I will be reviewing the latest version (v0.5 as of this writing) of the "Project Reality" mod for Battlefield 2. I first learned of the mod a few months after the BF2 release, while looking for something different, and a bit more "realistic". I recently looked at their site and it does seem that they have come a long way in terms of providing a more well-rounded gameplay approach. I continue to see what I don't like the most in a game however: "Engineering" the gameplay by introducing artificial barriers to combat tactics that would presumably be useful in a real environment (e.g. Airsoft).

I've done a lot of bashing of Battlefield 2 and the Battlefield engine in general since the demo of 1942 came out years ago. Any time I've enjoyed playing a Battlefield game, it has been on a LAN, WAN, or VPN with friends that I know and work well with, and not online in public servers -- ranked or otherwise, where bad attitudes are standard issue. It's almost like living out "The Pwn3d Life" sometimes.

Well, I've finally taken the time to set up a Battlefield 2 server the way I want to play it. And I like it. In fact, it's been the best Battlefield 2 experience I've ever had. To top it off, it's all with bots. No bunny-hopping, "noob-tubing", kamikaze pilots, cursing children, no chance of exploits or cheats. I still get my existing unlocks, so I can use whatever guns I want. I still can group up with a squad and work with other soldiers. I can play commander and try new or different strategies without getting mutinied. 

It would not have been possible to have this much fun with stock Battlefield 2. There were modifications that had to be made. In my case, I installed something called "bf2sp64" which is simply a collection of modified map resources which include AI paths for all of the BF2 maps, of all sizes, including maps which had no AI paths in stock BF2.

I've spend the past few days getting the Infiltration server set up again on the new machine. It's now up and running. There are still some to-do's including adding some of the newer mutators to the server, but it's largely up and running.

Also, work has started on the BF2 server. It is looking promising, and I think I've already got it mostly installed. Just have to set it up. 

Update: I've fixed up the BF2 server, and have a working ET/Omni-Bot server and a newly working TC:Elite server as well. For now, only the infiltration server will run full time.

This has been covered at a lot of other places, but I might as well join the crowd and mention it too. The guys at EA have put some kind of in-game advertisement system into Battlefield 2142. What this means, is that you will be seeing this slip in your $60 Battlefield: 2142 retail box, advising you that you are surrendering "non-personal" information, in some cases to servers outside "your country of residence".

Update: EA has released some additional information on the in-game advertising program, available here. Foot-in-mouth time. Basically, nothing really shady is going on, and no information from your PC is being used other than the IP address. Information that is tracked is clearly outlined in the document linked above.

I found out about Tremulous from Omni-Bot , turns out someone requested bot support for it. Tremulous is a FPS/RTS combination similar in vein to Natural Selection , but without the top-down camera view typical of RTS titles. Tremulous also has the benefit of being based on the (GPL'd) Q3 engine. This means no steam account or other "base" game is required.