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With the release date (Nov. 5th) now less than two weeks away, CoD4:MW is starting to get a few preview reviews from the major sites, like this one from Gamespy.
Note that this review includes some talk about the Mulitplayer changes, including the "XP" system which will make it possible to tailor your character's abilities to your playing style. There's also perks and bonuses to add more flavor to the game and reward your accomplishments. I like those aspects but we'll have to see how well they're executed here in CoD. The old ET:RtCW game had similar XP rewards to increase skills which really helped the team wins but didn't carry over MMO-style between game sessions.
From what I've read, for the MMO XP to work I think you have to run the server as a "ranked" server which means it must run PB and can't be mod'd at all. Hmm....guess we'll find out in the next few weeks!
_FFC_
While the Meatbot mod is kinda fun, there are still too many bugs there-in to make it worthwhile right now. Just one of those mods that was best tried out with the group before I could make a call on how worthy this mod might really be at present. I think it has a lot of potential, but is not quite soup yet. I'll keep an eye on the mod's progress and maybe we'll revisit it later on.
Next up is one of the more popular "realism" mods, the WRM mod. Real in terms of iron sights, one primary weapon only, minimal screen clutter, weapon recoil and ballistics, ammo loadouts, and so on. The only stock setting in the mod I really skimped on was the grenade use and loadout, to keep Crow and the higher-ping players happy...er. But there's still a random factor on all the loadouts so don't always count on having grenades or the same amount of ammo. This isn't a "run and gun" spray everything in sight mod. Make your shots and grenades count. Still no sprint function as this mod doesn't include it...wish it did as from a realism viewpoint a solider should be able to sprint once in awhile.
The mod does include a bandaging system and a way to clear gun jams via a menu activated by your "Use" key; hit that key to toggle the choice then hold it down to choose. There are also different gun and player sounds. There was no blood mod but I added one in; not tested that yet. The maps are mainly stock with a few custom ones chosen for realistic theme.
I've also activated Punkbuster as I want to experiment with some of the admin features it offers. So make sure you have that turned on in your CoD2 game under Multiplayer Options. I had no problem connecting so assume the PB client auto-update works. If yours doesn't update for whatever reason (usually firewall) their update page is here.
The mod files are kinda large (over 60MB) due to the included sound files so allow ample time for the auto-download process the first time around. If you already had created a connection or favorite to checkout the Meatbot mod I posted about earlier there is nothing you need to change; same server just different mod. Otherwise, see my previous post here for the connection info.
_FFC_
Judging from usage and after polling the F.F.C. members regarding CoD:UO interest, I have officially retired CoD:UO (may it rest in peace). It was a great game but is a dog that has had it's day.
As there wasn't a lot of interest expressed in a game other than CoD2, I replaced UO with another CoD2 server. Ah, but this one has a twist! I loaded the "Meatbot" (Mbot) mod on this new server which gives me the ability to add in fairly smart AI players aka "bots". This way if there are only a couple of us around we can go fight the bots or balance out our teams with'em. There are some pros and cons which I list below.
Pro:
- Balance teams for odd man TDM matches
- Us against Them, man against the machine teamplay!
- Ranking system included, become an officer!
- Battlechatter and mortars, a little buggy still
Con:
- Only works with certain stock and custom CoD2 maps
- CoD2 stock features only (no sprint, one gun, auto-health, etc)
- Mod is from Russia so support is difficult to find/understand thus far
- Map rotation and bot re-connection is buggy, so I must be around to babysit
Elaborating on that last "Con" a little more, as we are limited by the server host to 10 slots and the bots count toward that total, we could in theory have a server full o'bots and no FFC player could then connect. And who knows what kind of wild party those bots might have in there without us...all get drunk and burn the damn server down. LOL
So we'll see how things go. Eventually I'd like to be able to leave the server run with a couple bots in there all the time. That way if a FFCer is bored you could go fight dem killer bots. But thus far I've not figured out if that's possible.....maybe later.
And if the bots don't work out or we get bored with'em, well, having a second stock CoD2 server makes it easier to try different mods....like, say, a realism mod.
Here is the new server connect info:
Name: FFCMbot
IP: 69.28.221.15
Same password
I also updated our "FFC Server Monitor" page to include the new server in the usual fashion. If you have a "quick connect" shortcut, just make a copy of it, go into the Properties on the new shortcut Target and change the last octet in the old IP from 136 to 15 and you'll be good to go!
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After a very rough start trying to get the %$#*ing demo to download at all from those YaaHoos at Yahoo! I was finally able to get the download finished up right before FFC game time last night. Guess they got off their incompetent arses and fixed whatever server problem they were having....I only had to do one "resume" about half way through the 1.5GB download (thank goodness for GetRight ;). There are many mirrors and torrents now available hosting the demo so go check it out!
This demo (and by extension the game) kicks extremely serious ass!! For all of you BHD oldtimers think "BlackHawk Down" meets "Call of Duty 2" and you'll have a good idea of the environment, weapons and so forth. I especially like the M4A1 with grenade launcher, the killer Javelin anti-tank weapon, and hey there's even a few Dragonovs lay'n around. The AI is decent, similar to what's in CoD2 and the animations improved. One favorite example: I sniped a BG on a balcony who was about to fire a RPG, he fell backward and the RPG shot straight up with a smoke trail 200' or so into the sky then it arc'd over and exploded mid-air! TOTALLY kewl! You can also throw back grenades (if there's time), use night vision, knife melee, shoot through some barriers (I smoked a camel-jocky right thru an old couch he was using for cover ;), and more. Providing the MP is as good as the SP when this rolls out to the game servers, we will all be very happy campers.....uhh, no camping allowed soldier!, but hey you get the idea.
