There are engines that last forever. Bungie's Marathon engine has been immortalized since being made "open source". Same for the majority of ID Software's engines. Even 3DRealms' BUILD engine has been open sourced. They will forever be available to be used and reused. Epic Games' engines are not open source.

I had been doing some research to bring the TLG Infiltration server up to date. I stumbled across the UTPG site, which made mention of a Mac OS X client release. Eventually, after a few hours of cursory research, I found out what happened to the be-all-end-all Mac UT release:

"There's just no way around it...the UnrealEngine1 renderer totally blows on modern hardware. This really needs a rewrite before we're done." (Source: icculus.org, 02-20-2005)

and this gem, over a year later:

"...but as all the people still emailing me for UTPG updates can tell you, sometimes things just get flat out dropped." (Source: icculus.org , 04-24-2006)

Around the same time that development dropped off, Apple made its Intel chip switch announcement, and subsequently, the "boot camp" announcement. These headlines made great waves in the Mac Gaming community. It would seem that UT for OS X was one of the first victims of change.

The Lone Gamer's Infiltration 2.9 Server has been updated to UT v451, the Infiltration Mod Team's Weapons Pack v1.5.1 has been installed, and various other minor tweaks have been made to bring the server more in line with "modern" UT servers.

Additionally, I have posted a page with information on The Lone Gamer's server for reference to players. Happy Hunting! 

So, recently I've looked into re-configuring Omni-Bot behavior for Enemy Territory so that they are a bit more useful for something other than targets. In their default condition, the bots don't really participate in tactics or objectives at all. The best I've seen is an occasional revive from a nearby medic, ammo from a fieldop, or the occasional dynamite from an engineer.

But today I found out that the Omni-Bots can be scripted through a robust language that allows bots to literally be given a mind of their own. You can literally program each bot individually with its own personality, skill level, and preferences. You can theoretically even get the bots to communicate effectively through radio chat.

I plan on experimenting with this some tonight after work. Hopefully within a few days time I'll have come up with an enjoyable electronic companion soldier instead of digital cannon fodder. We shall see.

Why aren't there unlocks on my server?

This question is coming up over and over again, according to research done by The Lone Gamer. Indeed, we ourselves wanted to know the answer. Finally we decided to check the EA support site. Sure enough, there is an article on EA's support site which gives us the low-down, or as some see it, the low-down-and-dirty:

"Unlocks will only be available on ranked servers.  If you are not running a ranked server, or connect [sic] to a ranked server, all weapon unlocks will be unavailable to you." (Emphasis added)

This is a change which has only come about since the venerable 1.3 patch, which finally added back a feature which had been a hallmark of previous editions of the Battlefield franchise for Lone Gamers everywhere: Co-op mode.

So, as you can see, every storm cloud has its silver lining.

KainCon is a gathering of both locals from the Washington, D.C. area and also friends from as far away as California. It is managed like a small convention or organized LAN party and happens (usually) once a year. This Year's KainCon happens on the 29th of September through October 1st. It's a great place to hang out, play some games, relax, and of course, play more games. 

From the KainCon "About" page:

 "There was a lot that went on at KainCon. like drawing, computer games (He had the house networked with Ethernet), video games (Like tournaments in Tekken or SoulBlade games and related), a trip to Washington D.C., AD&D campaigns, etc... It wasn't as eventful as a true convention, but a lot who were there before from previous KainCon's seemed to like that. It gave them time to meet friends they knew online, or new friends and get to know them better.  It was a much more personal environment. "

KainCon Regsitration is now open and costs $35 per person for the whole event. Details can be found at the KainCon website: http://www.kaincon.org/