The MU forums are moving

The MU forums will shortly be closing up shop.

WordPress 3.0 integrated everything that MU always did so it’s better to consolidate the forums too. There’s a MultiSite forum on WordPress.org and any queries about upgrading or problems using WordPress 3.0 should go there.

The old forums aren’t going anywhere but later today or perhaps tomorrow I’ll be making them read-only. You’ll still be able to browse the forum, and Google will still index the wealth of information already there but posting will be disabled.

So, thank you to everyone who contributed to the forum over the years. You helped make WordPress MU great.

Bored of Bad Company 2 Onslaught already?

So I went online last night to play 20 minutes of Bad Company 2 as Mike had said he’d be on. We dived into a game of Onslaught because you can be sure that the game will last 15 minutes or so.

22 minutes later we finished Atacama Desert on hard difficulty. My best time there is 14 minutes so it was a really sucky game. Mike expressed his boredom with the DLC and as a competitive game mode I have to agree. I don’t mind, and enjoy playing it with random players but when I join any friends online it’s to be competitive and go for the win, in a meaningful manner. A better completion time is an incentive, but only a small one. With a little more imagination, DICE could have made the mode a lot more exciting and competitive. We’re all stats freaks aren’t we?

One part of the problem is that each game is much the same as the previous game on the same level. For example on Atacama Desert there are always 2 enemy tanks at the start, then 1 tank rolls up from the left, and a heli attacks. On Isla there’s always a sniper on the building next to the B flag. On Nelson Bay there’s always a medic and assault guy upstairs where Alpha 2 is. It’s predictable where Rush or any game played against humans can’t be.

It speaks volumes when swordsmanx75’s review of Onslaught suggests self imposed rules (only use shotguns) to make the game more interesting. Check out his review here:

Onslaught is fun, it’s lots of fun actually, but rush beats it hands down.

Edit: David has his own review of Onslaught. He pulls no punches:

I gave it a go with Donncha and Mike on hard and to be honest, I was not impressed. As a game mode it’s Squad Rush meets Conquest with AI. And as always the AI is stupid. I’m not expecting total consciousness from AI, but I’d be impressed if the level of intelligence had moved on from that of the original Tom Clancy Ghost Recon games from the beginning of the decade.

I got tea bagged last night. Well sort o…

I got tea bagged last night. Well sort of. Mike and myself were defending on Arica Harbour and we tore through the enemy on the first base thanks to our tank.
On the second base it was more varied but I sneaked up to the top construction site and hid behind some bushes. Enemy soldiers poured past, and even though I got 4 or 5 kills in the space of 10-20 seconds nobody came looking for me! Two lads ran past me so I decided to follow them around the back of the town. I knifed the guy behind, and knowing that he might alert his squad mate rushed the second guy but unluckily ran out of ammo just as I caught up with him. He turned around and shot me! Argh!

I laughed out loud when he went over to my corpse and fired round after round into it. I should have sent him a “LOL” message. Nice to see I upset someone’s plans. 🙂

I only played the one game of rush after a game of Onslaught. My KDR remains at 0.81, but I got a KDR of 1.43 in that game. Skill level went up 75 points! Oh dear.

Onslaught is great for practising. Fire …

Onslaught is great for practising. Fire up a private game and you can fly a Hind, or shoot enemies with your M24 and learn how distance affects bullet drop. It doesn’t matter if you die because you’ll respawn if there’s only one player.

I played a game on Isla, and figured out that the bullet drop on the M24 wasn’t as great as I imagined before. The Hind that appeared shortly afterwards was very annoying but I made short work of it after I respawned as an engineer. Good opportunity to try the M1 Garand too.

Mike brushed up on his heli skills last night while he waited for us to finish a game. Good thing too as in our first game on Atacama Desert I piloted the Hind out of our base and promptly crashed, with the Hind landing upside down! We both got out unscathed.

I don’t think I or anyone will obsess about Onslaught like we do about Rush because it’s like playing a single player game, but with your friends. There is the leaderboard, and I noticed that I had the best time for at least one maplast night among my friends. It’s competitive that way, but more than anything it’s a great diversion and just what I need for a quick 5 minute blast.

