BASHandSLASH.com

BASH...the Blog is dead.

Long live BASHandSLASH.com

You heard right, the BASH webcast's venerable CoD2 blog, will soon cease to be. It is a dead blog. The only reason it will continue to stand on its high perch is because we will have nailed it there.

With the coming of Call of Duty 4 in November, it must have been obvious to any of our readers that BASH...the Blog, as a CoD2 site had limited life left. For this reason we thought seriously of our future and decided to make a long term commitment to the CoD and FPS gaming community.

On a personal note, as the host of the weekly gaming webcast BASH, the author of this quasi-daily blog, BASH...the blog and the publisher of BASH EspaÑol - oh, and the admin for the BASH Boards, I've had a bit too much on my plate.

Managing all these entities has been tough without a portal and that's why we bought BASHandSLASH.com. Having one site will allow us to become more efficient and thus will make the gathering and disseminating of community news easier.

WHAT'S WITH THE NAME?

BASH is and will still be the name of our webcast; "SLASH" will refer to all our written work and hence the name of the new site: BASH and SLASH!


MISSION STATEMENT

BASHandSLASH's goal is to increase community awareness of the work, skill and effort put into building and maintaining the online FPS gaming hobby. It's about the community.


WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?

Light-hearted and intelligent discussion. I hope that we will not be a typical gaming site. We go by a few mottos:

"Entertaining and informative"

and

"At BASHandSLASH, we get the *word* out".

You will not find boring, overbearing, know-it-all articles here. And if you do...it's us doing sarcasm baby! One of the reasons we started this site is that we were tired of self-righteous, all-knowing, noob-hating site-Admins and their self-righteous, all knowing, noob-hating forum posters. The concept of our new site is to encourage communication so that all of us can one day achieve self-righteousness, omniscience and noob hatred.

Priorities and Focus

a) We will specialize in getting the CoD community all the news they need, be it both commercial in origin or derived from our own ranks.

The community will have input into BASHandSLASH! Contribute in our forums and let me get to know you and you will be allowed the ability to write your own articles on the pages of BASHandSLASH. Add links. Add news items. Participate!

b) General FPS Gaming, including exciting new games like Medal of Honor.

c) Humor ("humour" for the Brits out there)


Taps for dead blogs everywhere

Sadly, we will be losing BASH...the blog. It has served us well over this past year. This will be done in a slow phase out. We will not delete any of the posts on here - but we will probably not add too much content, if at all.

BS BOARDS

The current bashboards.freeforums.org forums will be for the time being our site Forums. We have renamed them though to: The BS Boards, in honor of the BASH and SLASHING going on in them.


HABLA ESPAÑOL?

Also, we do not plan on carrying forward with the BASH EspaÑol site. Bilingual articles may appear in this site - but that will be up to our readers and their needs.


THANK YOU TO YOUZ GUYZ

BASHandSLASH did not just pop out of our addled brains. No sir/ma'am. It is a fermentation of various comments, ideas and suggestions we have had this past year hanging out in the sometimes-fractious CoD Community. At the great risk I will miss thanking someone, here is a list of the people who have helped me out:

My Wife

{DD}MorphineFiend - oft misunderstood, oft misquoted, accept to no copies. Morph, yo' da man. No one in CoD writes as well as you - WORD.

{DD} GenSherman - founder of the Devil-Dogz. Woof Woof! Awesome dude. Russ gave me the encouragement to try my hand at webcasting and told me how much he liked BASH in spite of how much it may have sucked at the beginning. Thanks Russ.

{DD} Elixir of Mongoose - GenSherman's better half.

All the {DD}'s: Go0ch, Lem0nade ...et al

Matt Pruitt and planetcallofduty.com - Matt is one of the nicest folks I've met on here. Never a bad word about anyone and always optimistic. Thanks Matt!!!

Luis Guerrero - gracias cabron!

{DBTRS} Deuce - 1000 karma points for ya dude

*JOKER at eXtreme+: Positive role model for the whole community. He's the real deal. A community led by *JOKER would be a much better place.

BubbaGump - I lose two drops of pee everytime I talk to you dude. Funniest guy in gaming.

Tally, Norminator, and of course Anthony Scungile for not "whacking me".



As usual...we hope to continue to be both entertaining and informative!

The Wait is Over!

Click on the picture, register in the BASH forums and click on Bulletins to find out what the fuss is all about!

It's coming!

It's coming.


It'll sweep everything that has gone before it away.

Are you ready?

Really ready?

No, seriously. Are you ready? Ok. I guess your ready...sheesh.

