Server Info Page

The Server Info page is working again. It shows who’s playing and what the current map is.

Enjoy.

Stats Are Up

The stats from last Saturday’s game have been posted. Actually, the stats include all of the game play from the test server as well. I forgot that I had uploaded the log file to the main server, and didn’t notice until I ran the stats for Saturday.

The stats from the old server have been preserved and are moving forward, so no one’s bash or grenade records have been lost.

Last week’s gaming went fairly well, I think. We had some very intense, and very close games. The Ventrilo server came in pretty handy. It will be up and running again next weekend.

The “Server Info” page is working again, with the exception of displaying the current map image. Once I collect screenshots of all the maps, that should be working too.

IMPORTANT

Sorry to spring this on everyone at the last moment, but the Housewares server is now running the Heat of Battle mod. Please see the post below for instructions on obtaining the Heat of Battle Mod files. Without these files, you will not be able to join in, as downloads have been turned off on the server.

We decided earlier in the week that we would be making the switch. For the time being, we will be running the Heat of Battle only. Might bring the other server back online sometime later.

Happy Birthday

Today marks the birthday for not just one, but two, of our Housewares employees.

Both Sickness and Ash turn a little older today. I believe they requested a birthday bashing, so be sure to hand some out the next time we play. If we were a clan, we may have had the resources to throw you guys a big par-tay! But we’re not.

Anyways, Happy Birthday to the both of you.

The Skinny On the Heat of Battle Mod

As some of you are probably aware, we are currently testing a new Call of Duty mod called Heat of Battle.

Heat of Battle is a team-based mod, using a Capture and Hold style of play, whereby you must work together as a team in order to capture and hold certain objectives marked on your maps. The team that captures and holds all the objectives, wins the round. There are multiple rounds per map. We will probably set it to three rounds per map, so the winner will be which team wins two of the three rounds.

Keeping with tradition of the [Housewares] - Rifles Only Server, we are once again limiting the weapons to rifles only. But, .... you will come to find that the semi-automatic rifles are turned on, as well as pistols and grenades. To make things more difficult, the mod makes it so there are no crosshairs, making it much harder to shoot from the hip. Aiming down the sight is the preferred and most accurate way to fire. The grenade cook timer and movable MG-42 mods from the regular CoD server do not carry over into this mod, so all of you who like the cook-able grenades….sorry. (Maybe they’ll make it into the final mod, if we choose to go with the Heat of Battle mod at all). The Americans are back too, unlike in our regular server setup. A few more neat things are, ...if you get shot in the hand, you will drop your weapon, and if you get shot in the foot, you will go to prone. There are more features to this mod, and you can read all about them by going to the Heat of Battle web site.

OK, so what does everyone need to join us? Well, first you will need to download the mod. The mod is 140MB, so I have the download option turned off on the server. The mod can be downloaded here:

Heat of Battle Downloads

There you can find downloads for Mac, Linux and PeeCee. Choose the v0.41 Full Installer package. The mod is so large because it uses all new maps. The old maps we are used to (Dawnville, Depot, Bocage, etc…) can not be used with this mod. The new maps are of very good quality, along with some new sound effects too. If you want to see what some of the maps look like, you can see them here.

You will also need the IP address of our test server, which is 24.9.20.101. Our server can be found in the master directory listed as [Housewares] - Test HoB Server, or you can manually add the above IP address into your Favorites screen.

The downside of the mod is that it requires about 8 people to play in order to keep it enjoyable and challenging. We would like everyone to join in this Saturday and give the server a try. This server runs from my house, so players are still limited to 12 (the cable connection can’t really handle more than that). If everyone likes the mod, we will be happy to put it on our main server. But once there, there will be no going back to normal Call of Duty. So this is a decision we do not want to make lightly. If everyone could log on and give it a try, we can then get your reactions and make a decision from there.

Stats are not being tracked on the test server, so feel free to get crazy. As we have been doing the last two weeks, once the test server dies down (to less than 4-6 players), we have been switching back over to the regular server.

See everyone (including you…5.56mm) on Saturday!