Due to the long layoff before the start of the next TPG 6v6 season I am planning something to hold everyone over.  Stay tuned for details.  It may be a 6v6 tournament, a 3v3 league, theme maps, or a special rules league.  Something will be in the works.  Please check back this weekend for more details.

Welcome to TPG League (known for their Day of defeat and racing sim league Games)

TPG has several years experience running successful leagues on a state-of-the-art website and has some of the best admins in the business on its staff.

TPG is sponsored by well known companies such as http://www.steelseries.com/, and http://www.branzone.com/ Professional Hosting services.

 We would like to proudly announce our first launching of Call of Duty 4 for all of North America.

 We will be featuring an entirely different play style
from other leagues out there. We have created a 6v6 competition mod war simulator

Visit http://www.tpgleague.org/cod4/ for more info

We have recently changed our forums.  If you were previously registered, you will have to re-register on the new forums.  We do apologize for any inconvience this may cause.

 

TPG-gma|Atropos

As you know we recently announced the 2 new SteelSeries Ikari mice.

 

As a follow-up on the release we decided to write a background article on why we decided to enter the mouse market and also to reveal and explain some crucial facts about current claims from mice manufacturers, about their “gaming mice” being produced and optimized directly for gaming.

 

We claim that the Ikari mice are the first ever to be 100% optimized for gaming.

 

A couple of previews from the article: “Another problem with today’s laser mice is that they function using image correlation. Meaning that the sensor snaps pictures of the surface, then compares these pictures to determine the movement of the mouse. If the user performs an “advanced movement”, which can include sudden deceleration, mouse movements at a certain angle or something else weird, that couldn’t be programmed into the robotic testing machines, the mouse will either stall or try to “guess” the intended movement. This is not what we consider “gaming grade”. A gamer requires precision and accuracy from his gaming gear – not software that tries to predict and emulate his intended movements. If these “gaming laser mice” had been tested by professional gamers before their release, the test results would have clearly indicated that they weren’t suitable for high level gaming….”  

“When a company mentions DPI in the same sentence as precision, or anything else regarding better tracking, it is simply bullshit. First of all the term DPI (Dots Per Inch) has nothing to do with mice. It’s an expression from the printing world and shouldn’t even be used to describe mouse movement. DPI is meant to describe the fact that for one inch of distance you move your mouse on any surface, the equivalent number of counts are sent to the PC - resulting in movement on your screen. The correct term for this is CPI (counts per inch). You can achieve higher CPI in many ways: By having a larger image, higher sampling rate, better light source quality, adding DSP (Digital Signal Processor) power and having the right algorithm (prediction)….”  

The link to the article is: http://www.fragyou.net/?page_id=24

SteelSeries Announces SteelSeries Ikari Optical And Laser Professional Gaming Mice

Leipzig, Germany -- August 23rd, 2007 -- SteelSeries, a leading manufacturer of innovative professional gaming gear, today announced the SteelSeries Ikari Optical and SteelSeries Ikari Laser professional gaming mice. The new, ergonomic right-handed multi-grip mice mark the company's entry into the market for gaming mice. Adding the gaming mice line compliments an existing portfolio of professional gaming gear that consists of headsets, keyboards, surfaces, accessories and security software designed for competitive gamers.

The SteelSeries Ikari mice are the result of 15 months extensive research of ergonomics, technology, shape, motion, hand grip and play styles by gamers. The SteelSeries Ikari mice sets a new industry standard for input, research and co-development with professional gamers for gaming mice. The shape, materials and specifications of the SteelSeries Ikari mice are based on input from professional players from Team 3D, compLexity, mousesports, SK Gaming, Team NoA and other world-class gaming organizations, who collectively represent the world's most accomplished gamers in Counter-Strike and other gaming disciplines. The development of SteelSeries Ikari was also driven by community input and feedback from more than 5,000 gamers from the competitive gaming segment.

The SteelSeries Ikari chassis is shaped to accommodate the three predominant methods of grip utilized by gamers today: Swipe, Claw, and Palm. The chassis features five buttons with high quality gaming grade contacts. The SteelSeries Ikari mice also have an anti-sweat and slip-resistant surface coating to improve mouse control during intense gaming sessions. The SteelSeries Ikari mice boast the largest SteelSeries Glide surface ever utilized on gaming mice (more than a 300% increase over traditional gaming mice) that is specifically designed to reduce friction between the pressure points on the mouse and the surface under the mouse.

The new gaming mice from SteelSeries will be released Q4 2007.