MoH: Airborne SP Demo

If you are still into the World War II FPS genre, you should try out the recent, single player demo of EA's new entry into their Medal of Honor series: Airborne.

You can download the demo from MoH: Airborne on Fileplanet

If you *do* download it - post your thoughts and impressions in our forums, you'll probably see them next...right here on the blog.

Happy downloads and don't forget to pull the ripchord! :P

Download the demo


If you are interested in how it plays and also, more info on MoH: Airborne MP, download BASH34 which features Matt Pruitt and Pete (Whiskey) from planetmedalofhonor.com



By the way, BASH34 is now the all time most popular BASH, with (as of today) nearly one-thousand downloads. At 30Mb a download, we're clogging up all those Internet Tubes somethin' fierce.

Thanks to the planetmedalofhonor crew for allowing me to record them and embedding the webcast on their site!

MOH: Airborne Hacks

Ok...this ain't a CoD article...but I know all you CoD guys are downloading MoH: Airborne the SP Demo, so here goes:

Thanks to Paulo88 in the BASHBoards forum for this:


Play Medal of Honor: Airborne beyond the map limits!

If you would like to play beyond the MoH: Airborne SP Demo map borders, then check out this cool hack:

1. You'll need a shortcut to start your demo.

Rightclick the start-up Icon, go to properties and add at the Target line at the end: -enableconsole

place it just after the ".exe" command.

2. Once in the game and when you have played it up to the point where you have destroyed all the flak cannons and you are called to reinforce the gateway near one of the dropzones, *stop* just before you select the intro movie into the next mission, DONT PASS this point!

3. Once there you open your console, and type:

FLY

Now you can fly over the wall and land behind the trigger which activates the end of the demo.

4. Once back on the ground type WALK - And you will stop flying.

5. Now, fight the germans - on the first floor of one of the buldings you will also find a Springfield sniper rifle - Have fun.

Other useful cheats in console :

ALLAMMO - Gives full ammo for all weapons
ALLWEAPONS - Gives you all weapons
GHOST - Noclip through walls
GOD - God Mode
LOADED - Gives all weapons, ammo, and 100 adrenaline

So this might make the last 8 days more fun, before the game comes out. - Stay tuned for more info

Thanks Paulo88 and all your buddies at NANO, especially REGULATOR who told us about the hacks!

CoD4 Multimedia

Who listens to BASH?

Here's a picture of our listenership over the past few days. We're worldwide as ZZ top used to say.


Here at BASH we like to put the comm in community, wherever you are on this map, comm-unicate with us!

Send us your thoughts on our blog or webcast at jockyitch@gmail.com

Or better yet, come to our Boards and talk to us - we promise not to be abusive (well...not since the courts ordered us to tone down our rhetoric).

Activision announces CoD4 release date

Thanks to Deuce and http://www.planetcallofduty.com/ for the heads up that the CoD4 release date has been officially been set:

From http://investor.activision.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=261294

LEIPZIG, Germany, Aug 22, 2007 (BUSINESS WIRE) --

Activision, Inc. (Nasdaq:ATVI) kicked off German Games Convention 2007 today with the announcement of the worldwide release date for Infinity Ward's Call of Duty(R) 4: Modern Warfare(TM), a preview of the international song list for Guitar Hero(TM) III: Legends of Rock and new details on Activision's James Bond franchise.

Listen up soldiers, on Monday, November 5, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare will begin deployment to retailers worldwide. Armed with more than 40 awards and honors from this year's annual E3 Business and Media Summit including "Best Action Game" from the Game Critics Awards, Infinity Ward's epic title is set to enlist gamers into the most intense, thrilling action experience ever. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare will be available on the Xbox 360(TM) video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, PLAYSTATION(R)3 computer entertainment system and Windows(R) PC. A Nintendo DS(TM) version will also deliver the signature Call of Duty chaos of battle to handheld gamers.

Previously, the rumored date had been Halloween, thanks the French website, xboxygen. However, IGN labeled the 5th of November as the CoD4 drop date.

Congrats IGN for nailing it!

United we stand - Divided we fall: at the hands of our leaders

An Editorial:

Normally, I never talk politics on here. I know that most of you have enough of that at work; however, I cannot stand idly by when I see leaders in the CoD community, either:

a) trying to rip at others in that same community

or

b) pry open sore wounds in our community, causing them to worsen.

Therefore, I have to wonder aloud what the thinking was over at codhq.com when it was decided to poll on whether folks liked the bpcod2.com (Breaking Point) tourney better than the bfecod.com (Battle for Europe) variant.

