Gaming News

DFC played their first game of the new Sacrifice campaign last night. It brings together the characters from the original L4D with the map first seen in The Passing in L4D2. The campaign is pretty short, but the final part is tricky until you work out exactly what you have to do.

No doubt it'll feature at the LAN in 3 weeks time :)

l4d.com are hosting some movies based on the game. Some good ones in there, including a very short trailer for the official movie.

View them at l4d.com.

DF-Lynx has published the date for the next LAN weekend - it'll run from Thursday 4th November through to Sunday 7th. There hasn't been that much in the way of new games since Easter, although the recent Steam games Alien Swarm and Dogfighter look fun.

As usual, keep up with events at our BobLAN page.

Valve have released a further set of gameplay and bug fixes to CounterStrike: Source, following the major update a couple of weeks ago. Here's a quote from the Steam News article about the updates:

An update on the Update
The reason for the recent update was to move Counter-Strike Source (CSS) from the older HL2 version of the Source engine to the most recent version. This brings the CSS codebase in-line with our other games. This resolves long standing issues associated with the older engine and allows us to benefit from features and bug fixes in other source games as they come online, such as improved graphic effects and more accurate hit registration.

Read the full article, which lists all the enhancements made in this update.

The DFC site now has a version of the News page optimised for mobile devices. The intention is to add Forum posts and BobLAN updates to the mobile section.

You can try it out by pointing your mobile device at https://www.desertfoxclan.com.

The CS:Source update that has been in beta for the past month went live for all users earlier this week. It is a major overhaul that should breathe new life into this old game.

As well as gameplay and graphical changes, the main addition is the achievements system. There are 144 different achievements, some easy to obtain and some will be very difficult.

The complete list of changes can be found on Steam News. For a list of all the new achievements, have a look at the Global Achievements Stats.

Valve have released details of the beta of a major update to CS Source - the first in many years. Features include 144 achievements, lifetime player stats and summary screens, match stats, improved scoreboard, gameplay additions and the inclusion of many recent Source engine updates.

Given that we do still play CS Source at BobLAN, I'm sure this will be of interest to the clan.

Full details can be found in this Steam News article.

Steam are holding a weekend special for Modern Warfare 2. You can play the multiplayer version of the game for free all weekend, and all players will earn double XP.

Visit steampowered.com for more details.

The first expansion for Left4Dead 2 has been released this week. Here's a quote from the Steam News article...

The first game add-on for Left 4 Dead 2 (L4D2) brings the original Left 4 Dead Survivors down south for a meeting with the L4D2 cast, while delivering new single-player, multiplayer and co-operative gameplay for the PC and Xbox 360.

"The Passing" features 3 new maps, new weekly game modes (Mutations), a new "uncommon common" zombie class (the fallen survivor), melee weapon (golf club), firearm (M-60), support for infected bot play in Versus, 10 new achievements and more!

This is a free update, and no doubt will feature in our next Friday Night session :)

Yet another great LAN party hosted by DF-Lynx, aka Bob. Thanks from all the lads :)

The most played games this time round have to be Forza 3 and CS GunGame. There was a little L4D2 and UT2004. No UT3 or QuakeWorld this time. There was also a game of Battlefield 1942, however with all the problems encountered getting the game to run on Windows 7, 64-bit and widescreen monitors, it has been decided that BF1942 will no longer appear at BobLAN. Hopefully Battlefield 1943 will be out in time for the Autumn LAN :)

The turnout was good too. Thursday and Friday were the busiest days, with Saturday and Sunday relatively quiet. The Wednesday setup night was a success again, with some actual gaming taking place. It was good to see Trebz and Gren back after missing the past couple of LANs, but a shame that Reubs couldn't make it this time. Skonley popped round with his lad on the Saturday for a bit of CS. Neither Eddie nor Kevin put in an appearance.

The complete schedule of activities can be seen on the BobLAN 2010.1 page, along with links to the forum thread and Twitter site.

The first LAN of 2010 is well underway, with some quality gaming all round. Favourites so far have been CS GunGame, Forza 3, L4D2, Lego Rockband and TF2. No signs of any RTS games, UT or QuakeWorld yet.

The diary of events is being recorded on the BobLAN page so future generations can see what they missed :)

Nvidia have released a new set of drivers. Hopefully these 197.13 drivers will prove to be more reliable than the previous version, which got removed from their site due to fan control issues on some GeForce chipsets.

As usual, a download link is available on our Games and Files page.

Nvidia have released a new set of ForceWare drivers, just in time for the BobLAN change freeze. A download link is available on our Games and Files page.

Claimed performance improvements include up to 30% in L4D on a single GPU. No mention of L4D2. This is over the previous WHQL version 196.21.

Update
Nvidia have pulled these drivers and recommend all users roll back to the previous version (Driver rollback help)

Windows 7 allows you to include web sites in your local search, via Federated Search Connectors. DFC now supports Federated Search - simply download the connector and follow the r-click context menu prompts. IE can install it directly.

The result should be a Desert Fox Clan entry in the Favorites list in Windows Explorer, with search results that change as you type in your search query.

All the categories that have previously been included in the site's search feature will work, eg News, Match Reports, Humour etc.

The DFC site has moved hosts. Thanks to }data{ we're now hosted in Europe, meaning quicker response times and the latest PHP and MySQL versions.

If anyone spots any problems with this or the Forums site, please let Mesmer know.

Nvidia have release new WHQL ForceWare drivers for all platforms. Changes include bug fixes, tweaks to specific games, and PhysX updates. There appear to be no major performance improvements in this version.

Links to the drivers for WinXP, Vista and Win7 can be found at the bottom of our Games and Drivers page.

A few updates will be applied to MW2 via Steam, primarily aimed at h@x0rs. Details below, courtesy of Steam News

• Fix for latest texture hacks


• Fix to prevent players from getting inside geo


• Fix to prevent players with illegally pirated copies of Modern Warfare 2 from matchmaking with legitimate Modern Warfare 2 players


• Connection improvements for NAT-PMP routers


• Fix for "elevator" glitch that allows players to get out of playable area

Today sees the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. This is the sequel to the hugely popular Call of Duty 4, and it's just a shame that it wasn't released a week earlier in time for the LAN. I'm sure it'll feature heavily at the Easter LAN tho :)

The Autumn LAN is well underway, with a relatively painless setup evening, and late night Rockband mincage.

Follow events and view the live webcam on the BobLAN page.

Treyarch have released an update to Call of Duty: World at War. The patch includes 3 new multiplayer maps, gameplay changes and bug fixes.

For some bizarre reason, this is yet another incremental patch on all the other incremental patches, meaning you need to download well over 2GB of files to get a clean install fully patched. Why not combine them all together into a single point release?

Find links to this and previous patches on our CoD WaW page.