About SteelSeriesSteelSeries is a leading manufacturer of gaming peripherals and accessories, including headsets, keyboards, mice, software, and gaming surfaces. SteelSeries have been on the forefront of professional gaming gear since its inception in 2001, thanks to continued innovation and product development in cooperation with leading professional gamers. All SteelSeries products are developed in co-operation with professional gamers to ensure optimum performance and durability. SteelSeries supports the growth of competitive gaming and electronic sports through aggressive sponsoring of teams and support of communities, tournaments and LAN-events all over the world.

 For additional information, visit http://www.steelseries.com.

Copenhagen, Denmark - July 10th, 2007 -- SteelSeries, a leading manufacturer of innovative professional gaming gear, today announced the SteelSeries Siberia Neckband Headset, the first circumaural neckband headset created for professional gaming. The new professional gaming headset is optimized for use with personal computers while offering "street-style" functionality for use with MP3-players and other digital devices. 

The original Siberia Full-Size Headset was released in late 2004 and instantly became a smash-hit among leading professional gamers. The product was the first professional gaming headset to fully cover the users' ears, adding new levels of comfort to audio products for gamers. 

The new SteelSeries Siberia Neckband Headset features a similar eye-catching visual design, as well as the popular white theme, that made the original Siberia headset so popular. Professional gamers from a number of major international gaming organizations took part in the development and fine-tuning of the product, including some of biggest names in eSports: SK Gaming, Team 3D and compLexity. This is the first Siberia-product to feature the trademark pull-out microphone system found in most other gaming headsets from SteelSeries. 

The comfort and soundscape in the SteelSeries Siberia Neckband Headset was fine-tuned with the help of professional gamers, electronic DJ's and rock musicians. The combined input and feedback from this broad range of picky audiophiles helped create a soundscape optimized for a multitude of uses. Final sound optimizations for gaming were done with the help of Abdisamad 'SpawN' Mohamed, one of the world's most accomplished Counter-Strike players with 12 major international grand-slam championship titles and "Best of Class" awards by leading eSport sites in 2004, 2005 and 2006. 

The new open-type SteelSeries Siberia Neckband Headset is compact and lightweight, while fully covering the user's ears. The result is a product that is both comfortable and firm to wear. As the headset is placed around the users' neck the user can wear hats or other garments without problems. 

                        "The original Siberia headsets are still enormously popular, so trying to create the same unique combination of sound quality and visual design was extremely important to us," says Kim Rom, Marketing Director for SteelSeries. "The final result is a headset that breaks new ground for gaming accessories, just as the original headset did. This time it not only sounds even better, it also maintains the same low price point as the original."  

           "It was a lot of fun to help develop a gaming product that offers quality sound, and doesn't mess up a hairstyle or get in the way when you wear a cap," says Abdisamad 'SpawN' Mohamed, Counter-Strike player for SK Gaming. "Being able to use the same product for both gaming and my iPod is a nice feature, I'm looking forward to the release of this baby."  

The new SteelSeries Siberia Neckband Headset will be released in Q3 2007, pricing details to be announced.   

About SteelSeries  

SteelSeries is a leading manufacturer of gaming peripherals and accessories, including headsets, keyboards, mice, software, and gaming surfaces. SteelSeries have been on the forefront of professional gaming gear since its inception in 2001, thanks to continued innovation and product development in cooperation with leading professional gamers. All SteelSeries products are developed in co-operation with professional gamers to ensure optimum performance and durability. SteelSeries supports the growth of competitive gaming and electronic sports through aggressive sponsoring of teams and support of communities, tournaments and LAN-events all over the world. For additional information, visit http://www.steelseries.com.

http://www.steelseries.com/news/press_releases/steelseries_announces_worlds_first_circumaural_professional_gaming_neckband_headset

SteelSeries Announces Uber Expensive Exclusive Professional Gaming Surface

Copenhagen, Denmark -- May 8th, 2007 -- SteelSeries, a leading manufacturer of innovative professional gaming gear, today announced the release of SteelSeries SX, a new professional gaming mousepad made of fiber polished aluminum featuring an anodized oxide surface treatment. The exclusive gaming surface raises the bar for gaming accessories, offering what is probably the smoothest gliding sensation ever found in a professional gaming mousepad.

For more information about this exciting new product from SteelSeries, visit http://www.steelseries.com/news/press_releases/steelseries_announces_uber_expensive_exclusive_professional_gaming_surface

About SteelSeries

SteelSeries is a leading manufacturer of gaming peripherals and accessories, including headsets, keyboards, mice, software, and gaming surfaces. SteelSeries have been on the forefront of professional gaming gear since its inception in 2001, thanks to continued innovation and product development in cooperation with leading professional gamers. All SteelSeries products are developed in co-operation with professional gamers to ensure optimum performance and durability. SteelSeries supports the growth of competitive gaming and electronic sports through aggressive sponsoring of teams and support of communities, tournaments and LAN-events all over the world. For additional information, visit http://www.steelseries.com.

The rules for all leagues have been updated. All players are required to read these new rules fully as they have changed significantly. Due to the large amount of changes, these rules will not take effect until Friday, April 13th. The old rules will remain in effect until that time.

Perhaps the most important additions to the rules have to do with scheduling (4.1) and server usage (5.1). Section 4.1 contains details about how teams will no longer get bye wins automatically, and teams must initiate contact or reply to a message via the TPG Scheduler within 24 hours of the match default date or they will receive a forfeit loss. Section 5.1 explains that your team captain or scheduler(s) must keep the "Server Available" checkbox in the team profile updated if you intend to use that server for matches. This benefits the entire community by increasing the likelihood that teams without server are matched against teams with servers. Captains: Remember that you may assign up to two additional schedulers to manage all of these functions by clicking Manage Team Roster under your Team Panel on the left menu.

Some rules may be changed/added on a weekly basis as the season progresses. Updates will normally be made to their leagues the day after matches take place, leaving you plenty of time to learn/implement them. In order to simplify this process, we have added a new feature: When logged into the website and inside any league, an icon indicating that the league rules have been updated will appear under the League Info panel. When visiting the rules page, your last viewing will be recorded for your account. Upon subsequent visits to the rules page, any additions or changes to any specific sections will be highlighted for you.

I would also like to take this time to remind all players to make sure your e-mail address is correct in your profiles. It should be set to an e-mail address that you check regularly, as dispute notifications will be sent to this address. You can change your e-mail address by logging into the website and selecting "Account Management" under Control Panel on the left menu.

The Future of DoD

 The one thing I’ve learned about DoD over the years is that nothing stays the same. There is always change, sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s bad. Right now the future seems a little unsure with DoD. Other leagues have dropped DoD, or versions of it they don’t feel there is a market for anymore. There are newer games drawing players away from DoD. And of course there is also the issue of cheating and how to control it.

The story of DoD is pretty interesting. I won’t go into details, but let me say that the people playing today who have been around since the beta stages of the game, can tell you some stories about the life of it and how it’s developed over the years. The one thing I’ll say is that DoD has had the greatest misfortune of being the second most successful independent mod for Half-Life. Unfortunate in the sense that it has always lived in the shadow of CS. It’s always struggled to find it’s own voice and further more, not long after DoD reached the beta release stage, the market was flooded with competing WWII games.

Yet the game has survived, and not too badly. It’s survived where other similar games - much better in graphics and gameplay - have failed to keep an active online community. Why is that? I think the reason is that DoD is a game that really cuts to the core of what online gaming is about. It’s about you, your weapon and the other guy. How well you and your team communicate and execute. No planes, tanks, arty barrages, smoke and mirror tricks on the part of the game designer. I don’t see a reason right now why DoD and a community won’t be here for years to come. The community might get a little smaller as time goes on and it might get a little more grey, but it will be here in one shape or form.

And new people are still coming to the game. Maybe not in huge numbers, but they are out there discovering what makes DoD so cool and better than other similar games.

TPG will always be here as long as there are people who want to play DoD and there are people who want to volunteer to help our organization offer it. We may try new games from time to time, or even do completely new things like offer racing, but at the end of the day, DoD is what we do and it’s what we will continue to do. Are we perfect in everything that we do all the time? No. Do we get bad admins once in awhile? Yes. Is the Anti-Cheat effort perfect? Not by a long shot. Is there room for improvement? Absolutely. Will we continue to strive to improve the experience for the players so they keep wanting to come back here season after season. No question about it, yes. It’s a learning process that never ends. As soon as you think you have it all figured out, things change and it’s back to the drawing board to try to fix and improve things.

All I ask is that the community realize this and understand that we (the league) are humans here, we make mistakes but our goal is always to make TPG the place you want to be to play the game we all love - DoD.

TPG Founder / General Manager

Haiku 

 

The People Behind TPG

 Let’s talk about the volunteers who make TPG League and TPG Racing possible. When I started TPG League back in the Fall of 2002, we had four teams and I was the code developer, the only admin, forum manager and the janitor. I did everything. Within a few months though, as the league grew, I was overwhelmed and had to get people to help me. Over the years, I’ve been very fortunate to have a great group of people come through the doors at TPG to help out and keep things going. The vast majority of people who have been volunteers have done a fantastic job and served their time with passion, dedication and integrity for the time they were here. People like Sting, Eclipse, Nazgum...just a few names of people who worked here in the past and made a tremendous difference to the organization and made a personal impact on me.

Then there are the people here now - people like McGoo, Atropos, CrazyLegs, Druuna, Bullet, and Brian to name a few - people who continue to stay with the organization during the good and bad times. For people like this, TPG League isn’t even about gaming anymore. It’s about community, family, doing a good job and creating an environment where others can leave their daily pressures behind them for a few hours a week and have fun.

This doesn’t mean we haven’t made mistakes hiring people in the past. We think we are a pretty good judge of character and usually we make the right choices in hiring people, but do we miss the mark sometimes. There is no business out there that always hires the right people all the time. Even when you screen and interview people, sometimes you don’t know what you have until you see those people in action. At the same time, we know that sometimes there are "diamonds in the rough" and you don’t get to appreciate the value of those people until you give them the chance - even when to the average person, it’s seems pretty stupid that you ever hired them in the first place.

The State of the League

 Hello everyone,

I was asked recently to do a "pep talk" here on the DoD website. It’s not like things are falling apart or anything like that, but there has been some stuff posted on Gotfrag about us, and while it’s a personal policy of mine not to read the eRags, I did want to clear the air on some things.

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything DoD related around here, too, so I’m long overdue. I’m going to break this up into three posts to make it easier on reading. I’m going to talk about TPG itself, the people behind TPG and the game DoD.

A lot has gone on around TPG in the last year. First of all, and many of you might not be aware, but we’ve added a whole new division to TPG League - TPG Racing. This is our venture into the world of car sim racing. We’ve been doing it since January of 2006 and it has been very successful with a thriving community of drivers here in the Americas and Europe participating in multiple races each week.

There is a lot going on the DoD side of the house (as I’ve had to start to call it). First of all we have a new website which has been in place for a few months. I created the first version of the website back in 2002 using Perl. It was a very basic first step but did allow us to create/maintain schedules and standings. McGoo greatly improved upon the first website in 2004 when he re-wrote the entire site using ASP tied to a MySQL database. This was our first truly dynamic website that allowed us to register/maintain players and teams, in addition to the other stuff. Towards the end of 2006, Brian stepped up to completely re-write the website, this time with PHP. His efforts have greatly streamlined how the website works, made the job of the admins easier and have hopefully made the website a lot more useful to the community.

I can’t explain enough the enormity of the task it is to write code to drive a website for an organization like TPG League. It’s literally hundreds of hours of work writing, de-bugging and re-writing code. For us to have a professional do this work for us would easily be thousands of dollars and not possible, because we are a non-profit organization that is totally dependent on volunteers to keep things going.

The development of a website like ours is also a continual process. In once sense you can say that the site never leaves beta development, as it is always being changed and improved. So have some patience with us and know we are aware of the current shortcomings of the website and will work to improve it as time and resources allow.

TPG is proud to announce that our new 3v3 DoD:Source League will begin its first season starting Thursday, February 1st. The league features 12 minute rounds, no snipers or MGs, and lots of fast-paced, high action custom maps. You may find out more information and register your team by visiting http://www.tpgleague.org/dods3/

Team registration is now open! Please sign up your team quickly, so that you do not miss out on any of the action!

To allow teams maximum flexibility in managing their team functions, we are introducing a new feature.  Captains may now select any players on their rosters to have access to rescheduling matches or reporting matches. Different players may be selected for each.  Captains may assign these permissions by clicking "Manage Team Roster" from the Team Panel on the left side of the page (when you are inside a league).

TPG is in need of new banners & logos.  If you are interested in making something for us, please pm CrazyLeggs or Atropos in #tpg_league.

We have created this website in order to overcome some limitations of the previous website. Unfortunately, all players must re-register their accounts and teams. This website will allow the following features:

• Autoscheduler based on W/L record and server availability.
• Automatic re-scheduler to greatly reduce forfeit matches.
• Ability to schedule matches via your control panel.
• Private Messaging system.
• Better tools for team captains.
• And more...

Matches will not take place this week. If enough teams have completed their new rosters by next week then we will schedule you for matches. Please note that this website is still being completed and more functionality will be added throughout the week. The reason we have it up now is so teams can get a head-start building their rosters. If you wish to comment about our new website then please join #tpg_league on GameSurge.net.