DCS Server Update

May 22nd, 2013 by

It has been quite a productive day; I painted a bit of my fence until my shoulder which was recently injured following a mountain bike incident said no more so I thought I would head into the B-F Bunker and spend some time massaging the DCS server some more.

With a little help from one of B-F’s friands and Syndicate members (Super_Baloo) we managed to move things in the right direction and I have just ahd another couple of hours at it and I managed to connect to the server myself from home.

You can find the server when it is running (which  should be 24/7 eventually) by looking for server name battle-fields.com or by IP: 213.249.250.21. The current map has all DCS’s aircraft I think except teh Huey.

Posted in Editorial, Our Servers

 

DCS Dedicated Server

May 14th, 2013 by

I’ve been busy today mainly trying to come up with something that might resemble a dedicated DCS World server. Those of you who know me know my views on companies releasing games or simulations that have a multi player function but don’t take the time to develop a dedicated server for their products.

In fact I can feel my blood pressure rising as I’m typing this out! Im lost for words (or even keypresses!), its, its, its …..  just stupid! I can only imagine how the meeting went when they decided to spend time and effort developing a flight sim:

“So guys, we are going to build a truly amazing flight sim, we have all played IL2 and Rise of Flight but they are going to be blown out of the water .. erm the air when DCS releases this puppy. Now lets brain storm, what is the first thing we need? …….. anyone?”

Mr Big Cigar looks around the room at various nerdy looking types, one is wearing a leather flying jacket, another a Bone Dome …. with the O2 mask fastened tight then one who looks almost normal speaks up.

“If it is going to be successful we will need to make it easy for people to host dedicated servers and collect stats so communities can be built around the sim, this will ensure its longevity like IL2, it would be nowhere now if it weren’t for the fact they released a dedicated server”

Mr Big Cigar: “what? what has that got to do with shooting Migs down? Com on guys we need to be doing some blue cheese thinking here”

Bone Dome mumbles something that is intelligible because of the O2 mask, but luckily Leather Jacket can translate just like Zilly used to do for Clunk in catch the pigeon.

“He says we need lots of big airplanes and jets with wings and bombs and brrrdding whooosh pop boingbrrrt”.

“Thats more like it, lets make it look really good and really complicated so people spend weeks of their lives just working out how to start the friggin thing, then we will charge them extra for manuals and videos and once they are bored with not being able to fly the Black Shark we will offer them an A10 to fly which will be even more confusing. Then Just before they slit their wrists we will go old school with a Mustang and what the heck a Robinson R22 with guns on it or maybe even a Huey!

Right get to it Clunk … I mean Bone Dome and make me proud! Oh and maybe we can make it so in the unlikely event one of these sado’s has a friend he can connect to his mates computer and they can pretend they are a squadron saving the world!”

Well anyhow that’s how I think it went, Normal Guy probably just walked out dejected and spends his days playing minecraft or maybe CS GO because they have dedicated servers, like all other good games.

Anyhow I’ll update you when I get the server going, I’m using my office PC because it needs a graphic card unlike a real dedicated server, as with all things B-F I’ll be doing it in my spare time so please cut me some slack :)

Ive got the urge to eat pigeon pie now ……

Posted in Help

 

Servers Update

May 13th, 2013 by

I have just carried out a long overdue update to our servers page with the details for each of the servers that we are running.

We do have some spare capacity in the hardware department so if there is something you would be interested in let me know.

 

Posted in Help

 

I’ve Gone Nostalgic

March 27th, 2013 by

I thought it might be fun to invest a few pounds (about £35) in a Raspberry Pi. Simply because I guess I am trying to relive my youth and maybe to learn a bit more about programming (although I doubt that will happen). So me and my son were sat in front of our LCD TV eagerly awaiting something to pop up on the TV that would remind me of my late teens.

When the screen finally appeared (after about 30 seconds) it was for me a bit of an anti-climax. Its HD, it booted in 30 secs, and it looked really good. I’m not really sure what I was hoping for but 30 minutes to load and then blocky graphics might have brought back fond memories. So instead I headed off to YouTube and found this. Now that is what I call a flight sim!

I spent hours in my bedroom as a 17 year old flying the ZX81, it took an age to load, if it didn’t I had to get the screwdriver out and tweak the tape heads until it did, ah happy days!

So Im now downloading something for the Pi that will make it look more blocky, who says we have to progress?

Posted in Help

 

Skint!

February 16th, 2013 by

One of the (newer!) servers has filled its pants and a hard drive has died. It is unfortunately the one that gathers stats for B-F1 and does other things from time to time when one of the other old girls quits.

