu, Blizzard? Abandoning your single player, LAN gaming base is going to be a costly mistake. Sure, plenty of Diablo fans will buy Diablo III despite being required to have an always-on Internet connection, but those of us who still fondly remember Diablo LAN parties will shake our heads sadly and give D3 a pass. Blizzard, what do you think made Diablo so huge in the first place? Do you really think you lost any sales because of LAN gaming? No. Even if a dozen people at a LAN party all played with one copy of Diablo, the promotional value made up for any imagined loss in ways you clearly have never imagined possible.

To make matters worse, the real-world-currency market in D3 is going to give wealthy people a distinct advantage in the game. Yes, that's what the world needs: more advantages for rich people.

Screw you, Blizzard, and screw your accountants and lawyers who pushed for these changes. You just lost a customer. And speaking of promotional value, don't forget that it comes in negatives as well.

Ghastly details: http://games.slashdot.org/story/11/08...tion-House

UPDATE: Blizzard responds to the outcry with more bullcrap. Details below.

UPDATE 2012Jul26: The backlash against Diablo 3's senseless DRM ramps up in Germany:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/2012...ents.shtml

TPU is currently down so that I can image the hard drive. Having a current image is crucial for disaster recovery situations. In other words, it makes recovering from hardware failures a lot easier (and faster). Sorry for any inconvenience. It should be back up by about 11:30am PST.

UPDATE 2011Jul30 11:54am PST: TPU is back up and running.

UPDATE: As of August 18, Ubisoft has started panicking about all the backlash. In a move that will surprise few, they have decided to 'remove' the always-on Internet requirement for its new games - by actually leaving it firmly in place. Which leads to the obvious question: say what? Here's what they've actually done: you still need an Internet connection to start the game, but you don't need one to keep playing once you've started. In other words, this change will only be helpful for people with dial-up and intermittent Internet connections. All twelve of them. Attaboy, Ubisoft! Way to listen to your customers.

You may recall that Ubisoft has a history of making some very poor choices in trying to prevent what they still view as 'piracy' of their games. In this not-so-fine tradition, they have once again implemented a seriously misguided DRM system for their most recent games, including Driver: San Francisco. This despite having earlier stopped using this same kind of DRM, which requires an always-on Internet connection, in response to widespread complaints. Ubisoft seems doomed to repeat its failures and never to learn from them.

What Ubisoft astonishingly fails to realize is that their copy protection efforts only really hurt legitimate, paying customers. All copy protection schemes are defeated, some within hours of being made available. People who want to get a game for free are going to do it anyway. Meanwhile, people who pay for the game are getting something that is less useful than the same game without the draconian copy protection. In fact, more and more legitimate, paying customers are getting fed up with these measures and downloading unprotected versions. Some of these people will buy the DRM'd-to-the-point-of-uselessness game, but play the unprotected version to save their sanity.

There is a large and growing amount of evidence showing that 'anti-piracy' efforts are doomed to failure; that they only hurt legitimate customers; that they don't prevent 'piracy'; that people who 'pirate' games are actually the people who spend the most money on games; that basic economics show that the best way to reduce 'piracy' is to reduce price; and that the backlash from customers to particularly nasty forms of protection can be seriously damaging. Ubisoft, pull your heads out of your collective asses and get with the program.

To demonstrate just how backward Ubisoft's thinking is, try not to facepalm as you read this PCGamer post about Ubisoft's new DRM.

*GP* not-a-bot pointed out that DC games weren't showing up on the TPU stats site. I tweaked the stats processing code to add the missing mods, so stats for all DC games played to date should show up on the TPU stats site overnight. Thanks for letting me know, not-a-bot!

UPDATE: Confirmed - all DC games from July 26 now appear in the stats.

Some players are having trouble connecting to TPU when it's running DCFinal maps. There are a bunch of different DC maps and mods out there and it's bit confusing, but as far as I know, it works like this:

DesertCombat is a full modification for BF1942. Its last version was 0.7N. That's the version I'm running on the TPU server and on my client computer. Here are the DC files on Filefront.

DCFinal (aka dcfinal/DC_Final) is apparently a mini-mod for DesertCombat; it requires DesertCombat to work properly. DCFinal's last version was apparently version 3, although that version appears in the BF1942 client as version 0.8, and also as 0.8 in the server browser. I'm running that version on the TPU server as well as on my client computer. Here are the DCFinal files on Filefront.

I've made all the required files available from the Files and links page on this web site, which you can find in the left column.

Note that you will also need the DC versions of the Secret Weapons and Road to Rome maps to play those maps on TPU. They are also available on the Files and links page.

If anyone has any different information about the Desert Combat mods and their most recent versions, please let me know and I'll update things accordingly.