Some of you may have already heard about this league. This is basically a summary of what the BGU is.

The website is currently undergoing some superficial design tweaks but is fully functioning. It can be reached here: http://bgunited.org/

After the demise of the BGL NA division due to the admin being removed last week the BGU arranged exhibition matches at short notice for the Sunday.

The founding of this league was based on inter-clan cooperation, the name itself embodies the spirit of the league. Players playing BG with no personal vendettas of grudges that plagued the BGL. The format was drafted out with input from all parties involved.

This weekend the BGU will stage its initial ranked matches. It was decided to keep the 9PM Eastern time used by the BGL and 5on5 gameplay.

All clans are welcome to participate, please fill out the application here: http://bgunited.org/newclan.php

-New Roob

Battle Grounds Mod’s progress continues:

Thanks to the generous help of a fellow named David Harrison, the 2.0 client can now be downloaded from yet another link (in addition to what we already have):

2.0 Client Additional Mirror

2.0 Client Additional Mirror 2 (courtesy of StrategyInformer.com)

Battle Grounds Mod is also on Facebook now, thanks to [OBCD]Danihel, so feel free to join up with that:

BG on Facebook

As always, visit us on the forums here at bgmod.com.

-Nathan Hale

Battle For the Colonies has been reborn! For those of you who don’t remember, Battle For The Colonies is an organized play project where individuals play as soldiers in the American or British Army. A central campaign map guides the action overall, similar to Risk or Empire Total War. Each side has a commander-in-chief, who decides where to attack and defend. Then the battles are played out in BG 2 2.0. Players are allowed to come and go each week, so no one needs to commit to the entire campaign. You can come for any battle, or all of them and play as many times as you want. Matches are played on a points basis, with capturing ground being the important part, not individual melee or damage.

Each Saturday at 12 pm Eastern US Time, the battles begin to determine the fate of the colonies. The following link has more information, and you can register to join either side in advance. The Heroic Elite Server will be hosting the battles.

Tiedup14 of the Heroic Elite will be administering the campaign and has made this general announcement as well:

“Battle for the Colonies is a campaign style tournament. Players join either the British or American side and battle it out over a period many weeks. There is a map of the 13 colonies, and each colony has a different point value. Battle for the territory (colony) would be a match on a server.”

Battle For the Colonies

The project needs players to get off the ground, with one more possible officer spot available on each side. You can also learn more by visiting the BGMod forum using a link on the right side of this BGmod.com webpage.

The direct link to registration/enlistment is:

Enlistment Here

-Nathan Hale

Following up on the succesful release of Server Patch 1 for BG2 2.0 built for windows, a version for Linux server is available now. Server admins can get it here:

http://www.acc.umu.se/~tjoppen/files/bg2/bg2-2.0-serverpatch_linux.zip

For the detailed changes and more information, see the release announcement of SP1 for windows servers here.

Today, we are also releasing a Line Battle map pack consisting of new maps made for this popular way of playing BG 2 in organized formations. The positive feedback received about the first large scale line battle map included in BG 2 2.0 encouraged Peacekeeper to create three new fanstatic maps.

First off in this map pack, there is a map of the Battle of Valcour Island.

The next map is called Alpine Pass and is a fictional mountain-site battlefield. This map features a wide array of terrain and movable, light artitterly pieces. They can be pushed across the battlefield and fire into the enemy ranks.

Finally, there is a new version of the popular Battle of Concord map including the same new cannons as Alpine Pass.

You can download the mappack here:  http://www.acc.umu.se/~tjoppen/files/bg2/bg2-2.0-mappack1.zip

We are proud to announce that today we are releasing a small server-side only patch for 2.0 addressing some of the issues reported by the community and found by developers and community during intense sessions of 2.0 gameplay. The patch includes the fixed version of bg_assault (see post below) and many other small changes. Only servers owners need to install this patch. Server admins please note a fixed mapcycle.txt using bg_assault_r2 (fixed version) instead of the normal assault is included, be aware of this if you put it on your server. To install, shut down your server, extract the contents of the server patch .zip file and restart your server.

The Game version in the Server Browser is changed to 2.0 SP1 indicating a server has been updated.

