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)