Gaming News

Following the refactor, I felt the site needed a bit more functionality. I remember back in the QW days that there were no tools for parsing the QuakeWorld console logs in a way that could be integrated into a clan website. Now we have one :)

Most of the Match Report pages have a link to view the console log. For an example, see the log of DFC vs NUT. The log rows are colour-coded so you can see the change of fortunes in the match. Things going our way are green, and enemy success is red.

There is also a summary for each player in the match, totaling their contributions, or otherwise :)

DF-Lynx has picked the weekend of the 26th - 28th October for the next round of gaming festivities. This has been chosen to coincide with the end of BST...

In an attempt to get the most possible playing hours into the weekend I'm think that the clock change weekend would be a good one, giving us the extra hour as the clocks go back!

More news to follow as the event draws near, and watch for forums for the usual games discussions.

Congratulations to Gobbers who got hitched at the weekend. The event took place in Ellmau, Austria, where he moved recently to set up a mountain bike business.

Best wishes from all at DFC to Keith and Manu :)

This site has had a major refactor. Gone are the old Classic ASP-style inline SQL scripts, in favour of the n-tier approach.

If ne1 clan members spot any odd behaviour, please let me know. I should now be able to fix any issues in an agile manner :)

This Friday saw a return to CS from the lads. Daz, Bob, Pup and Mes turned up on the ET server, and a good evening was had by all.

Following a brief outage due to hardware rationalisation at FreddysHouse, our TeamSpeak 2 server is back up and running.

Details of the server can be found on the TeamSpeak page.

This was announced a couple of weeks back. Virgin are to employ traffic shaping to temporarily limit the connection speed of "heavy downloaders". It defines "heavy" as 350MB between 4pm and midnight for the M package customers, and 750MB for L. That equates to a normal and HD TV show respectively. Pretty poor.

Read more about it on the PC Pro site.

Another great LAN came to an end last weekend - thanks go to Bob for hosting once again :)

A good range of games were played, and with the arival of Wii and PS3 since the last LAN, console games proved very popular. Here's the list of stuff that was played:

• Battlefield 2142 - this was a newcomer to BobLAN, and once it was all installed and setup, was a great hit. It managed to provide a tense finish to one particular game, which finished 0-2
• Battlefield 1942 - this was played on the Thursday evening when t'internet was down preventing Steam auth, and Pup wasn't around with any other servers. It was still a fun game though depite its age and relative slowness compared to Desert Combat, Battlefield 2 etc.
• CounterStrike - the perennial favourite, and with improved VIP support and Deathmatch mod, was played a lot.
• Call of Duty 2 - great game and not played as much as it should have been. We've setup a proper dedicated server for next time, so hopefully it'll get more play time.
• Company of Heroes - the game should have lasted hours. It actually lasted around 20 minutes. One team was still mincing around with foot soldiers when quatoria's lot sent in tanks and rocket launchers. RTS games really do need a fairly even level of experience across all players.
• QuakeWorld - a quick Team Deathmatch game was all that was played this time. No CTF unfortunately. It might be our age, but it looks to be getting faster every year :/
• Airfix Dogfighter - this game stopped working when we upgraded beyond Pentium II a few years ago. However, when Bob tried it the other week, it worked again. It might have been a DirectX update or graphics driver fix - who knows. The network code proved a bit flakey as some people couldn't join. Fun game tho.

On the console gaming front, Wii Sports Tennis and Bowling on the projector was great fun. We also had two Guitar Hero II sets, and were able to play both together.

A few photos were taken, which I'll be putting up in the gallery soon.

Update: photos uploaded to the Gallery.

Bob has confirmed that the usual Easter LAN is on. It will start on the evening of Thursday 5th April and go on til the Sunday afternoon. Let's hope the WoW veto is still in place :)

Due to their association with Dabs, we are automatically included in the BT Shop and BT Broadband affiliate schemes. If anyone intends to buy anything from them, or wants to sign up to BT Total Broadband, please do it via our Affiliates page.

Any sales we generate will result in a decent commission, which will help pay for hosting and pizza at the next LAN :)

Age of Empires III has been updated to v1.10. You can download the update via the link on the AoE III page.

A merry xmas to all DFC members, and also to Evil Twin and Killer Mongoose, whose servers we use/abuse on Friday evenings.

Easter eggs will soon be appearing on the shelves of Tescos, and that can only mean one thing - BobLAN cometh :)

Gee's Evil Twin has informed us of a server IP address change. You can connect to the new server by clicking the following link:

82.71.218.106:27015

Our Servers and Friday Night pages have been updated to point at the new location. Thanks to Gee :)

Battlefield 2 has been updated to version 1.41 to fix a server crashing bug. Download the update from our BF2 page.

Dabs have recently re-opened their TradeDoubler affiliate scheme. We have been accepted as affiliates to the scheme, so please can you all make any future Dabs purchases via the Affiliates Page.

BobLAN starts tomorrow, and the attendance list is looking good. Even the Thursday evening setup has around 10 names down. Friday is due to be the busiest day, with many of us taking the day off work \o/

I know it's not easter, but Bob's verse still applies :)

The DFC website and forums have moved home. We've been hosted by FreddysHouse for the past couple of years, however with Deebs scaling down his hosting operation we were made homeless. }data{ offered to host us on his server, the move to which was completed today.

Thanks to Deebs for his hosting and help over the past couple of years, and to data for the new hosting and smooth transition.

Age of Empires III has been updated to version 1.09. The update gives players experience points after each game, meaning all Home Cities will now level up faster. There are also network and client fixes.

There is a download link on our AoE III page.

A major update to Battlefield 2 was released today. Version 1.4 comes in a clinically obese 530MB download. The release is mainly a collection of bug fixes, however there is a new conquest map called Road to Jalalabad, and a new "No Vehicles" game mode.

Links to the download can be found on our Battlefield 2 page, and further information on the update is on the EA Games site.

The radar updates for CS:Source were made available today - it rocks :) de_train has also had a facelift. The update will be applied automatically next time your Steam client loads.