Apparently the Battlegroup 1942 map "Invasion of the Philippines" was kind of lame, with the bots in particular not behaving very intelligently. DarkRyda has made a bunch of changes to the map that should improve gameplay substantially. The new map is now in the Sunday BG42 rotation.

Here's what was changed:
* removed Allied PT boats with spawn points
* added Allied ships and landing craft to the bottom of the map
* added ships to the Axis side and spread them out on the top of the map
* removed all planes and AA guns
* added more small boats and ships
* changed all the regular cars to cars that float
* changed the Japanese tank to a regular Chi Ha
* left the Axis PT boat since it doesn't have a spawn point
* replaced the Allied boat with a floating tank
* added better support to both sides, including flamethrowers, and tanks, support, a car, and two types of boat at every flag
* added plenty of MGs
* added three new defguns

The Axis team starts with four ships spread out along the top of the map: two destroyers and two freighters. When they get to land they have Chi Has and Ho Kis to defend with.

The Allied team has one destroyer, one flower class support boat, and two landing craft (one has a half track and a Sherman III and the other has an APC and a Sherman IV). On land they have the Stuart and the Satan (flame thrower).

One of the TPU regulars, Mitch, has developed a new map called The Dock. It's available for download from jdrgaming - go to the Downloads section or use this link: https://jrc-core.com/files/The_Dock.zip

Currently The Dock does not work in single player or co-op modes, but Mitch will be adding bots soon and once he does that I will make the new version available here.

Thanks, Mitch!

Thanks to generous donations by Sisko and DarkRyda, I've switched the hosting for the jdrgaming.com web site to A Small Orange's 'Small' plan, which is more in line with actual use. And with that, we're good for at least another year, assuming Shaw's Internet service billing doesn't change during that time.

I added a field to the forum's user profiles: TPU Player Names. Anyone registering for the forums will need to enter something in this field. This is mainly a spambot recognition measure, but it's also a handy way for players to identify each other. If you're already registered in the forums, you'll need to enter at least one player name in this field if you want to edit your profile. I encourage everyone to add all their TPU player names.

The rules for TPU have been updated:

Rule 13, regarding player names, has been expanded somewhat:
13 - Player names.
Do not use foul words in your player name. Do not use the default player name (Player), because using it makes it difficult for other players to communicate with you (what if everyone used it?) Also, if you use 'Player', your stats will NOT be tracked. Try to avoid using weird characters or backspaces in your player name; again, doing so makes it more difficult to communicate with you. For the same reason, you should not use a player name that is invisible or blank in the game; while this may be useful in PvP games, TPU is a co-op server.

Thanks once again to DarkRyda, we have a new version of the Midway map for BG42. Read more for the details.

I just watched the TPU BF1942 server crash and restart several times on the BG42 Battle of Britain map. I restarted the server at the top of the BG42 map list and removed Battle of Britain from the BG42 rotation. I'm not sure what's going on there, so if anyone has any ideas, please let me know.

Also, if there are any other BG42 maps that are causing problems, please let me know in the comments here or by email. Thanks!

UPDATE 2011Mar14: The BG42 map 4411-towards_budapest is apparently causing the server to crash repeatedly, so I have removed it from the BG42 map rotation.

New information has surfaced regarding the apparent DDoS attacks involving TPU. As I suspected, TPU was not being targeted specifically. Rather, all known BF42 servers were being used to propagate an attack against one or more other servers. Because of the distributed nature of the attack, and the fact that BF42 servers were involved, many of the systems appearing to attack TPU were in fact just other BF42 servers being used by the attackers.

Unfortunately, given the nature of the Gamespy network protocols, we're unlikely to see an effective fix for this problem. The best we can do is to block the offending IP addresses as soon as we see them, so that's what I will continue to do.

According to the original source, the actual originating IP address of these attacks is 66.150.214.18.

Here's a link to the article:
http://www.redditgadgetguide.com/r/ba..._attacked/

UPDATE 2011Feb17: A small glitch in the placement of one machine gun has been fixed. Thanks to Mitch for reporting it.

Kharkov and Battle of the Bulge have been given the DarkRyda touch. Here's a rundown of the improvements to these two maps (now live on TPU):

Kharkov: added a few more cars in various places; gave both sides artillery at their main bases, instead of just on the hill; added machine guns and AA in strategic locations.

Battle of the Bulge: added planes (Mustang, Ilyushin, BF109 and Stuka); added Katyushas, some at the flags but mostly in empty areas); added more cars; added a heavy tank at the Allied main base; added AA guns to all sandbag rings and a few other strategic locations; added machine guns to defend bridges and strongholds; added new spawning locations for tanks and cars so players don't get stuck walking long distances.

Sony doesn't want anyone to be able to fiddle with their own, legally-purchased PS3, so they're going after anyone who posts the code required to "Jailbreak" the console. Well, here it is again, Sony. Do your worst. The notion that you can survive as a business by treating your customers like criminals is simply idiotic.

erk: C0 CE FE 84 C2 27 F7 5B D0 7A 7E B8 46 50 9F 93 B2 38 E7 70 DA CB 9F F4 A3 88 F8 12 48 2B E2 1B
riv: 47 EE 74 54 E4 77 4C C9 B8 96 0C 7B 59 F4 C1 4D
pub: C2 D4 AA F3 19 35 50 19 AF 99 D4 4E 2B 58 CA 29 25 2C 89 12 3D 11 D6 21 8F 40 B1 38 CA B2 9B 71 01 F3 AE B7 2A 97 50 19
R: 80 6E 07 8F A1 52 97 90 CE 1A AE 02 BA DD 6F AA A6 AF 74 17
n: E1 3A 7E BC 3A CC EB 1C B5 6C C8 60 FC AB DB 6A 04 8C 55 E1
K: BA 90 55 91 68 61 B9 77 ED CB ED 92 00 50 92 F6 6C 7A 3D 8D
Da: C5 B2 BF A1 A4 13 DD 16 F2 6D 31 C0 F2 ED 47 20 DC FB 06 70

UPDATE: Here's the code embedded in the notorious "Free Speech Flag" image's colours: