Gaming News

Nvidia have released version 180.48 of their ForceWare drivers. It is mainly fixes to application issues. You can find a download link on our Games and Drivers page.

Thanks go to Bob for another great LAN. However, in what can be seen as a disturbing trend, far more console games were played this time round.

On the PC multiplayer gaming front, there were some great CS GunGame sessions. We had a UT3 CTF game that was won in the final second, and also the old favourite CTF5 in QuakeWorld. There was also some good BF1942 (Desert Combat) and Call of Duty 4 games.

On the X360, there were a few PGR races, aswell as a team GTA SA game, which was comical. The biggest, and noisiest X360 game though was RockBand. Thanks to Pup for bringing his drum kit, mic and guitars :)

The food was predictable, in that we had Asda curry on setup night, rinky on Friday and pizza on Saturday. Also predictably, Tin Tin failed to deliver one meal, and Santinos ran out of pizza bases. Bob did sterling work on breakfast, however his bread buttering needs some fine tuning.

All in all, a good weekend was had. The only shame was that numbers weren't as high as usual. There were some work commitments, and also it being in school half term week didn't help. Perhaps a month earlier next year might be better.

Addendum: I can't write a LAN report without mentioning Pup's fall from grace. All he needed to do was sit on Lynda's swivel chair for the base to crack, and end up on his arse in a heap on the floor. Top work \o/

Nvidia released an updated ForceWare 178 driver set last week. The drivers contain a couple of fixes and enhancements on the previous 178.13 version.

You can download the drivers for XP and Vista now. Note that these drivers are now well over 100MB due to the inclusion of the PhysX software.

Nvidia have released a new set of ForceWare graphics card drivers for the first time in a while. This version includes the PhysX software that was previously a standalone installation. It also allows you to enable hardware PhysX using 8 and 9 series Nvidia cards for the first time, outside of the beta driver programme.

Nvidia Drivers

The cable upgrade has now been done. The forthcoming LAN will benefit from this, and will run at:

Downstream: 10,240,000 bits/sec
Upstream: 512,000 bits/sec

Note that you need to reboot your cable modem to get the new configuration file.

Virgin Media have finally announced when Halifax customers will get their broadband speed increase - they reckon it'll be done sometime this month. That's great news for the coming LAN, as 4Mbps connections will be upgraded to 10Mbps. I'm not sure what the upstream upgrade will be, if any.

http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/existingcustomers/faster/schedule.html.

Also, did you know that Virgin customers can get the same deals that new customers get - they just don't advertise it. Just phone the 150 free number, and follow the menus to the "You are thinking of leaving us" option. Tell them you are thinking of leaving due to cost, and that it's unfair that loyal customers should be paying more than new customers. Et viola - at least £10 off your monthly bill if you have all 3 services :) This does tie you in for a new 12 month contract, but if you have no intention of leaving them then you're a winner.

The autumn LAN this year is slightly later than normal, beginning on Thursday 30th October for setup, and running through to Sunday 2nd November.

We'll set up a games list and general discussion over on the forums.

The Nvidia PhysX pack for all GeForce 8 series and newer cards was released yesterday. You can download the pack at http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx_8.08.18_whql.html. I'll post an update once I've installed it and tried some PhysX-enabled games (GRAW, GRAW2 and UT3).

Following their purchase of Ageia, Nvidia are to release a software and driver pack that will enable PhysX on graphics cards up to 18 months old. GeForce 8 and 9 series cards will benefit, so all those who upgraded for the last two LANs should be sorted :)

Custom PC have a good article on the subject.

The pack should appear in the "Other downloads and support" section of the main Nvidia driver page. PhysX is already there, but only for 9800GTX and newer cards. The forthcoming pack will extend support to the older card ranges.

Hot on the heels of v1.6 comes v1.7 - it fixes some bugs and exploits introduced in v1.6. The update is a patch, so you'll need to download install v1.6 first.

Downloads for both v1.6 (290MB) and v1.7 (39MB) are linked from our Call of Duty 4 page.

Firefox 3 has finally launched.

Download Firefox 3 to see this site at its best :)

A full update to Call of Duty 4 was released last week. Version 1.6 brings 4 new multiplayer maps (Creek, Chinatown, Broadcast, and Killhouse), alongside a new server browser filter, bug fixes and a DOS attack fix.

Download the patch from our Call of Duty 4 page.

Congratulations to Wij - the latest DFC member to bear offspring \o/ It seems Kylie had a point :)

Battlefield 2142 has been updated to version 1.50.

This patch adds two new community maps, no vehicles mode, and more.

The download is nearly 540MB, and you can find a link on our BF2142 page.

For you clan members with an Xfire account, you can now add your Xfire username to your DFC account. Your mini-profile will then be shown on your member details page.

If enough of you provide your Xfire details, I'll knock up a page that lists all our whereabouts if currently in-game. Simply visit Xfire Download and follow the 3 steps to having a working account.

I've added a few more RSS feed links around the site. You can see a couple on the right column News and Forum panels. Also, there are new links for ATI and Nvidia driver updates on the Games and RSS Feeds pages.

On the topic of RSS, Newsgator have released their latest reader software free of charge. It used to cost around £20 for a licence for the Outlook plugin.

This has to go down as one of the best LANs yet. The number of people attending was constantly high, making for some great team games. Also, the Wednesday setup meant that mincing was kept to a minimum on the Thursday (although Bob's router packing up on the Saturday was unfortunate).

By far the most played team game was Call of Duty 4. We tried all the multiplayer modes, and it proved popular as the antidote to last time's CounterStrike fest. There were some great games of Sabotage where the advantage ebbed and flowed many times.

Also very popular was PGR4 on the Xbox360. We had the full 8 player system link going for some good Cat and Mouse action.

CounterStrike did see an appearance, for a GunGame session. It was great when several players were all on grenade, trying to get that elusive kill.

Food was once again a major part, with Asda curry on Wednesday, Pizza on Thursday, Rinky on Friday and a cracking curry from Kamran on Saturday. Bob came up with the goods every morning with the full English breakfast \o/

All in all, an excellent weekend. On behalf of all the attendees, thanks Bob - top job once again.

BobLAN starts today with setup and mincing, so hopefully that'll give us a good chance of some gaming on the Thursday for a change. More to follow as the LAN progresses, and there's plenty of chat about the games being played over on the Forums.

I recently came across this site - http://www.map-factory.org/.

It offers map downloads for a whole variety of games, including Portal, Battlefield and CounterStrike. Many of the custom maps that EvilTwin used to use can be downloaded from here.

With the Easter LAN only a month away, keep an eye on the Forums where the games, food etc are being discussed.