Gaming News

This time from the Easter LAN of 2002, courtesy of Gren. If anyone has any other old LAN photos lying around, zip em up and mail em to me. No more of Wij's arse crack tho plz :/

Uploading of avatars to your DFC Forum profile should now work. Click on Profile at the top of the forums page, and near the bottom you can browse to an avatar on your local machine.

Avatars should be 80x80 pixels and no more than 6KB in size.

Some photos from last weekend's LAN are up in the DFC Gallery. Thanks to Trebz for being cameraman, and apologies on Wij's behalf :/

Another great DFC LAN event came to a close today. Thanks to DF-Lynx for playing host once again - top job as usual :)

This LAN saw a few new games in action - Battlefield Vietnam was a firm favourite, and Unreal Tournament 2004 proved popular for CTF and Assault games. Call of Duty made an appearance in place of Medal of Honour. We had a few rounds of Desert Combat, however after experiencing the improved gameplay of Vietnam, DC didn't seem quite the same.

Season 3 of the Ladder got off to a start, although there wasn't the same number of games as in previous LANs. The popadum eating contest between Trebz and Gobbers was class tho :)

The DFC affiliates fund raised £30 towards the total cost of the LAN. We are well on the way to earning the same again for next time round, so get buying.

The DFC Ladder season 2 has come to an end and season 3 started in time for the LAN. Congratulations to DF-Lynx for coming top in season 2's ladder. How about a TFT bezel match to get season 3 off to a start? :p

Don't forget that the LAN starts tomorrow evening chez Bob. Check the forums for the latest discussions regarding games, ladders etc.

The official Battlefield 1942 web site has published some of the maps in their recent map making contest.

You can download the maps individually, or you can scroll right to the bottom to be offered them all in a single 140MB map pack.

A Steam update was released a couple of days ago. The update relates to Condition Zero, fixing a few minor bugs. If you haven't played the game online ever, then you should not automatically receive the update.

An RSS feed has been added to support the DFC Forums. Point your Newsgator or Firefox plugin at https://www.desertfoxclan.com/forumrss to receive new forum posts delivered to your desktop.

A page has been added which also lists all the feeds we provide.

After quite a lengthy wait, the single player version of Counter-Strike is out today. The game will be familiar to all online CS regulars, however there are a few subtle differences in order to make it work in a single player mission-based model.

The progress through the game has a bit of a PGR feel to it, as you earn points and unlock maps by completing objectives, and you spend your points on buying better team mates in the next round.

There are a few new weapons, in fact you may be forgiven for thinking that all the weapons are new. In fact, they have renamed all the old CS weapons for some political correctness reason. The first map you will encounter is Dust.

The tactical elements of the enemy and team AI is excellent. The coders have clearly observed a lot of online play and got most things right. The only weakness is a lack of awareness of what's going on behind them - human players constantly check all around to make sure nobody is sneaking up behind them. The AI doesn't do this too well, although it does pick its camping spots well :/

All in all, a great game.

Just a reminder that BOBLAN 2004 is on the cards for this Easter. The weekend begins on the evening of Thursday 8th April and goes on until Sunday 11th. Hopefully there will be a good turn out for the weekend.

Have your say on what we play on the DFC Forums.

A major Steam client update is due shortly. Here are the highlights:

• Offline Play


• Account validation (via e-mail)


• A new Half-Life 2 hardware survey


• Support for purchasing games through Steam

Update - this will take place on Weds 3rd March.

EA have put up a site for the forthcoming Battlefield 1942 mod Vietnam. Here's a brief snippet from the site:

The Battlefield franchise enters a new era equipped with more firepower, modernized weaponry and vehicles, and a deeper infantry experience from the jungles to the beaches of Vietnam. From villages on the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the city streets of Hue wage modern warfare as the United States or North Vietnamese Army (NVA).

It is hoped that Vietnam will be out prior to the LAN at Easter :)

DFC have received their first payout from the affiliates scheme :) This should get the kitty off to a nice start at the LAN in a couple of months time.

Thanks to all who bought using the Affiliates page - it really does make a difference.

A beta demo of Unreal Tournament 2004 has been released by publishers Atari. Most of the usual mirrors are hosting the download, including Fileshack and Jolt.

Also, there was a Steam update a couple of days ago. This included the main engine, plus a few tweaks to Counter-Strike. This should all auto-update next time Steam starts up on your PC.

As mentioned in the last news item, the updated version of the BF1942 mod Desert Combat was due out on Friday. It was released on time, and download links are available from desertcombat.com.

A new patch was released for Battlefield 1942 this weekend - version 1.6.19. Check the EA Games site for the full change log.

Now that GAME.NET has gone, our usual FTP source is no longer available. One decent download source is bf1942files.com. I got a steady 46KB/s download speed. The full point release is 274MB, and the update from v1.5 is 148MB. Yes, that is correct - they are double the previous patch sizes :/

For those unable to download, mail Mesmer to request a CD with client and server versions on. It is doubtful that both the BF patch and Desert Combat will fit on a single CD now.

Note that GCW have yet to supply an enhanced version :) Also, there are issues regarding Desert Combat and this patch. Version 0.7 of DC is due for release on 6th February.

The invites went out for the next DFC LAN at Bob's today. It will run from the evening of Thursday 8th April til Sunday 11th (Easter weekend). There is a forums thread regarding the LAN already running on the DFC Forums - have your say.

Don't forget to help our pizza fund. We will need to hit the £30 mark soon otherwise we'll miss the next payment date.

Following the announcement last month, the closure of GAME.NET, formerly known as BarrysWorld happened this week. All services have been terminated, including clan servers, bookable servers, web hosting and email accounts.

Our previous site was hosted with GAME.NET, hence the timely move over to FreddysHouse, which is now nice and stable - cheers Deebs :)

Good news regarding Trebz, who was made redundant by the GAME.NET closure - he's found another job with MNP, starting early Feb - congrats m8 :)

We now have £29.29 in our LAN pizza fund. However, we need £30 in order to be able to draw it out, so get buying!!