I had zero problems with the install on XP and Vista. Well, nothing that wasn't my doing at least. I tried skipping the DirectX 9.0c update section the first time since I already keep my DirectX up to to date. Bad idea....DirectX error...game wouldn't run. I tried to reinstall the demo and it first uninstalled the demo, then exited. On the next install attempt I let it do the DirectX and all was fine. No reboots required but I lost a lot of time. Ah well, such is the testing life. ;-)
As for performance...on XP the demo ran very smooth at 1024x768 with all other settings (including 5.1 audio) maxed out, averaging about 35 FPS. That seems low compared to CoD2's 55 FPS (using DirectX 7) but keep in mind there's a LOT more going on in this demo. It's a very "busy" environment...lots of billowing smoke clouds, burning debris, frenetic jihadists shoot'n RPGs with vapor trails and AK bullets whiz'n all over the place....kinda like well, war. I lost a few more FPS when running the demo under Vista with the same settings...more like 20's FPS average but still very playable. I noticed no Vista disk swap'n activity even with my 1.5MB vs recommended 2MB of RAM. IF I were to run the game under Vista I'd likely be cranking a few graphics options down for the better FPS trade-off. Those of you with lesser hardware may want to stick with XP if possible. Keep in mind there is no DirectX 7 choice for this game like with CoD2....it's DX9 or nothing. So try the "Optimal System Settings" choice tho' that was way under-choiced in my case. I tried it and it didn't do a very good job of adjusting to what my hardware would actually support so I cranked things up manually.
In summary, it appears that IW did a fantastic job with the development and especially the performance optimization of CoD4:MW. I am amazed how well the demo runs given how much is going on even at lowered FPS. Yes, I have some "heavy" hardware altho' said hardware is now more than a year old so ain't bleeding at the edges. I'll be anxious to hear back from the rest of you as to how it performs and plays.
_PC_
Currently over 2 HOURS past the 9am PST release date of the much anticipated CoD4:MW PC Demo and NO ONE has been able to download it. I've checked on all the official and unofficial gaming sites and the story is the same. Apparently Activision made an exclusive deal with Yahoo! (my gawd WHAT were they thinking??!) to distribute the demo and they royally screwed the pooch....[heavy sarcasm] gee how unusual is that for Yahoo! ?[/heavy sarcasm]....by having only ONE distribution server!
Story is the same all over...try to download, get either "Connection Refused" or about 16-20MB and then it stops. Download managers don't help, nothing helps, it just don't work, I've tried it myself for an hour.
Needless to say the fans are up in arms all over the globe so it will be interesting to see if there is any official word or apology issued soon. I know I AM PISSED since I have the time today to mess with this but won't next week. Grrrrrrr!!
Only positive note is that they did finally release the System Requirements for the demo which should be the same for the game....see below. Weep or rejoice depending on your current hardware, but I'll have more to report about the reality of the specs IF the demo ever gets truly released.
“Recommended Specs” CPU: 2.4 GHz dual core or better is recommended RAM: 1GB for XP; 2GB for Vista is recommended Harddrive: 8GB of free hard drive space Video card: 3.0 Shader Support recommended. Nvidia Geforce 7800 or better or ATI Radeon X1800 or better
“Required (min) Specs” CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 2.4 GHz or AMD(R) Athlon(TM) 64 2800+ processor or any 1.8Ghz Dual Core Processor or better supported RAM: 512MB RAM (768MB for Windows Vista) Harddrive: 8GB of free hard drive space Video card (generic): NVIDIA(R) Geforce(TM) 6600 or better or ATI(R) Radeon(R) 9800Pro or better
_FFC_
Turkeyfiles, the free redirect map host we've been using over the past year or so has shutdown their hosting site. Seems it was costing them too much for the bandwidth...well, DUH!! What did they expect? Ah well, it was a good ride while it lasted. And I'll miss all the different maps that showed up there regularly for CoD2 and other games.
In case you were wondering just what the hell a redirect map host is anyway, read on! The game maps that I upload to our game server have to be uploaded to another server elsewhere too. This is because the game hosting companies generally don't have the extra bandwidth and storage to support buku megabytes of map files being transfered each day, per hosted game server. Or if they do they charge extra $ for it. So Turkeyfiles was a big hit with many game admins since they hosted maps for free for anyone, but obviously they bit off much more than they could afford.
Most of our maps, especially the olders ones, are still hosted on one of my sites so we'll go back to using that one full time. I started using Turkeyfiles when I found it since, 1) They already had most of our maps and some good new ones which meant less work for me since I didn't have to upload them there and, 2) Other gamers would upload their map files so new ones would show up regularly that were often worthy of play. Made my work a lot easier/simpler. It wasn't a perfect solution since being a public server I had less control over the maps themselves meaning any maps I customized for our server caused conflicts. But overall it worked pretty well and now it's gone..."C'est la vie".
Sooooo.....I'll be increasing the storage space on my DD site and get'n the missing maps (that were only hosted from Turkeyfiles before) uploaded there. I'll have to test each download rotation of which we have 20 right now, times 5 or more maps per rotation. In actuality we have about 85 "user-created" maps as some of the rotations have the stock maps mixed in. Hopefully I'll get this all ironed out during the next week or so, but if you experience any weird map download problems hey, at least you have some idea WTF is going on.
