1/15/04 - Community Update
Good Day, Soldiers!
It's been an eventful few weeks here as we gear up to release the 1.6 patch, by far the most comprehensive patch to date. You'll find a complete feature list for the patch below. As you will notice, it's a very large patch with the full client patch weighing in at a hefty 266 MB. With the addition of Punkbuster, we're commited to releasing the cleanest patch yet. So, please be patient. We want to give you this patch just as much as you want to get it!
To keep you out of trouble for the next week or so, check out the items below. Some are fun, some are funny and BFStats will have you burning way too many hours improving your rank!
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Patch News - New Content in 1.6
New Map - Liberation of Caen
Liberation of Caen is a new map for BF1942 owners. It includes a whole new army, the Canadians. The army includes the Sexton SPA and the Lynx scout car, as well as new skins, flags, voice overs, and a new Assault rifle and the Johnson M1941 LMG. The Germans in this map are also equipped with a new scout vehicle, the Kettenkrad.
New Map - Raid on Agheila
Raid on Agheila is a new map playable for owners of the Secret Weapons of WWII expansion pack. This exciting map adds a bevy of new vehicles, including mobile spawn points, stationary rocket launchers, a new tank, new self-propelled artillery, and the Flettner, an experimental helicopter.
Modifications to Existing Maps
The Russian dive bomber, Ilyushin IL-2, has replaced one of the Yak 9 fighters in Kursk and Kharkov.
Battle of Britain can now be played using Objective Mode. Secret Weapons of WWII expansion pack is NOT required to play Battle of Britain in this mode.
Invasion of the Philippines has been slightly revised. The Japanese Destroyer has been rotated to face North, giving the Japanese a better chance at the start. The out of bounds area has been pushed back, and ticket bleeds have been slightly reduced.
Client Specific Changes/Bug Fixes
Added support for Punkbuster anti-cheat software
In-game HUD Player and Map Voting Interface Via Scoreboard
To access the new scoreboard features either enter the spawn interface and click the Scoreboard button, or press TAB. (NB- clicking the right mouse button while holding down TAB will give you a cursor- clicking on the 'lock' button will lock the scoreboard onscreen.)
Features of the new scoreboard:
Add buddies.
Vote to kick players.
Vote to kick a player on your team (only your team can vote).
Vote for maps.
All players can be seen through scrolling the score list.
Integrated vote dialog to respond to vote requests.
Added two new key bindings map to Yes and No for the vote response dialog (default: Yes: 7 and No: 8).
Added a new key binding for quick access to the map vote dialog (default: INSERT).
Please note that if you already have these keys bound in your custom profile you will need to assign these functions to other keys or use for them to work.
Improved Server Browser:
Support for favorite servers as a separate list accessible from the filters pane. NOTE: The favorite servers list must be refreshed manually to reflect the latest information from these servers.
Added button to place server in favorites list.
Much better filters and updated performance.
Added new filter buttons:
Populated only.
Favorites.
Pure Servers (Content Check).
PunkBuster only
Server Information pane will now detail which mods are present in the server rotation - Fixed the "Add server" button in the in-game server browser- now works for servers that use the standard GameSpy BF1942 ports.
Added button which takes you to the server rental service website.
Added LEGEND button (looks like question mark). This details what the main icons represent in the Server Browser Interface.
Other Fixes / Changes
The game.listPlayers command shows the cd key hash of the local player.
Slightly improved loading speed of maps.
Fixed sinking destroyer bug.
Changed APC exit point to minimize certain exploits.
Fixed an exploit involving damage to Aircraft Carriers.
Fixed crash bug when a dead bot was thrown through a window or door.
Dedicated Server Specific Changes / Bug Fixes:
Added Support for Punkbuster Anti-Cheat Software
Visit www.evenbalance.com for more information
Win32 Dedicated Server Implemented Through Back-port of the Linux Dedicated Server:
Runs in console mode displaying a status monitor with an interactive console.
The server uses a different binary than the game (bf1942_w32ded.exe).
Status monitor changes (compared to Linux server 1.5):
Added chat feedback.
Added number of tickets and current round number.
Added game state (playing, paused, etc.).
Added Support for Mixing Mods, Maps and Game Modes in the Maplist.
