Thanks to DarkRyda and TenaciousMojo, TPU has a new version of Husky. It has some new tank spawns and other tank-related changes, an Allied aircraft carrier, and a few more surprises.

Wake has a few more machine gun emplacements, and if the Allies lose all the island spawnpoints, they can still attack from their ships.

Enjoy!

Don't forget to check the polls (right side of the site, scroll down a bit).
Your feedback helps!

By popular demand, the ticket ratio has been bumped up from 225 to 300. As always, feedback welcome. If there are particular maps where this new ratio is just too high, we may consider tweaking those maps rather than going back to a smaller overall ticket ratio.

Thanks to DarkRyda and TenaciousMojo, TPU has new versions of Midway, Wake and Berlin. More MGs, AA batteries, a few new planes, some flag adjustments, PT boats and many more fun changes await. (Warning: "thanks, but no tanks" for Berlin!) As always with TPU, no map downloads required.

Try the new maps and let us know what you think in comments or the related poll.

Next up: a new version of Husky from DarkRyda and TenaciousMojo.

The TPU server will be down for a few minutes while I make a few more changes to the network hardware. It should be back up by 10:30am today.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

UPDATE: TPU is back on-line. Let me know if you notice anything different (ie worse).

My problems with S:CS start on its main menu. No, that's not a joke. The currently selected menu item lags behind mouse movement so badly that unless you wait for it to catch up before clicking, nothing happens; or - worse still - the wrong menu item is activated.

This kind of sloppy and unrefined programming permeates S:CS. Of course, being essentially an RPG, this is hardly unexpected. Aside: why is it that RPGs as a class of game seem to be the buggiest? Many of S:CS's bugs have been squashed or ameliorated by way of patches, but many remain.

The TPU server will be unavailable from 12:30pm for up to two hours while new network hardware is installed. Sorry for any inconvenience.

UPDATE: All done. It went faster than I thought.

Please let me know if you notice any new problems or unusual changes.

I'd like to point out that the modded Midway and Gazala maps currently in the rotation on TPU were the work of DarkRyda. He and TenaciousMojo have been working on a new set of changes to some of the core BF42 maps, which I will most likely add to the rotation once I've checked them out. Stay tuned.

I finally worked out why friendly fire kickback and splash kickback were not working. The values for these settings are stored as floating point numbers between 0 and 1, while all the other friendly fire settings are stored as integers between 0 and 100.

Friendly fire kickback and splash damage kickback have been set to 25%. So now, when you hurt someone on your own team, you feel it - just not quite as much as the guy you shot.

Thanks to Tenaciousmojo for reminding me that kickback wasn't working.

Mojo also pointed out that on the player stats page, only the player's top 20 maps are shown. I bumped this up to 40.

I recently started experimenting with intrusion detection on my network and immediately discovered several attempts to gain access to my development system remotely. So far these attempts have been unsuccessful, but since the attacks are automated, they tend to flood the network with traffic for periods ranging from ten minutes to two hours, every few days.

Since there have been reports of lagginess on the TPU server and I have been unable to find any specific cause, I'm investigating these intrusion attempts in an effort to determine whether they might be the culprit. I hope to either confirm the intrusion traffic as the source or rule it out definitively.

Anyone noticing lag on the TPU server should report it to me (see below), indicating the date, time and approximate duration of the lagginess. That should help narrow things down.

jrivett AT jdrgaming DOT com