TPU (Tanks n Planes Unlimited)

A TPU regular recently suggested that the Battle of Britain map was unwinnable by the Axis. Certainly the TPU version of the map makes an Axis victory more difficult: the Allied factory and all five of the radar towers - all of which must be destroyed - respawn after a brief delay.

Still, I was certain that Axis victory was possible. But I was wrong. Checking TPU's map stats, I found that of the 854 rounds played on the BoB map, exactly zero had been won by the Axis.

Accordingly, I adjusted the map setup to make things easier for the Axis. The factory still respawns after a few minutes, but the radar towers do not.

It's not a squadron of Spitfires, but I think the Luftwaffe will find the going a bit easier now, in the skies over London.

There's been some discussion on the TPU Facebook page about some of the TPU maps having too many tickets. Certainly some of the maps - Wake and Midway in particular - seem to go on forever.

The current set of maps, including the number of tickets each map starts with, was set up by (and for) a previous group of players. Wake and Midway have a lot of tickets because those folks were heavily into air combat, and those are a couple of the best maps for that kind of thing. If you don't fly, grinding back and forth between the two spawn points on Midway gets old quickly.

The point is that different people have different play styles, and like different kinds of maps. There's no way to make everyone happy. The easiest way to get past a map you're not enjoying is to issue a map vote. The map voting system is set up so that even a lone player can use it to change maps.

Still, if the current crop of players can agree on shortening Wake, Midway, or any other map, I'd be happy to make the required adjustments. I could even reduce the global ticket ratio, although that would affect all maps.

If you'd like your opinion known, you have several options. Go to the Contact page for a few ideas. If you have an account on this site (contact me to set one up), you can comment on this post. You can also vote in the new poll I've set up (look for it in the right sidebar). Anyone can vote on open polls; an account is not required.

Update: most of the maps currently have starting ticket numbers of 600/600. The exceptions are Wake (900/900); Battle of the Bulge (Allies 1200, Axis 600); Berlin (Allies 600, Axis 360); Tobruk (Allies 600, Axis 900). The global map ratio setting is currently 300.

Discord is an excellent, free, gaming-centric chat client that you can use on the web or run as a client on your computer.

I've been using the Discord Windows client for a few weeks now and I like it so much I'm switching to it for JDRGaming-related chat. Previously I was using IRC, but that was a bit tricky to set up for users. Discord is much simpler.

So there's now a JDRGaming Discord server, with channels for each of the JDRGaming game servers. You can use Discord or install the Discord client at the Discord web site.

Here's an instant invite for the JDRGaming Discord server: https://discord.gg/5KVyRUv. I've added the Discord invite URL to each of the game servers, so you should see it when you join or during gameplay.

This morning I discovered that about a month's worth of Battlefield 1942 and Secret Weapons game logs had not been processed by the TPU stats system. I was able to locate the problem (a massive, corrupt log from a BG42 round started in April), fixed it, and re-processed the stats. Everything seems to be up to date and working again.

Sundays and Mondays have been quiet on TPU lately, so as of now, we are no longer running Battlegroup 1942 on those days. It's Battlefield 1942 24/7 now. See you on the Battlefield!

The TPU stats are showing game dates incorrectly. I'm not sure when this started, but since it seems to affect even stats archives from previous years, I'm investigating the PHP component of the stats system.

Hopefully I can fix this problem without losing any stats data, but I can't make any promises right now.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

UPDATE: As of 2016Mar13 11:15am, the problem seems to be resolved.

The stats for TPU have been reset for the new year. You can still access the stats for 2015 by clicking '2015' in the TPU Stuff box in the sidebar.

The main router has been replaced. Connections to the JDRGaming game servers should now be much more reliable.

The IP address for all JDRGaming servers has also changed. The new IP address is 96.49.178.198. The previous address was 96.49.181.168.

The router between the JDRGaming game servers and the Internet is acting up. It started rebooting itself frequently about a week ago. When it reboots, any active connections to the game servers are dropped.

I've been unable to find the source of the problem, so I'm planning to replace it later today.

I apologize for any inconvenience.

(Updated 2015Sep13 to correct a few things.)

As of September 8, the Battlefield 1942 master server we've all been using since Gamespy went away has been moved to a different IP address. Initially it looked like this would be temporary change, but they later announced that the change was permanent. The old IP address will continue to work, but the service operators recommend using the new one (94.23.196.155).

If you haven't already done so, you'll have to use whatever method you used previously to switch to the new master server (at 109.71.69.254), to switch to the new server at 94.23.196.155. In my case, I modifed my gaming PC's HOSTS file:

#109.71.69.254 master.gamespy.com
# New IP circa 2015Sep11:
94.23.196.155 master.gamespy.com

I also changed the HOSTS file on the TPU server, so players should be able to join and the server should update its status on various server trackers as before.

In related news, the server list at http://master.bf1942.sk/ is back online.