Although it isn’t of any real importance unless you enjoy stats it is a sign of things to come I guess. I have just transfered £100 from my almost empty bank account to the B-F paypal account to cover next months rent. Im changing jobs on Monday and so this is going to be a lean month for me generally so I don’t have the money for the hard drive.

Times are hard and for the next 12 months my income will reduce significantly as I have to pay for some of my re-training costs in my new job. Unfortunately its a sign of the times that has been forced upon people in my profession thanks to there been too many eager pilots willing to fund their own jobs, but Ill not go off on one now because its not the time or place!

Also recently we have lost one or two Syndicate members and server supporters which isn’t helping the B-F funds. Things are precarious to say the least, but Ill keep things running as long as I can but my kids do have to eat (more and more it seems as they get older!) and as it appears they are already eating horse burgers i cant make many more cuts at home. The good thing is I should get more time at home with the new job and I will be around a bit more once the training phase is out of the way. If I make it through it that is! If I dont I will have all the time in the world but no money for B-F.

Enjoy it whilst it last! ;)

Posted in Help

 

Busy Busy!

January 29th, 2013 by

I was just having a poke around on the server stats page for B-F1 our main IL2 server and there were 57 players online. Its amazing that all these years after IL2 was released it is still so popular.

I was also chatting on our Teamspeak server this morning as I often do when I’m at home and have some spare time and I have to say over the years the Battle-Fields community has gone from being a mainly UK based gang to a full blown international world wide group of friends. It’s such a pleasure to be able to chat and joke with such a great bunch of geezers!

It never ceases to amaze me when I jump into the chat and say ‘good morning!’ to hear various other greetings from so many different time zones, including guys on the other side of the world in Australia, the USA, Canada and everywhere in between.

Long may it continue! All I hope is that we get something usable to replace IL2 so we can keep everything rolling along nicely!

Come on DCS! Lets have a dedicated server!!!!

Posted in Editorial, Our Servers

 

New TS Address

January 4th, 2013 by

It must be my age; I’m struggling to remember even my own telephone number so the chance of remembering IP addresses when I want one is pretty slim!

I set TS up on my sons PC today and created a channel for him and his mates to use whilst they carry out their mining activities and Team Fortress shenanigans. It took me a while to manage to get the IP right so he could log on. So I thought it was about time i sorted this and added a friendly name to our TS server.

So if you want to join the server just use this: teamspeak.battle-fields.com and voila, well voila if you know the password which is plastered in the forums somewhere.

Remember though, NO SWEARING! That goes for Bone_Jnr’s friends too!

Posted in Help

 

Happy 2013

December 31st, 2012 by

On behalf of myself and all the staff here at Battle-Fields, well OK on behalf of me, …. although the syndicate members are the ones who keep things running right and supply most of the funds to keep things going as well as they do so on behalf of me and the Syndicate wallers and server supporters, er, what was I on about?

Oh right; from all of us to all of you have a brilliant 2013! May it be a happy and peaceful one and lets hope all the games and simulators we want turn up and don’t disappoint, unlike the steaming pile that is Cliffs Of Dover; probably the most anticipated but I have had a drink so I will not get on that one!

Cheers!

Posted in Help

 

Thumbs Like Sausages?

December 31st, 2012 by

Maybe this isn’t for you then (or here if you are in the USA).

I have to confess, well I have lots of things to confess about but I’ll leave most of them to my death bed, don’t get excited I have never worked for the BBC, its more of a ‘I still have a ruler in my desk that I forgot to give back to the junior school when I left type of thing.

No this confession is more about quite liking Logitech hardware. I have a G15 keyboard that I tend not to bother programing very often and a G500 mouse which although it has more options than your average mouse I don’t really make good use of them. I think the reason I like them is they seem quite sturdy and work well even after much hammering and abuse. I’m sure there are enough crumbs in my keyboard to make a sandwich and if it weren’t for some other more dubious things in there I might have a go.

So back to the G600 mouse, I have never handled one and because I have thumbs like sausages and a memory like a sieve Im thinking I might not bother either but I have to admit to being slightly intrigued. If you have used one why not let us know how you got on with it in the forums.

I cant really think all those buttons will be of much use as I cant even remember to press the melee button I have mapped on my G500 so what I would do with a whole array of them I don’t know. By the time I have stopped moving looked down to work out which one to press I suspect I would be virtually dead. Especially if Finn isn’t there to watch my back.

Posted in Help

 

B-F RO2 Server

November 25th, 2012 by

Is now up to date I think :) Not had time to try it myself yet but it seems happy enough.

Posted in Help

 
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