Some background:

I'll get flak for this but, first off, both tournaments are nearly identical. They cover the same topic, namely they are Call of Duty2 tournaments set in WWII. Their similarity is not a surprise when you note that bfecod.com unintentionally begat bpcod2 and they share some of the same genetic code. A group of disaffected youngsters playing in bfecod, broke away about two years ago and formed their own tourney: bpcod2. The two groups have been bickering ever since. The rift is worsened by the fact that distance and culture separates the main proponents of both groups: Bfe seems to attract Europeans a bit more than does bpcod. It is sad to see, given that they clearly share mutual love for a similar gametype.

As the newer kid on the block, bpcod is attracting folks away from bfe, wrankling many of the admins in bfe. Heck, wouldn't *you* be upset if you saw your monopoly suddenly face competition from a young upstart?

I would be.

Imagine the Coca Cola board of director's meeting the day after they found out about Pepsi. How would Coke counter the Pepsi threat?

Well, I bring up that analogy, because we're in the counterattack phase right now. And tensions are high and nerves are raw.

The best thing the community elders could do at this point is douse everyone with water and say soothing things. But alas, some folks in the community would rather light a match.

For that reason, I must wag my finger at my friends at codhq.com and suggest that having a poll like the one they are currently running will just fan flames. I hope that this was not done to intentionally cause even more polarization - but the appearance of it (given that codhq.com supports BFE) is quite strong.

Regardless of what we think of each other in this community, I caution folks to turn the other cheek, I call that the "What would Jesus the Gamer do?, philosophy and as they say in Scotland: take the high road boyos.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that poll.

Peace.

- Jock


Full disclosure: I've had or will have members of both bfecod and bpcod2 on BASH - and I've also had JD on from codhq.com. They all seem like fine, level headed folks and I have no personal animosity with any of them. My comments above are on behalf on the CoD player in me.




Adapted from the Boys On The Docks lyrics

Say hey Johnny boy hear the battle call.
United we stand, divided we fall.
Together we are what we can't be alone,
We came to the CoD2 community and made it our home.

Yet another BASH contest: shhhh! it's a secret

On the BASH Boards we have an exciting announcement about the future of BASH.

In addition we are announcing a contest that goes along with this announcement (that'd be an announcement to the power of 2!)

What's the contest about? Now that will be a secret - unless you go and register on the BASH Boards.

What will the winner of this not-really-a-secret BASH contest get?

OK. It's not about the money. If it was, you wouldn't be plopping yo' heiny on that chair for as long as you do playing CoD2 - would ya?

No. It's all about notoriety, fame and accolades from your peers.: you will get 10 Karma points in our Forums!

Normally, you would get 1 Karma point for, say, suggesting a story we air or print on our blog.

So if you wing, you will get 10 all in one fell swoop!

WOW.

If you only knew what I was talking about - you'd really be excited. So, good luck and remember get all the details here: BASH's new contest

BASHIE Contest Heats up!

Our "Design the BASHIE" contest is heating up.

The BASHIE is our CoD/Web version of the Academy Awards. This site awards the "BASHIE" to the best gaming multimedia presentation on the net.

The winner of the contest will have the award named after them for one whole year.

Register in the BASH Boards and read the contest rules and have a look at the entries submitted so far, click here: The Big Picture Forum


Past BASHIE winners

CoD4 interest takes off!

We have often used Google Trends to assess the relative interest (or lack thereof) in CoD2. Many times we've used this fascinating tool, which assesses trends by checking Google search logs, to compare CoD2 versus Battlefield 2142 - up to now, a major competitor to CoD2.

With the announcement of CoD4: Modern Warfare, we thought we would plot all three on one graph and see who is winning the gaming popularity contest.

And holy mackeral! In the short span that CoD4 has been announced it has spiked to the same interest levels of both established games and the trend looks hyperbolic!

Certainly great news for everyone associated with this new IW offering!

CoD4 for the XBox 360: Review

CoD4: Modern Warfare reviews for the XBox 360 are starting to hit the 'net from the established gaming press. It didn't take very long for them to start pumping out critiques after Activision's 9th of August press conference and "reveal". Kudos to 1up.com which had theirs up the next day, here it is:

CoD4 mini review from: 1up.com



Here's their summary:

The guns feel solid and meaty: Primary weapons range from assault rifles, shotguns (manual and automatic) and UZIs to larger weapons like sniper rifles and RPGs. Various grenade types include flash, stun, and smoke grenades. While there's no Gears of War-style cover mechanic (something the developer attributes to the desire to keep the player in the first-person perspective), the lack of a lean ability is a bit disappointing. Still, the combat is very well done; while we'll reserve judgment until playing the final game with our asses plopped firmly on our sofas, we wouldn't be surprised if this were to become the next "it" FPS when it hits later this year.

-Evan Shamoon

The next "it" FPS? Evan. Dude. It's "the" FPS.

CoD4 on XBox 360: Screen Shots

BASH Boards regular [DBTRS]Deuce alerts us of the following link to a large collection of XBox 360 screen shots from Call of Duty 4:

Planet Call of Duty screen shots

or alternatively:

Team Xbox screen shots

Here's a sample. Note the Mig 29 screaming low over the battlefield. For you realism buffs, the only way this plane would be this low would be if this fighter were either taking off or landing.

Also see the radar screen (top left) clearly showing ingressing (1 solo bandit) and egressing aircraft (2-ship line formation).

The photo is also remarkable for the spectacular lighting around ground objects and the sky is quite nicely rendered. The Mig on the other hand looks like it was pasted on and details on it are too easily made out. In reality, the aircraft would be a blur at this altitude.

No CoD, but eSports hits Sat TV

The gamers all have the facial expression of zombies, but you have to give the announcers credit, they inject a lot of energy into these gaming shows.

The Championship Gaming Series is trying to bring the heart-stopping excitement you get playing video games to the non-interactive media of television.

Will you watch?

Take a look at their video streaming site where there are four gametypes cued up (CSS, FIFA07, DOA).

Championship Gaming Series

Modern Warfare due out November 9th in Europe?

For our European readers, from computerandvideogames.com comes the news that Activision's Modern Warfare will be released in Europe on the 9th of November.

From their article:

The date supposedly slipped out at a recent CoD4 press event, where a marketing bloke is said to have revealed that Modern Warfare will be deployed on PC, PS3 and 360 on November 9. Activision UK meanwhile is unable to confirm the date, sticking firm to its original line that the Infinity Ward's shooter will be out simply "this winter".

The date seems to confirm the not-so-well kept secret that Modern Warfare is coming out just before Christmas.

The word "November" did feature prominently in CoD4 demo videos and it should not be a surprise to anyone.

While the month and day may now be known (although still unofficially), BASH continues to place operatives in the field in the hopes of learning what "year" Activision has slated the game to be released. We will alert you as soon as we find out!

For the North American crowd, the buzz on the street indicates that CoD4 will invade the store shelves on the 30th of October - just in time for Christm... errr... Halloween?

That info is courtesy of the French website xboxygen:

Activision vient de communiquer les dates de sorties de Call of Duty 4 : Modern Warfare. Le FPS tant attendu signé Infinity Wards devrait débarquer le 30 octobre outre-Atlantique et le 9 novembre en Europe. Le titre le plus impressionant de l'E3 risque donc nous réchauffer une bonne partie de l'hiver!

There are no verifiable sources, in any language, in xboxygen's article. IGN on the other hand is labeling the 5th of November as the CoD4 drop date. Stay tuned.

Team Pandemic's World Rankings are out

For those of you who listened to Rob-Wiz from Team Pandemic in BASH Episode 32 and became a fan of the team, here's the latest rankings, from an article on Team Pandemic's site:

After an amazing run at WSVG Dallas that led to a second place finish, the Pandemic Call of Duty team has reclaimed the top spot in the GotFrag.com North American Rankings. Although this isn't the first time the team has been in the top position, it has been five months since their last top finish. The team has also achieved their top international placing in the rankings as they are third in the World only behind Tek9 and Serious Gaming.

GotFrag.com North American Cod2 Rankings

1 - Pandemic
2 - 20ID
3 - Flow Gaming
4 - Check Six
5 - Enervate
6 - Gameslaves
7 - PowerHouse Gaming
8 - eXploit
9 - Area 51
10 - Awakening

GotFrag.com World Cod2 Rankings
1 - TEK9 Networks
2 - Serious-Gaming
3 - Pandemic
4 - Logitech.fi
5 - eSuba
6 - H2k.QPad
7 - 20ID
8 - Team Speedlink
9 - Flow Gaming
10 - Tempkids

Congratulations to Nabore, crzg, Miller, prank, rob-wiz and of course KG for all of their hard work that led to this finish. Look for the Call of Duty 2 team to continue their strong play this summer in CEVO-P and some more WSVG stops.

And if you want to know why their not number 1 in the world...their loss at the WSVG Dallas to TEK9 has something to do with it!

Download the whole match here: Pandemic_vs_Tek9

To play it, load it into your demo folder in CoD2, then type /demo nabVStek9WSVGFINALSmatmata

Here's the last few minutes of that match:

eXtreme+ version 2.2

Does anyone over there at eXtreme+ sleep? Seriously, I bet they must all be grumpy-Gus's cuz they just don't know how to take it easy and relax. Heck, *Joker, a senior support staff member is from California for gawd sakes. If anyone should know how to hang, it's gotta be the Californian surferdude in the bunch.

But no...they're busier than beavers-on-bennies those folks are.

Hot on the heels of a *complete* website overhaul ( BEFORE | AFTER ) now comes news of eXtreme+ version 2.2!

You will remember version 1.7 right?

Well that kinda turned into version 2.0 if you recall, which then morphed into version 2.1 (the bug fix and Linux/Window-all-in-one-trick-pony version).

The new version should be coming out in one week give or take a few days.

Why 2.2? Apparently it started out as a maintenance revision but the eXtreme+ folks started adding things that were being asked for like:

Invisible Spawn

Look no one there!


Invisible Spawn Protection (ISP) code has been used frequently by sniper servers. When the player is spawned his original model is saved for later and swapped with a null model (so now the player is invisible!). Then upon entry into spawn protection self invulnerability is set to false so that the invisible players are not allowed to get in places they normally would not be able to like across mine fields etc. After the loop is exited (spawn protection over) the program restores the player’s original model type and he is sent on his way: visible again! This lets you sneak away after spawning without the enemy seeing you.

LR Rifles and Hitloc. LR = Long range rifles.

Without this mod you would have only short range (real rifle bullets) hitloc and only about 320 yards of reach. Most sniper servers use a projectile weapon (without the resulting shell-shock) in the place of the rifle bullet to be able to play the big long range maps. This however results in kills for toe or even finger shots... not realistic or even fun. End result is that the mod allows you to shoot farther and lethality requires: location, location, location!

According to *Joker himself, who was kind enough to break the news to me, here are the changes:

1. First off, version 2.2 will be released in two ways

a) In it's entirety as v2.2
b) In a Delta File Format. This way servers running v2.1 can easily remove, replace or add files to update their servers to v2.2. This assumes of course that they have not extensively altered anything.

2. The changes!

The Weapons on Back (WOB)

- Changed: main code.
- Changed: model precaching now done when precaching weapons (_weapons). The weapon models are now loaded at the beginning of the game which makes for fluid weapon switching in the heat of combat.
- Added: enable/disable in cfg (playercontrol.cfg). This allows the admin to switch certain weapons related things off and on.
- Added: Having a weapon on your back in now *only* active when a secondary weapon enabled. You can have 1 gun, 2 guns, 1 gun and a pistol, 2 guns and a pistol, 1 gun and a knife, 2 guns and a knife, 2 guns a knife and a gerbil. Check that. The last option is still buggy and has not been included in 2.2.
- Added: no weapons on back in jail (LIB).
- Removed: lots of xmodel stuff. xmodels are stuff like trucks, tanks, potatoes ...etc. Apparently there is a limit to the amount of these xmodels in the game. The folks at eXtreme+ seem to have gone past that limit in version 2.1.

Weapon menus, ex_weapons, LMS GT script, obituary and weaponcontrol.cfg
- Changed: lowercased weapon names (for WoB).

Character scripts
- Changed: restored to what they were in 2.0 (not needed anymore by WoB).

FX: molotov_blast.efx
- Changed: removed thick smoke effects (caused lag).

FX: emitter_panzerfaust.efx
- Fixed: emitfx typo.

Roundbased gametypes
- Fixed: Inserted gas and firenade code into callbackPlayerDamage.
- Changed: weapon loadout in spawnplayer, and menuWeapon code.
- Fixed: lastwinner and roundwinner in ESD and RBCNQ now correctly read.

Liberation gametype
- Changed: code cleanup.
- Added lib logic to ex_spawn
- Fixed: LIB removed for all stock maps in mp\cod2maps.arena.

Liberation quickmessages (added in 2.1c)
- Changed: only active when LIB is playing.
- Fixed: headicon save/restore was old code.

Add to favorites
- Added: ingame menu expanded with line "Add this eXtreme+ server to your favorites".
- Added: enable/disable in cfg (miscfeatures.cfg).

Ammocrate teamcheck
- Changed: no more "no can do" messages when passing an enemy crate.

Artillery and mortars falltime
- Fixed: negative falltimes are now corrected.
Affects artillery_ambient, artillery_player, mortar_player, punishments (arty).

Liberation camper
- Fixed: camper punishment for players in jail.

DRM messages:
- Changed: inserted code to avoid extra "DRM : reading config file" messages.

Gas and fire nades
- Fixed: gas and fire nades respect spawn protected players now.
- In progress: hard to get the full friendly fire logic in.

Calls to [[level.callbackPlayerDamage]] will crash the server eventually.
- Changed: some code cleanup.

Invisible Spawn protection
- Added: enable/disable in cfg (monitoring.cfg).
- Includes invisible parachutes.
- Changed: no fade on SP hud icon (to synch player and parachute showing).

Also affects ex_main: moved spawn protection monitor above parachute thread.

Landmines
- Added: landmines also linked to ranksystem. Landmines based on weapontype still selectable.
- Fixed: initialization for variable self.handling_mine in ex_main.
- Fixed: handling of damage if player who planted the mine left the server.

Parachutes
- Fixed: proper handling of parachute protection.
- Added: option 0 for no parachute protection at all.
Warning: meaning for settings in cfg has changed (playercontrol.cfg)
- Changed: proper self unlinking when dead -- Thanks TNIC, you were right!
- Added: invisible parachute when invisible spawn protection enabled.
- Fixed: parachuting once is now really once, also when dying in the air.

Rank System
- Fixed: image updated on demotion.
- Fixed: ammo update for demotion now takes extra nades away (in ex_weapons).
- Added: ability to have preset ranks based on clan tags (ranksystem.cfg).
- Fixed: rank promotion/demotion weapon update was based on old rank.
- Added: rank promotion nades add-feature is now configurable.

Security and clan handling
- Fixed: proper var init before checkGUID stops checkInit().
- Changed: self.ex_name now stores clan tag.
- Added: ability to have inactivity kick exclusions based on clan tags (playercontrol.cfg).
- Fixed: clan tag at end of name bug. Now working properly.

Varcache:
- Added: var reading for the extra features.
- Fixed: ex_wepo_loadout (attempt) to turn ranksystem on. Now the wepo_loadout is turned off when the ranksystem is off.

Monitoring.cfg
- Fixed: descriptions for camp objtime minimum and default.

Long range rifles hitloc
- Added: LR rifles Hitloc.
- LR Rifles will be included as an Add-On in IWD format

Localized strings
- Fixed: Tennessee in obituary.str.

Map Rotation / Gametype Scrolling Messages
- Added HUD elements for more eye candy

Configuration files
- Changed: removed scr_allow_vote from serversettings.cfg and varcache (unknown to cod2).
- Changed: removed scr_freelook from serversettings.cfg and varcache (unknown to cod2).
- Changed: removed scr_roundcam from serversettings.cfg and varcache (unknown to cod2).
- Changed: removed g_forceteamspectate from serversettings.cfg and varcache (unknown to cod2).
- Changed: removed g_teamswitchdelay from serversettings.cfg and varcache (unknown to cod2).
- Fixed: seta sv_wwwBaseURL template in server.cfg.

Headshot and melee (bash) rewards:
- Added an optional extra points for headshot and melee kills (only DM and TDM). If the game doesn't give you points for a bash...heck folks, I will!

Misc
- ???? Fixed: free spec bug (_spectating.gsc).
- world sounds for mobile MG's fixed.
- URL eXtreme+ website changed (mod.str, cfg).

Poll #4 What is your favorite CoD2 map?

What is your favorite CoD2 map poll has ended and here are the results:

Beltot	0 (0%)
Brecourt	1 (6%)
Burgundy	2 (13%)
Caen	4 (26%)
Carentan	5 (33%)
El Alamein	1 (6%)
Matmata	1 (6%)
Moscow	1 (6%)
St. Mere Eglise	2 (13%)
Stalingrad	1 (6%)
Toujane	4 (26%)
Villers Bocage	0 (0%)

Votes so far: 15

Ok...I'm the one who voted for Brecourt. Yes, I know it's a sniper map - but you really have to play a team game to do well at that one. And that's what I love about CoD2: the team aspect.

Having said that, my "best" map is and probably always will be: Matmata.

But enough about me!

Carentan, not to my surprise won. This is the map of choice for most people. It is a well thought out map and has all the elements you would want and is a natural choice for scrimmers.

- Great for close in fighting inside the buildings.
- Good protection from nades
- Overlooking buildings onto the spawn points mean that tactics play a big role.
- Multiple ingress and egress routes. Yes there are the usual 3, but there are variants on those as well.
- Heck, on the German left (American right) the alley way even lets people snipe!

CoD4 Xbox Beta: The Basics

Some of the details regarding the Beta version of CoD4: MP are now available at Charlie Oscar Delta. Here we'll only scratch the surface to show you what the console gamers will actually be playing this month.

