I recently ran out of steam for the games I had installed on my system, so I looked into getting my hands on some fresh meat. First, I turned to my "archive" of games to pull out old favorites that in the past had kept me happy for months. I made a temporary return to Counter-Strike 1.0, but soon enough, Programmer's Tweak set in and I lost my enthusiasm. (Programmer's Tweak is my name for a phenomenon where you are able to modify aspects of the program you are using, and become unhappy with it until it is customized to your satisfaction. In my case, I lack the ability to code out my modifications, but I know that they can be done.) Next on my list was Battlezone II. Battlezone is one of the best, if not the best First person RTS that I know of. I long for a up-to-date version of this game. The rest of my back-catalog was unimpressive to me.

So I turned to MODs. Perhaps there would be a MOD which could satiate my need to kill time on a Saturday Afternoon. The long and the short of that answer is that the ones that I have been able to download have been less than encouraging. The rest are over 1GB each and are a real chore just to download. Those two are BattleGroup 42 1.33 and Battlefield 2: Project Reality.

Hopefully I'll get some results sometime this week. 

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 been doing a lot of research lately in preparation for my next "big" purchase. I've eliminated a number of choices that I originally had been somewhat looking forward to. Among these are my M4 Masterkey project. The shotgun base I was looking at using, the Maruzen 870BV, uses a gas reservior in the grip. Since a masterkey conversion involves removing the grip, well that kinda explains itself right there, no? Instead I've been looking at the FNC, mainly because of the MOSFET that comes pre-installed (if not from the factory, then at least from the retailer I'd be buying from). I've also been eyeing the VFC AKS74UN. 

Another thing I had been looking at was a new pistol. I'm partial to SIG pistols, though I like Berettas as well. I had been looking at the KJW model 226 and 229, but there's apparently a lot of disdain for KJW. So I'm not really sure. I will probably end up going with the 226. 

I've been doing a lot of forum lurking, and discovered that there is a very diverse crowd out there, in general across the entire country. I am glad that we have as good a set of forums and good people here in this region. I've seen some piss-poor role models in some of the forums I've been in.  I also know personally (though not as friends) some players that I avoid playing with because of their attitudes. I bring it up because some of my friends that I have brought with me to play at the local CQB shop have told me they are less interested in coming back after playing with these people. It is frustrating because even if only one person has a bad attitude it can impact a lot of people.

For the rest of 2007 I hope to be able to reliably schedule myself and be able to play regularly. The last half of 2006 this was not the case and I'd say at least half of my game days got cancelled at the last minute.