A quick update for those interested in the BF Vietnam Ladder that is about to start here at GameArena. We now have the Ladder Rules finalised. All competitors should take the few minutes to read them - they are all new for BFV, clarifying a number of the questions people asked about the BF1942 and Desert Combat rules. You can find them through the navigation bar on the left (highlight Ladder, then click on Rules) or click here.

We've also put out the call for Referees for the new ladder. If you would like to help out by refereeing at least one match a week, check the application process here. No previous experience is required, and many of our refs have found it a rewarding experience working with the Ladder Managers to help the community enjoy ladder matches.

We've developed a new feature to the GameCreate ladder system this week that goes a very long way, (as did last weeks feature) to improving the overall feature intergration of teams and competitions.

The new feature is a team email system.
How it works: Teams usually find it difficult to contact each other, this becomes more apparent where the team is a collection of pickup players using the ladders automated recruiting feature. You may not know who the new team member is so thus find it hard to communicate such things as prefered nights of play, game tactics and prefered maps to challenge. The new team email system removes that by dynamically building a mail list of all members of the team and providing one email address to send information that the whole team will get.

For example, I create a team on the ladder, say team mammoth, then add 8 players from the automated join feature to my team, since I dont know much about these players I can send an email to mammoth@teams.gamearena.com.au which will email all members in my team the info I want to advise them of, which they can in turn reply to that will agian go to the whole team. The team email address can be changed at will by the captian of the team at any time. The email address will work if other teams would like to contact you or you would like to contact the other team, allowing you to send one email to all the team mates of the team you are challenging (if they have told you their address).

This is a very powerful feature that can be a fantastic help to assist captains in the management of their team, and promote competition within the ladder system by improving the communication between the teams within the ladder. As an anti spam messure, we will not publish the team email address, if teams wish to publish it they may, or if its been published by someone else they have the facility to change it to something other than the published address to avoid getting emails. For those familure with the power of traditional mail lists, this is practically identical so you should feel right at home. Captians can find and change the email address that has been generated for you by visiting the teams properties page for your team, for other members you can quickly look up the address by visiting the Team management page, you will need to be logged in to view this information.

The patch is only 16Mb, and downloadable from GameArena here. This is now a required file, as all GA servers (including GameCreate) have been updated.

Contents of the patch information:

SERVER FIXES
-General optimizations to reduce server lag.
-CDkey hash added to game.listplayers output.
-game.listPlayers uses the new format:
#Id: - is remote ip: : hash:
-Gamespy port setting fixed.
game.gameSpyPort - now working
game.gameSpyLANPort - now working
game.ASEPort - removed (not supported by ASE)
-All Seeing Eye updated.
-Battlefield Vientam games no longer appear in Battlefield 1942
ASE list.
-Player details should appear correctly in ASE server list.

CLIENT FIXES
-Sort by Ping fixed in Server Browser.
-Scrollbar fixed in Server Browser.
-Player number now displays properly if more than 10000 players.
-Soldier prediction fixed to remove jerky movements when walking/jumping.
-M60 removed from the LAW kit and replaced with M14.
-M60 and RPD min/max bullet deviation increased when standing/moving.
-M60 and RPD max bullet deviation decreased slightly when prone.
-Rate of fire and velocity of M60/RPD adjusted.
-Player movement speeds on Heavy Assault kits reduced slightly.
-Network overhead of vehicle engines and airlifting significantly reduced.
-Added minimap warning icon when enemies are within capture radius of an
opposing team flag.
-The Dedicated Server option in the Multiplayer -> Create Game menu has been
removed to fix potential issues with Punkbuster. Non dedicated Internet servers
started from this menu will no longer use Punkbuster. As a result of these
changes, Punkbuster can only be enabled when using the Standalone Dedicated Server.
The required exe's have been included in the client 1.01 patch.

Also contents of 1.1 patch including;

OH6 LOACH


KA-25 Hormone




Edited by MalthiusFormatting tidied, promoted to news item.

We're releasing a little tool tonight for teams that are in any GameArena Ladder competition so that they can play with it on their websites. The new IFrame team status tool is designed for teams that want to show visitors of their website their current position on any Ladder. It includes the teams current rank, next game (or last game), and their win/loss ratio like this:

For info, and the code for your team, simply visit the MyTeams section of the ladder you play on, which will give you all the info you need, including how to edit CSS to change the look and feel. To view this for another team check out this team's info page. For those teams that do impliment this, post your url in the comments, the termy gold star will be awarded for the best implimentation of the new Ladder info iframe on a team website!

Update: There is now an XML feed available; check your team management page.