(NOTE: This is only supported from the dedicated server GUI)
IMPORTANT NOTICE ABOUT NEW SERVER FUNCTIONALITY
Please note that all old maplists are incompatible with this new feature and will have to be created again. Running the server with an old map list will not work.
As a result of this the game.serverGamePlayMode command in the ServerSettings.con file and the +game command line argument are now obsolete for dedicated servers and should not be used.
The Maplist.con was changed to allow three arguments:
game.addLevel < mapname > < game mode > < mod >, e.g.
game.addLevel Gazala GPM_CQ bf1942
** NOTE : the following commands now also use this functionality:
admin.changeMap
admin.setNextLevel
Updated the DedicatedServer.exe launcher program to allow for creation of maplists with the new functionality.
Updated Chat System
Fixed "chat lag" by streaming messages over a high-priority channel.
Added basic flood protection which prevents players from taking to much chat bandwidth by "spamming".
Added chat text as messages to the status monitor console.
GameSpy/ASE Host Reporting Changes
Added (kills/deaths) to ASE score format.
Added roundTimeLeft to GameSpy keys.
Added reporting of cd key hashes to GameSpy keys.
Added active_mods key showing all mods in map cycle.
Added content_check key showing content checking mode.
Converted GameSpy reporting keys to lowercase and replaced spaces with underscores to facilitate filtering in external browsers.
Upgraded XML Logging Format to 1.1
Added support for CD key hashes for players.
Fixed a few spelling errors for keys.
Fixed a bug where compressed XML logs where sometimes being corrupted.
Escapes non-printable characters as bf:nonprint tags.
Added chat text messages to the XML stream.
Updated Banning System
Bans can be set on CD key hashes as well as IP addresses.
Timeouts can be specified in these ways:
admin.banPlayerKey [timeout]
Where timeout can take one of these formats:
Omitted or 'perm' meaning that the ban is permanent
An integral number meaning the number of seconds the ban will be active (i.e. 3600 means one hour)
'round', meaning the ban is active until the next map
An integral number prepended by a colon (i.e. :1234567), meaning the epoch exporation time of the ban (number of seconds since 1 Jan 1970). This option is most usable by external tools.
IP address bans continue to work as earlier but include the new timeout options as well.
Bans are stored as absolute times in banlist.con. Existing bans in banlist.con will be interpreted as permanent bans.
Updated Content CRC Generation
Generation bat files are now created only for the mods you select. The new bat files are named getcrc-.bat.
Updated Remote Console Output:
The remote console now mirrors text written to the main console by prepending each mirrored line by a hash character (#). This is useful to capture chat text from external tools that periodically send commands to the remote console.
Please note that if several remote connections are made, the state of the mirroring is cleared so that mirrored console lines can easily be lost. Thus if you plan to use this feature in a tool, please only connect with one remote console connection at a time to ensure that you will get the correct results.
Other Fixes/Changes:
Added installation sanity checking that will tell you about common installation errors such as missing files. The sanity checking is done automatically at startup.
Added more readable error messages for common errors such as misspelled level names.
The game.listPlayers command lists cd key hashes of connected players when running in internet mode.
The game.showPorts console command can be invoked to display the ports currently used by the server.
Added overlayPath feature to support running multiple server instances from the same installation directory. To set up an instance, please follow these steps:
Create a new, empty directory to hold the instance, for instance C:\Server1
Copy the mods\bf1942\Settings directory from the main installation to the new directory
Create a new, empty Logs directory in the instance directory
Start the server with the overlayPath argument in a shortcut:
bf1942_w32ded.exe +overlayPath C:\Server1
Please note that the working directory for the server must still be set to the main installation directory.
Also please note that if your overlayPath contains spaces you will need to quote the path in the arguments in one of these ways:
bf1942_w32ded.exe +overlayPath 'c:\path with spaces\server1' (single quotes)
bf1942_w32ded.exe +overlayPath """c:\path with spaces\server1""" (note that these are three double quotes)
Admins Take Notice
The 1.6 patch radically changes the format for the maplist.con file. Please see below for details, but note that your current maplists will not work when you update to the 1.6 patch. We've included the information you need to modify them once the 1.6 patch is released. |