Windows Patch:  http://www.acc.umu.se/~tjoppen/files/bg2/bg2-2.0-serverpatch1.zip

Linux Patch: http://www.acc.umu.se/~tjoppen/files/bg2/bg2-2.0-serverpatch_linux.zip

Detailed Changelog:

2.0 SP1 5/8/2010
Server-only patch:
Fixed baoynets not being able to hit heads during the retrace period.
Fixed fowler having worse accuracy when crouched compared to standing.
Fixed longpattern without bayonet having worse accuracy than normal longpattern.
Reduced pistol constant damage range to 8 yards (from 15).
Roughly halved the number of shots fired when loading buckshot, and increased the total damage by about 10% for both fowler and carbine.
Flattened stamina regeneration curve. The rates are now 11.7 – 23.3 per second based on health instead of 6.3 – 23.3.
Tweaked stamina drains:
- reduced rifle and musket stamina drains to 35 (from 45)
- reduced pistol stamina drain to 25 (from 45)
- fixed jumping stamina drain at 40 (from 30-40)
- reduced ducking stamina drain to 25 (from 30)
Made the bots useful:
- they will attempt to capture nearby flags
- they will attack nearby enemies
- they will only fire their weapon/perform melee attacks if their enemy is close enough
- they won’t move away from the flag if close enough, even if an enemy is in sight
- they will only reload if no enemies are in sight or if the current weapon lacks a melee attack
- they will wander randomly if they have no decent target (flag or enemy)
- they can fullcap bg_ambush
Fixed bg_assault crashing when the British successfully defend. Map name changed to bg_assault_r2.

Tonight we have an immediate fix for the crash issues with the Fortress Assault map. Mapper Jake Parlay explains:

———–
As many of you know, the new Assault map for 2.0 has been causing some server crashes, specifically when the British successfully defend the fort until time expires. HP and I scrambled today to come up with a fix, and are very pleased to report that we solved it.

The file should be placed in your BG2/maps/ directory. For anyone curious, the bug was related to the logic and entity system that controls the timing of the map. I also used this opportunity to reduce the flag capture time for the Command Post Roof area, from 12 to 6 seconds.

If anyone has any Assault map feedback or findings, feel free to report them here or use the other feedback threads/areas on this site. Good luck and happy hunting.
———–

Thanks to Jake and the team for their work.

-Nathan Hale

You can grab the updated version here:

http://mirror.bgmod.com/bg2/bg_assault_r2.bsp

Last Monday was the 19th of April. “Why is that important?”, you may ask. The reason is that on the 19th of April in 1775, the first shots of the American revolution were fired at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts. It is therefore fitting that only a few days after the 19th, on the 24th of April, we now RELEASE BATTLE GROUNDS 2 version 2.0. BG has long been known for timing releases to coincide with historical dates– we’ve had several “4th of July” releases. This is no exception, as we have timed this release to coincide with the anniversary of Lexington and Concord, 235 years, this past Monday.For details on the contents of the release, see our previous news post. It’s a long one, and worth the read if you want to know what’s new.

The mirrors for 2.0 are below; thanks again for your support.

————-

Full installer client (use this if you’re just joining servers and playing BG2):

2.0 FULL Client:

http://mirror.bgmod.com/bg2/bg2-2.0-installer.exe

Mirrors:

http://www.strategyinformer.com/pc/halflife2/mod/35821.html (courtesy of  strategyinformer.com)

————–

Full Installer SERVER Side (use this if you’re going to be running a server):

http://mirror.bgmod.com/bg2/bg2-2.0-server.zip

————-

Patch 1.5 to 2.0 (use this if you have the old version and are client):

http://mirror.bgmod.com/bg2/bg2-1.5a-2.0-patch.exe

————

Patch 1.5 to 2.0 SERVER (use this if you have the old version and are running a server):

http://mirror.bgmod.com/bg2/bg2-1.5a-2.0-serverpatch.zip

-Nathan Hale

The Battle Grounds 2 Team is pleased to announce the release of Battle Grounds 2 2.0. The game will go public at 12 AM Eastern US Time on 24 April 2010.

2.0 is the biggest change to Battle Grounds 2 since the port over from the Half-Life 1 engine. Not in several years have we had so many new features and so much improvement. The releases once again proves the BG Team has been hard at work. This release is the culmination of severalmonths’ work by a number of talented individuals. The game improvements should be apparent from the start. This is an up-to-date, high quality game with a unique faithfulness to history and realism.

(Left: 1.5, right: 2.0)

The changes are too numerous to list but I will highlight just a few:

Weapons Selection and Ammo Selection:
-Players now can choose their weapons based on historically accurate weapons available to each class. You will get to choose from many of the guns the actual soldiers carried between 1775 and 1783
-New Fowler hunting smoothbore gun and new American Brown Bess muskets for the Americans
-New Brown Bess Carbine and Long Pattern Brown Bess musket for the British
-Added the use of “shot” for Carbine Brown Bess and Fowler: allowing performance and shooting similar to a modern shotgun style weapon
-Improved iron sights by Taxpayer and Nathan Hale

(New Weapon: American Fowler)

Classes:
-New British Light Infantry class

(British Light Infantry)