The requirements to get a chance at the Beta are:

a) Access to an XBox360
b) An XBox Live subscription and wait...oh they get more complex it seems:

To be eligible for a token-you must be 18 years of age or older, punctual and capable of answering three trivia questions correctly. Yes, punctual. To be fair, we're doling out the tokens on a first come first serve basis. We're still finalizing plans for where the Beta will be available. Initially, in order to get underway we'll be rolling-out in the United States. As soon as we're able to confirm which other countries are good to go we'll be back to update everybody.

- charlieoscardelta.com

I wonder what the three questions will be?

1. Are you older than 18?
2. What the heck are you doing with an XBox if you are older than 18?
3. If they answer to 1. is yes, have you ever kissed a girl?

Some of the main impressions from the Pre-Beta v3 CoD4: Modern Warfare edition for the Xbox 360 now on display at http://charlieoscardelta.com follow.

The splash screen has a gray out of focus backdrop, with a Marine silhouetted in the foreground, shafts of light pierce through the smoke. It's a near colorless scene. Actually, that is what strikes me oddest so far about the game. The atmosphere is near colorless. Perhaps it's to prepare us for night fighting which will be done in a monotone as well - not gray but green. The gray says "cool" and unemotional and it foreshadows the fact perhaps that killing in the 21st century will be detached, robotic and without passion. Is this also to resist inflaming passions in Americans? After all, they are currently at war and will be playing a game that their sons will be waging for real nearly concurrently.

The console gamers will find that they will be playing on "ranked" servers. You will have a ranking and you can check the progress of your character over time. The PC apparently will not have ranked servers. Here are some of the choices you have:

Barracks:
Check your rankings on the Leaderboards and your progress through Challenges, choose your Clan Tag, and even review your basic player statistics. Note you can look at your rankings world wide or relative to your friends.

Party Invite:
Invite your friends to your party.

Woe. Party? They couldn't think of a better butchy name than "party"? How about fragfest? Or Battle Bash...anything other than party.

Currently it looks like your ranking will be capped to Master Sergeant.

The controls for the game are of no real surprise. But I must ask, why won't some bright spark come up with a better interface for this game than this?


Who goes into an FPS game with a noob stick? Surely, not I. What kind of accuracy will you have with this preposterous interface?


The Beta will also provide you with "challenges" which if successfully dealt with gets you all sorts of add ons and goodies.

Punk Buster Service Communication Failure

If you have been getting the Punk Buster "Service Communication Failure" when connecting online, you're not alone. This has been a serious problem since their July 25th release:

Version 1.719 of the PB Client for COD2 has been released to our PB Master Servers for auto-update and to our website download page.

Release Notes for PB Client v1.719:

• the new PB services are no longer optional, see our PB Services FAQ for more info
• the new PB services now support 64 bit flavors of Windows

It seems that their latest release, Version 1.725 A1383 of the PB Client for CoD2, which was released to the PB Master Servers for auto-update and to their website download page and is described as a "maintenance release" may have fixed some of these problems.

One of our BASH Boards regulars, JohnDoe|EagleEye| had this problem and gives us this fix:

For the moment I seem to have fixed the "service communication failure". I don´t know if it was the new PB update (v1725 Sat 4 of August 2007) or a PB command I introduced that fixed the problem. Anyway...I will tell you what i did:

1) Connected to a server and get kicked for "Service communication Failure"
2) Unistalled the PnkBstrA and PnkBstrB services with the pbsvc.exe
3) Reinstalled the two services
4) Updated the PB version manually to v1725 with the Pbsetup.exe program
5) Ran CoD multiplayer
6) Entered PB command: /pb_security 0 using the console
7) Connected to my Clan Server
8) Played normally.

I still want to see what happens in the following days.I hope the issue doesn´t show up again

NOTE:

PB_Security [0=no, 1=yes]:

When set to 0, PunkBuster will accept all "update" files without verifying that they are authentic; the default is 1 which should not normally be changed except for LAN environments where there is no Internet Access and/or you fully trust the Servers you are connecting to.

Let us know if *you* are having problems with Punk Buster. If you are register in our forums and tell us about it in our Tech section.

BASH 32: Pandemonium

In the latest installment of BASH, we have on one of the best CoD2 players scrimming in the world today: Team Pandemic's Rob Kennedy.

Rob is a 19 year old CoD2 player who put down his Kar98 and joined Team Pandemic this year - taking on the important role of shotgunner for the American crew.

TP has just come back from the WSVG Dallas where they picked up 2nd place. Listen to the webcast to hear what it is like to play at the highest class.

