Three Wise Men

Modern Warfare 2 is these days pretty hot topic. Everyone is talking about it and everyone is playing it. However, there is some criticism around the game, which things are broken or badly implemented, so I will hop on the bandwagon and join with shameless bashing and criticism. ;)

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has broken UPnP support.

UPnP a protocol that enables software to talk with the internet traffic routers. For example, if you have (and most likely you do) some sort of the router in your network and you want to host a multiplayer game on the internet, you will need to tell your router that it should forward all the internet traffic for that game to your server. You will need to punch a hole in your firewall. The problem is that not many people know how to do that. UPnP is an attempt to remove this sort of complicated task. With UPnP your game server can tell your router which ports has to forward and where.

I use Linksys WRT54G series wireless router for internet connection. Firmware was upgraded with DD-WRT firmware and I have UPnP turned on. See the picture below.

As you can see UPnP is enabled and Xfire client successfully enabled port forwarding for itself. Great! However this is not good enough for COD: MW2. The game itself will still report that type of your NAT is Strict. But, but, but? I have no idea why. Windows 7 firewall is also disabled so that is not the problem.

You will have to fix things the old-fashioned way – hand job. COD: MW2 requires ports from 28960 to 29000 to be forwarded to your server. Again, see the picture below.

Run the game, go to multiplayer and check your NAT settings in the lobby. NAT type should say open.

Lube up and Good hunting.

The very first unboxing post on TWM-KD. Because Modern Warfare 2 is now the new hype and everyone is talking about it I decided to purchase a copy and make an unboxing video.

The Whale’s way of unboxing:

Eric Lampel – Director of PlayStation Network Operations confirmed a rumor about an upcoming PS3 firmware update.

He stated that the update will include the following features and improvements:

• Social networking integration by linking your PlayStation Network account to Facebook. PS3 will; upon users confirmation, publish trophy and PSN store activity. Although we applaud that users will have a choice weather to publish their personal information on their Facebook wall, we are not convinced that this will work through XMB menu system.
• The Photo category on the XMB has been revamped to make it easier to see more of your photos stored on your PS3
• The PSN Friends List has been modified based on feedback we received after update 3.00. Additionally, you can now choose a color for your PSN ID on the XMB.

Additional features list will follow upon 3.10 release. When? Soon.

Edit: Sources at 1UP.com state that PlayStation 3 firmware update 3.10 will be available later today on the November 18 2009.

A word of caution. After I managed to install Windows 7 64bit my machine started to freeze. Completely freezing, not the blue screen of death, not the black screen of death, not the ‘this program has stopped responding’ kind of freeze. It was the ‘if I had a CRT monitor the picture would be burned in by now’ kind of freeze. Why? Because of the µTorrent. After running it for 15 minutes or so machine was freezing constantly. This only happens on 64bit version of Windows 7, 32bit version is ok.

I am not sure if this is related to the fact that µTorrent is downloading on TrueCrypted drive, but I am not going to test this theory. The impostor was already removed from my disks and I was just copying a load of stuff to and from the encrypted drive for two hours now and no freezing.

Past few couple of days I had some problems with buying Windows 7 and getting it installed. Long story short: they sold me 32bit OEM Home Premium version and I wanted 64bit version. They refused to replace it since I already opened the package. Let’s not get into details that they shouldn’t even sell me the OEM version and that Microsoft won’t be too happy to hear about this but I had a problem and it needed fixing.

Microsoft support was VERY helpful and they told me that I can use my existing serial number to install 64 bit Windows 7 Home Premium OEM, not the retail version, but OEM. Great! Unfortunately they told me to get the installation DVD somewhere else.

Read on if you want to know how I solved my problem …