Bad Company 2 Onslaught of Death

I played a few games of Onslaught after work there. On easy difficulty level because I want a nice gentle introduction to the mode. First of all on Isla I joined 3 others and completed it in about 8 minutes. Worked out well and yes, it was easy.

Then Mike got online and I set up a private match. We played Atacama Desert and there are a lot of vehicles on this level! We got into the Hind which was a bad mistake. Didn’t last long and had to contend with 2 or 3 tanks on the first flag without armour. Luckily I was an engineer, took out one with an RPG and another with my repair tool. Mike respawned as an assault class to supply us with ammo.

The enemy hinds are really annoying! Luckily they’re pretty dumb too. They’ll hover overhead after bombing us so it’s an easy kill with the RPG. On to the last base where we took out a few tanks, rolled in there, rolled out to repair and in again and sat on the flag until the game ended.

Final score? I got 79 kills, Mike got 96. Both of us died 3 times. One of those deaths for both of us was changing class. Me from assault to engineer, and Mike from medic to assault. In retrospect we should have just looked for appropriate kits from fallen enemies but we did have 2 tanks breathing down our throats! Besides, what a KDR! 🙂

Once the sheen wears off I can see myself playing Onslaught mode when I’m too tired to go up against human players. On easy difficulty the enemy will fall with just a few rounds from a UMP, without magnum ammo.

The aim of the game is to complete it with the best time. Mike and myself finished in Atacama Desert in 23 minutes which we’ll probably destroy in the coming days. There’s a leaderboard made up from your friendslist and I see Geoff and Gary completed it in 9 minutes. So, plenty of room for improvement.

Oh yes, to repeat something that was said in a video below, the best squad needs one or two engineers, and assault guys, and probably a medic too. Medic isn’t so important as you have infinite tickets but if all the team die it’s game over. I don’t think there’s any point in a recon player in Onslaught is there?

So, is Onslaught worth getting? Hell yeah. It should have been included in the original game as it uses much the same assets as the regular multiplayer game. It wasn’t, and EA have spotted an opportunity to make more money. Suck it up and buy it. It’s fun.

WordPress 3.0 Domain Mapping 0.5.2

I’ve just released WordPress Domain Mapping 0.5.2. This plugin allows you to map any domain on to your WordPress 3.0 or WordPress MU website.

New in this release:

  • WordPress 3.0 support.
  • Added “domains” page for superadmin to add domains to any blog. The user’s domains page can be disabled by the superadmin too.
  • Added support for “www.” prefix in front of domains.
  • Allow dashboard to redirect to mapped or original domain.
  • Better support for SSL
  • Translation file added for localization.

For security reasons remote login is now disabled if the dashboard is redirected to the mapped domain. There is a tiny chance of a man-in-the-middle attack during redirection, but it’s just as likely to happen when you’re logging in and sending your username/password to the login form. Call me paranoid.

I would like to thank Ron and Andrea who were a huge help developing and testing this release. Andrea has written a great post on creating a network in WordPress 3.0 plus instructions on upgrading from WordPress MU. Great stuff!

Bad Company 2 Onslaught Gameplay

Gameplay video by 6Larinro9 showing Bad Company 2 Onslaught on Isla Inocentes. Looks like it’s set at dusk and you have to capture the flag in each base. Looks great!

And this is what it looks like on Nelson Bay! Oooh, sunlight!

Valparaiso at night.

Atacama Desert, low light, perhaps at dusk.

The guys at Reddit are playing it too but one person has had serious problems with assault rifles unfortunately.

Close

Ad-blocker not detected

Consider installing a browser extension that blocks ads and other malicious scripts in your browser to protect your privacy and security. Here are a few options.

  • uBlock Origin is a free, open source, ad blocker for your browser.
  • Use pi-hole if you have a spare Raspberry Pi on your network.
  • Set the private DNS settings on your phone to dns.adguard.com to block adverts and trackers.