Animations:
-Third person reload added thanks to Jlea, Taxpayer and Peacekeeper’s hard work
-New reload animation for Brown Bess Carbine
-Better balanced reload speeds for some long-range weapons
-improved first person animations by Taxpayer and Peacekeeper
-Greatly improved walking and other animations by Peacekeeper and Taxpayer

(New variety of player skins)

(Improved muzzle flash effects)

Visuals and Improved Historical Accuracy
-High poly world models for all weapons
-A large volume of new, high-quality textures for every player, weapon and many objects and maps
-New high-quality, realistic smoke with adjustable smoke settings to suit your preferences and computer performance
-Better effects: including new muzzle flash and flash alignments
-New and greatly improved interface with graphics and historical information
-Fully new player skins and random skin generation for many classes, including Indians and Frontiersmen
-New, improved faces for virtually all characters, including vast improvement to Continental Soldiers by Peacekeeper, Tax and JayArc
-New custom scoreboards unique to each map, with images related to the particular map being played
-Phong shader improvements by Peacekeeper

(New Continental Soldier visual, thanks to JayArc’s help)

Maps and Map Resources:
-Assault fortress map, with cannon, exploding powder keg storage areas and fortress fighting by JakeParlay
-Miningtown, a combined effort of Taxpayer and Agent
-Battle of Concord, an historically-based line battle map by Peacekeeper
-Quebec, an historically based capture map originally by Cycophant, with new improvements by Taxpayer
-improved Plateau by Grantelbart
-capture the flag map improvements by Grantelbart

(Lake from Miningtown)

(Waterfall from Miningtown)

(Battle of Quebec Map)

Sound Upgrades:
-new sounds and sound fixes by PostalDude, including completion the difficult task of keeping sounds synchronized to animations

Code Upgrades:
-new damage and stamina settings to promote greater realism by HairyPotter and Tjoppen
-numerous bug fixes found by the team and community, as fixed by Tjoppen and HairyPotter

(Quebec)

Thanks also to continued support by Ben and Gecko to keep the BG site and domain running along.

When the release time comes, we will post a short update with mirrors for the download. Please visit our forums, using the link to the left of this webpage.

-Nathan Hale

Happy New Year from the Battle Grounds team! We have some more good progress on Battle Grounds 2 to report.

First, as we mentioned earlier, Gecko has been working hard on a new interface for the game. He’s made some good progress on it, and below are a few screenshots of the work-in-progress. These shots are from a few weeks ago, and since then he has continued to improve the design. It should add some much-needed modernity and a nice touch to the graphics.

Next the mapping front: first, JakeParlay has been hard at work on a new fortress map. This map depicts a typical 18th century fortress and walled town, complete with active cannons. This map will probably be a progressive spawn attack-defend piece, in the style of our current Germantown map.

It also features a unique item for BG2– a guard tower that can be destroyed with artillery. This will allow the attackers to knock out the defenders’ guard capabilities from high. Destroying the tower will be part of the attack. Players inside the tower will most likely be killed in the fall, though there is a slim chance of lucky survival.

Long-time mapper Grantelbart is also working on improving his maps and bringing them up a notch in terms of quality and playability. He is currently conducting a review of our existing maps. He is also working on a new map project, which is in the early stages of development.

Agent will be testing and helping to improve all of these new maps. He and Taxpayer are still improving their nice Miningtown map, which will prove to be a real gem in the upcoming version. Agent has said he’s looking forward to making that map a great quality item.

Peacekeeper, HarryPotter and JakeParlay have also continued to improve new plant and grass sprites for the game. They will add nice depth to the maps.

On the models and skins front: AngryTaxpayer and Nathan Hale have been working on developing new weapons for the weapons choice feature. We wrote previously about the American Fowler, but we also have a Long Land Pattern Brown Bess musket now (thanks to Dain’s original work) and also a new Brown Bess carbine. These guns, we’re hoping, will fire buckshot as one possible ammunition. Our long-time coder Tjoppen has been experimenting with some rather innovative buckshot physics code so that we’ll have realistic shooting with that ammo.

Peacekeeper has continued his excellent skin work. He has redone a number of player model faces to look more realistic and more variable. This will add new variety to the game.

In the animations division– Jlea continues his good work for the team. We are currently working in implementing his 3rd person reload animation, which hopefully will yield a nice result. Jlea is also working on a good 1st person reload for the Brown Bess Carbine. This should add some nice new material to the game.

In the sounds area– Postaldude has made some nice new reload and musket sounds, as well as some new high quality cannon sounds. They should be a great help to the realism of the game and also to mappers who want to make use of the cannon sounds.

As always HarryPotter is working on coding in many of these great changes, as well as improving game stability and fixing bugs. He has already spotted and fixed several.

Please visit us on BGmod.com and our forums at http://forums.bgmod.com

-Nathan Hale