-WiFi

– WildFire

• Resurrected (and slightly improved) the !mani feature, offering a quick and easy overview of everyone running for committee positions at the upcoming AGM.  You can private message any committee member and ask them to add your manifesto to the list
• Added SSL support – the bot now connects to the network using an SSL link
• Improved integration with !lan (and added helpful easy-access committee view of liftee:lifter ratio)
• Improved code which checks if a user is identified with NickServ – on rare occasions the bot could conclude that someone was not (when they actually were…)
• Improved user online tracking code.  After netsplits, the bot could sometimes be left with the ridiculous notion that some users were offline, and so the bot would appear to ignore them!  This should not happen anymore
• Fixed a bug in the scheduler where two !reminders at exactly the same time would sometimes not trigger properly (thanks Wyrm for the report on that)

-WighFigh

12:00 – UT2k4 – (expect TDM, iTDM, TAM and perhaps carball, depending on people’s preferences)

15:00 – SWAT4 – (ask on IRC/Yell at the LAN if you don’t have it, there will be spare copies around but it’s quicker to get it before hand)

19:00 – Defence Alliance 2 – (Free mod for Killing Floor, which you can buy from steam)

(I also want to play Hidden:Source in the evening – everybody download that!)

For those of you interested in Supreme Commander, I suggest you get on down to the forum thread to organise a mutually suitable time – hopefully this way it doesn’t take over the entire LAN. Also check the forum thread out to see what other games are likely to be played throughout the day.

Firstly, there is a motion to change the name of all societies (Word document). This would mean that all societies would have to prepend “The University of Bristol Student’s Union” to their name, and our official acronym would change from COGS to UBSUCOGS, which is rather less snappy.

Rather more important for us is the draft motion to lobby the university to provide extra bookable rooms. Not many of our members, I believe, have heard of the plans for the University to take over entire fifth floor (and more) of the Union. All of our recent LANs have been on the fifth floor and there are no rooms that come close to the Avon Gorge for satisfying our LAN needs.
Consequently, if our society is to continue to provide frequent, cheap, well attended LANs as it has done, it is imperative that we find an alternative space in which to hold them – somewhere with internet access, bookable for at least an entire day at the weekend, multiple (or high power) power rings, adequate space, tables, chairs and control of lighting and temperature. This is quite a list of requirements, but as an active society (and the largest of its kind in the country, as far as we can tell) we should have some clout.

As an additional incentive, the Union promise things like free pizza and pound-a-pint for attending. Finally, one more proposal COGS members in particular may be interested in, Change the name of the AGM to SHAGFEST (PDF)

Here are the games we’re timetabling for the LAN on Saturday. Naturally other ones will take place throughout the day (see the Forum thread for ideas and a chance to give your own)

12:00 – Shattered Horizon
15:00 – C.S.S. Gungame
20:00 – (or “after we’ve eaten pizza”) PVK2 (or, if it gets shouted loudly enough, some other source mod – install all that you fancy and state your preference on the forums!)

As yet there has not been much activity in the thread, but UT2k4 (especially Carball, but probably also TDM/ONS/Insta), Swat4, Killing Floor and SupCom are almost certain to have a strong following.

I have been beavering away on some shiny new features for COGSBot for a while now, and the time has come for another upgrade.  Changes follow:

• !whois has been overhauled.  No longer do you have to PM your requests to WildFire — you now can manage your own !whois data yourself!  You can change your !whois setting through the bot’s standard settings interface (i.e. !set whois).  As always with !set, typing just !set followed by the setting will tell you what you need to do (though in this case it’s pretty obvious!)
• As well as being able to update your own !whois status, you can now get more information about other users from their !whois entries.  You can find out their online status, along with their current spam prevention status.
• !tell has been implemented, which allows you to leave messages for people who are not currently in the channel.  The next time the recipient joins the channel, your message will be relayed to them.  N.B. a new setting has been added which allows you to customise how the bot alerts you to messages left for you (!set tell).  You can also disable tells entirely, so that people are unable to leave you messages.
• If a COGSGuest joins and types !help, they now get customised help content to assist them changing their nickname
• The bot can now !inform groups of people rather than just the channel.  I can send message to all the channel moderators, for example.
• [internal] Fixed some odd behaviour when dynamically reloading some plugins

As usual, the IRC statistics have been updated as well.  Along with updating these, I’ve created some new ‘Rankings’ which offer a more exciting view of the stats.  Click here to view them

We must applaud Taters – not only for leaving briefly to lend us his XBox (thank-worthy in itself) and thus give us the chance to plaster his rig with our little messages, but also for doggedly (and somewhat reluctantly) bearing the sum total of COGS’ nuclear arsenal, verbally and in-game!

Here is a slightly advanced notice of some games we should play on Saturday:

12:00 – UT2k4. Make sure you have the mods TAM and Carball installed beforehand so you don’t have to wait for ages downloading them from the server.
15:00 – HL2:DM. Half Life 2 Deathmatch is a source mod many of you will be familiar with. If you don’t have it you can get it for free if you have an ATi graphics card. Or, you can get it for free if you have an nVidia graphics card. If you’re gaming on an Intel integrated card, you can log into Steam from another computer. Finally, if you have HL2:e1, you should have it already, and it only costs £3 on Steam. Toilet-tossing fun!
19:00 (or “after pizza”) – PVK2. After huge success last LAN we would be foolish to not bring this back.

Details for installation can, as usual, be found on the gaming guide.

In addition, there’s sure to be some Supreme Commander happening quite a bit, and we intend to have an OpenTTD server running throughout the day.

There is also this thread on the forums with more suggestions, some of which are sure to be played. If you like the look of them, get installing now to maximise enjoyment later!