Three Wise Men

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – Mythbusters series

As with any first person shooter game there come some individuals who excel in experimenting and using game engine to their advantage. This little tricks can sometimes become useful in multi-player game sessions where they give excelling player the advantage needed to show n00b players how it is done.

Defend the House actually loves the Mythbusters series and they made it their business to know the game engine. First they busted the game called Halo. Now they are proving and busting myths in new installment of Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Be advised. There are no perky girls in short tops with ammunition running around and looking all pretty and smart. But there are some goofy guys with guns and explosives. You do the math:

Guy + gun + explosive + virtual word = ????

Prepare to be amazed by killing mirrors, exploding cars, head colliding missiles, old mattresses,  inhuman speed, bursting hydrants, hitting a target by curving bullets and many more. Just some of the tricks of trade all Call of Duty masters need to know.

If you are experiencing UPnP problems with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 then you should read this post. If you don’t understand what ping bars mean and you want to tweak them and gain some advantage in network play then check this post. Otherwise if you are looking for just plain fun check this unboxing video.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – Ping readings

Don’t you just hate the lag-o-meter in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2? Four bars? What the hell does that mean?

“What is your ping? Four bars!”
“Is four more than two?”
“Yes!”
“So you are lagging more than me?”
“No!”

Those bars aren’t all that accurate. Each bar represents 100 milliseconds, so four bars is 100ms of ping time. Two bars means from 200ms to 100ms ping time. Now, if you see just one red bar it meas that your ping time is more than 300 milliseconds. That’s bad, even for people that generally suck at FPS gaming and lag doesn’t affect them much¹.

With a little bit of tweaking you can make your lag meter more accurate.

Open folder

C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\call of duty modern warfare 2\players

Then locate file config_mp.cfg and open it with Wordpad or some other text editor that supports Unix text files. A backup of this file could be a good idea if you have the habit of breaking things.

There are two configuration directives that affects lag-meter in game:

seta cg_ScoresPing_Interval

seta cg_ScoresPing_MaxBars

They have the values 100 and 4 by default. Four bars with 100 milliseconds each. Change the value of MaxBars to 10² and the value of Interval to 25. Save and close the file.

Now your readings will be a little bit more accurate. One red bar will mean more than 250 milliseconds of ping time and five yellow bars will mean from 100ms to 125ms of ping time.

For the hardcore foaming-at-the-mouth-i-m-gonna-kill-ya-all-n00bz gamer this is way too much and you’ll probably want to disconnect. However, if you just wanna have fun and don’t mind dying, because it can be fun and hilarious too, then you are alright with it. Until enemies aren’t warping here and there while they’re running around, you’re good.

Good Hunting.

1. BigWhale is a good example of such player. [↩]
2. This is the limit, you can’t have more than 10 bars [↩]

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – Strict NAT problems

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 server¹ 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.

1. or the game itself [↩]

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – The Unboxing

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: