Now that I have two functioning XBox 360s, I was thinking that at long last I would be able to play certain games cooperatively. You know, games that have co-op modes but only when you're playing on-line or with multiple 360s on a LAN. Co-op gameplay on a single console is usually limited to games that support splitscreen, but also includes many sports games and some fantasy-type games such as Gauntlet and its ilk, where all the characters are visible at the same time on one screen.

My hope was that games with online-only co-op modes would now be mine to explore. As it turns out, this hope can be fulfilled, for a price. That's the price of a second copy of every game I want to play cooperatively. Yes indeed, for another sixty bucks I can play the game in a way that should have been included to begin with. Oh, I tried starting the game on one console, then running it on the other, but as soon as I ejected the disc from the first console, the game exited back to the dashboard. Even installing the game to the hard drive made no difference. Ah, the joys of copy protection.

So now I'm thinking that since my first 360 is already in warranty-voided-land, I might as well finish the job and hack it so I can run copies of games. There's no frigging way I'm going to buy second copies of a bunch of games.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE 2009-11-12: Apparently Microsoft just killed XBox Live network access for a huge number of modded 360s and the owners are now unloading them on Craigslist (http://gaming.icrontic.com/news/craig...-xbox-360s). Maybe I'll hold off on that modding notion.

My popular demand, I've just bumped up the tickets on all maps. I changed the ticket multiplier from 175 to 225. Because of this, I also removed the 60 minute time limit for rounds.

Some TPU users are reporting CD key errors when they try to join TPU when there's an expansion map running (Road to Rome or Secret Weapons).

I just cleared the CD key ergc values from the server and restarted it, so hopefully those issues are now resolved. Please let me know if you find otherwise.

Sorry for any inconvenience!

UPDATE 2009Oct10: Apparently the issue still exists for some players, with Mimoyecques in particular triggering the error. I'm working on it...

Now that I have a workbench again, I'm getting back into old projects. My first XBox 360 died with the classic Red Ring of Death some time ago and has been sitting in a storage locker in the form of a pile of parts since then. When it died, I had already voided the warranty some months earlier by opening the unit to install padding under the lid of the DVD drive - to stop it from scratching discs. That repair had been a complete success, but then the RRoD happened. I would have been able to send the unit back to Microsoft for warranty repair if I hadn't opened it because they extended the warranty to three years specifically for RRoD issues.

The TPU server is now running on new hardware. If you notice any problems, please let me know. In particular, I'd like to know whether or not performance has improved. Are there any new lag issues? Has lag increased or decreased?

Old server (Claude):
Pentium IV 2GHz
512MB RAM

New server (Hubie):
Pentium IV 2.8GHz
2GB RAM

Sigh. I bought my second XBox 360 after my first died of the horrible 'Red Ring of Death.' I had successfully modified that 360 a few months earlier, installing padding (under the lid of the DVD drive) that prevented the drive from scratching my game discs. Unfortunately, opening the 360 had also eliminated the possibility of returning it for repair/replace as part of the extended 3 year coverage specific to RRoD issues. Oh well. That 360 is now a pile of parts in a box. I tried one of the X-clamp fixes on it with no success and plan to keep trying at some point, but meanwhile I bit the bullet and bought another 360.

Schedule changes completed. Here's how it works now:

Mon/Wed/Fri/Sun:
* Axis mornings (6am-noon) & evenings (6pm-midnight)
* Allies early mornings (midnight-6am) & afternoons (noon-6pm)
Tue/Thu/Sat:
* Allies mornings (6am-noon) & evenings (6pm-midnight)
* Axis early mornings (midnight-6am) & afternoons (noon-6pm)

The Tanks 'n Planes Unlimited server is back online in Burnaby, British Columbia. The new IP address for the server is 24.87.160.136. Hopefully it will start showing up on in-game server browsers soon. Otherwise you should be able to connect directly via IP. Let me know if you have any trouble connecting.

I'm not sure what's going on, but the TPU stats page is currently down. I'm looking into it and hope to have it sorted out within the next day or so.

UPDATE: it's fixed. My provider (A Small Orange) moved this site and its subdomain http://tpu.jdrgaming.com - home of the TPU stats - to a different (and better) server. This involved a version change for MySQL that necessitated a small configuration change in the stats software. They fixed the problem for me (gasp!) and let me know about it today. It's fixed, and their explanation made sense. I like these guys!

The TPU server is going down at about 7am PST on June 7. Since I'm moving, it's hard to predict when it will be back up, but hopefully it will be running again by June 10. The server IP will probably change, so you may need to update your in-game server list.