Gaming News

EA have release a major patch for Battlefield 2. Here's Gamespot's quote on the release:

This is the long-awaited version 1.50 patch for Battlefield 2. In addition to making all content from both expansions free-to-play, it includes a number of bug fixes and gameplay tweaks.

Read the full description on Gamespot and download the patch via our BF2 page (2GB).

The next gaming weekend will be Friday 6th to Sunday 8th November. In practice, it is likely to start with a setup night on the Thursday.

Keep up with events at the LAN on the revamped BobLAN page, which includes a live webcam feed, links to our Twitter page and Forums topic, plus a rough schedule of activity (to be completed as each day progresses).

Valve have announced more DLC for L4D. Planned for September, it should be out in time for the next LAN \o/

Bean has posted details on the DFC Forums.

ShackNews have posted some details of what L4D2 will contain. Melee weapons will include a cricket bat and a chainsaw, and there will be 5 new campaigns. It is slated for release in November, so we'll not get to see it at a LAN until next Easter.

Read more at ShackNews.

Valve have announced that they are working on L4D2, due for release later this year.

"Featuring new Survivors, boss zombies, weapons, and items, Left 4 Dead 2 offers a much larger game than the original with more co-operative campaigns, more Versus campaigns, and maps for Survival mode available at launch."

Read more about it on Steam News.

I can't quite be sure when DFC was officially formed, but the date we tend to go by is the date we joined the MCW league (Modemers Clan Wars, for those who can remember what a modem was). It was 11 years ago to the day that we were accepted into MCW, and the landscape of online gaming was changed forever :)

See the News Archive from 1998 for more.

Valve have issued a series of updates for L4D. The major one being the addition of a new game mode - Survival - plus enabling the other two campaigns for Versus mode.

You can read about the updates on the Steam news site:

• Major update details
• Minor tweaks and fixes
• Survival mode gameplay changes

The LAN is in full swing, with plenty of Left 4 Dead, CS GunGame and RockBand so far.

Follow BobLAN via:

• WebCam
• Twitter

A new set of Nvidia drivers have been released just in time for the LAN. You can find a link to ForceWare 182.50 on our Games and Drivers page.

Valve have released a major set of fixes and tweaks to L4D. You can read the full list at steampowered.com, but here are some highlights:

• Various changes to Tank behaviour


• Smoker targetting and field of attack


• Boomers exploding in mid air drop bile


• Burning Hunters do less damage


• Several general server and multiplayer tweaks

The update will be applied automatically via Steam.

DF-Lynx has announced the next LAN - it will be on Easter weekend as usual, with an early setup on Weds 8th April, finishing on Sunday 12th April.

Follow the build-up on the BobLAN 2009.1 Forums Topic.

An update has been released for Call of Duty World at War. This is an incremental update, so you will need both the 1.2 point release plus the 1.3 patch.

Links to both are available on our CoD World at War page.

There has been a welcome resurgence in our Friday night gaming sessions. This is largely thanks to Left4Dead. We've had some cracking co-op games the past few weeks, and it really does bode well for the Easter LAN. We've only done Campaign Mode so far, and it'll be great for times when numbers are low (up to 4 players). Versus Mode is what we should be doing plenty of at the LAN tho, where human players get to play as special infected - should be comical.

We've also found another CS server that is relatively quiet, and has some Evil Twins playing on it. Thanks to Captain Birdshit for the details in his forum post.

You can find links to this CS server, plus some L4D info, on our Friday Night is Gaming Night page.

The most recent Nvidia drivers seem to have fixed the Multicore Rendering issue that caused major stuttering in Left4Dead. You can find a link to ForceWare 182.06 on our Games and Drivers page.

AngryDaz has spotted an issue with the latest Nvidia driver release. It relates to using remote desktop on the host server. See the forums thread on the subject.

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.