Prior to the interview we invited BASH Boards users to post questions for Rob. JohnDoe|EagleEye| asked:

Q) Do you do sports?(besides playing cod2)

A) Rob plays hockey - like most of us up here in the Great White North - and in fact was nursing an injury to his jaw during the interview. He soldiered on during our chat even though he had his jaw partially immobilized.

Q) What are your priorities in life?

A) Rob is starting college next year and is looking for a career in video arts - but will continue to game.

Team Pandemic's Prank: World's best CoD2 player?

In BASH episode 32, CoD2 professional gamer and fellow Torontonian, Rob Kennedy (a.k.a. rob-wiz) waxed on about the state of professional gaming and about CoD2 competition specifically.

This uber-confident, some would say cocky, shotgun-wielding midfielder went on to discuss his team, Team Pandemic and his fellow teammates.

You could tell that he was genuinely appreciative of the skill of his colleagues; in fact, he took the time to especially single out one individual: Justin "Prank" DeMara.

DeMara is the team's sniper. Sniper on a 5v5 S%D team is the tactical equivalent of the catcher in baseball, or the middle-linebacker on a football team.


According to Rob, Prank is the best player in the game...the best.

That's high praise indeed from someone who is as supremely confident in their abilities as Mr. Kennedy.

Generally considered as the #2 Sniper in the world up to now (2nd only to the legendary eSuba Czech player luckeRR), his performance at the World Series of Video Games in Dallas may have put him over the top.

His shot making was *unreal*.

The demos can be found here: Pandemic demos of WSVG 2007

As far as I'm concerned, in a game full of automatic weapons - you have be the best overall when you and the chambered round in your sniper rifle manage to survive against the salvos coming back at ya. I had heard many people say they were the god of Cod before, so I held off my decision on Prank ...until I saw the demos. Have a look. After seeing him in action - if he's not the god of Cod - then, I want my donation to his church refunded!

Remember September Trailer Released

This post is now found in:

bashandslash.com

Nvidia 8800 problems

Apparently the GeForce 8800 GTX and GeForce 8800 GTS graphics cards, currently being touted as a minimum requirement for running the next generation of video games coming out at the end of the year (CoD4 included), have software bugs.

The full story is reported in the following artices:


1. The Inquirer.Net

IT SEEMS THAT Nvidia's Geforce 8800 series of graphics cards suffers random slowdowns, and this can be particularly problematic for owners of the Geforce 8800GTS 320MB, the cheapest 8800 out there.

The problem lies in fact that the G80 GPU has some trouble with texture memory management. In many unrelated cases, this bug starts leaving textures in video memory and system memory, causing the board to run out of texture memory. Once you run out of memory for textures on your graphics card and system, you will experience a lot of swapping with textures on a hard drive, and that is recipe for disaster, at least as far as framerates are concerned.

Follow up article

AFTER OUR ORIGINAL story, we managed to get an update from an Nvidia rep regarding the actual timeframe of the driver release that will fix the 8800 slowdown issue.

As it stands right now, fix for this highly annoying bug is planned for a release between the end of August and middle of September. My personal assumption would be that the latter date is a more realistic one. Nvidia stated that this problem is "of complex nature," and it seems to us that fixing one card leads to issues with another.

Poll #3 What CoD weapon is your fave?

The bolts have it!

This is one is a huge surprise to me - and frankly, i really don't see this trend in the servers I go to. So, that must mean that BASH readers are more likely to have a fondness for bolts.

When I first started playing, the only weapon I used effectively was the Thompson. As I moved over to play on eXtreme+ servers, my tastes changed and I became a Greasegun fan (not as lethal, but allows excellent mobility and has a high rate of fire).

Nowadays, I'm either using the Kar or the Garand (backup is either the MP44 or the Thompson).

What CoD weapon is your fave?

The first to play CoD4 are.....

If you were a member of our Forums, you would have seen this posting from {PST}*Joker:

I'm not sure that this is out yet, but I haven't been told NO so here it is.

The USA guys that got invited to the IW Community Event in June, got a re-invite on Aug 9th to be amoung the 50 Sweepstakes winners that get to play COD4 first before anyone else.

I have accepted the invite, as well as Sparks -- that is all I know for sure

- {PST}*Joker

Way to go Joker and Sparks!

See what's shakin': use vibrance!

This article is now found here: BASHandSlash.com

CoD4 now can be pre-ordered

Deuce from the DBTRS's clan just alerted the BASH forum community on the BASH Boards that CoD4 is now on sale - you can pre-order right here:

ebgames

gamestop

(Quick, take dad's credit card from his wallet...I think he's asleep).

The PC price is $50U.S. and thanks to a weak American economy, Canadians can afford it as well (~$53 CAD + GST lol)