If your team has been flagged inactive due to a FF loss against your team, you need to get with an admin to change that status. If you do not do this we will assume your team has decided to no longer play in TPG. Also if 2 teams do not record their match in a reasonable amount of time we will give both teams a FF loss and flag both teams inactive. These rules are in place to help the teams that honestly wish to play so that they do not get scheduled against a team that no longer cares about the league.

 

If you feel you have reached this recording in error..... 

To make it easier on everyone involved we will be using the same COF plug-in as CAL. The plug-in is called Sentinel, it is mandatory. We also have a new config to properly use this plugin.

 

Both can be found here.

The map for Tuesday March 13th will be dod_anzio+_b4.

 

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.

Preseason shall begin on Tuesday, Mar 6th 8:00 pm CST . The map will be dod_solitude_match. The rosters are unlocked and I urge you to get signed up and get 6 members ASAP.

 

This season we will be useing a COF "Cone of Fire" plugin. As of right now that plugin shall be rFIRE. Expect more news on that shortly.

 

Also a new rule set and a new CFG will me released soon, so keep your eyes open.

Once again another season of TPG has come to a close. I would like to congratulate the following teams for their placement in their respective divisions:

Upper

1. Pub Starz
2. Visual Gaming
3. Nomadic Soldiers

Middle

1. Vice
2. Imminent Mayhem
3. Totally Cool Boys

Lower

1. Pancake Time
2. Phalanx
3. Pointless

We will be taking the 27th of February off and the first week of preseason will be the 6th of March. The rosters will be unlocked shortly and an updated rules list will be released soon also. I would like to thank all teams for supporting TPG. Next season will be a great season as always.

Congratulations to the teams that won in the semi-finals.  The brackets have been updated.  The map for the finals will be dod_rails_b2

Upper Brackets
Middle Brackets
Lower Brackets

Please stay tuned for information about next season!

Congratulations to the teams that won in the quarterfinals.  The brackets have been updated.  The map rotation for the remaining two rounds is as follows:

02/13  Round 2 dod_anzio
02/20  Round 3 dod_rails_b2

Upper Brackets
Middle Brackets
Lower Brackets

Playoffs Map Rotation:

02/06  Round 1 dod_donner
02/13  Round 2 dod_anzio
02/20  Round 3 dod_rails_b2

Upper Brackets
Middle Brackets
Lower Brackets

The seedings were determined by the following weightings in order: most wins, least losses, head-to-head tie breaker, and point differential.

The final map of this regular season will be dod_cal_coire.

Notes:

• If you enter your server information into your team profile it will automatically send the connection information to your opponent once the match has been approved.
• Playoffs seeding information will be announced later this week.
  

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!

The map for week 6 of season 4 will be dod_donner.  This is a stock map, so no download is necessary.  The map for week 7 will be the map CAL is using during the first round of their playoffs.  TPG's regular season will conclude at the end of our week 7 and proceed into the postseason.

Important Notes:

• I have created a forum post that contains the map rotation for the current season and all of the necessary downloads.  You can quickly access this forum post at any time from the "Map Downloads" link in the menu on the left.
• Also, please note that the TPG web scheduling system is the ONLY official means of communication.  Any match details agreed upon in IRC are not binding unless they are explicited noted via the TPG scheduler.  Please make sure you promptly schedule all of your matches using the TPG scheduler.
• Any team that forfeits will be immediately and automatically flagged inactive by the system.  If you forfeit you must contact an admin to have your team set active again.

I would also like to thank all of the teams for your continued interest in TPG's DOD Source 6v6 League.  We greatly appreciate your participation.  If you have any questions, suggestions, or concerns please do not hesitate to contact any one of our helpful admins.

The map scheduled for Tuesday has been changed to dod_stug_rc1

The map for this coming week 1-2-07 will be DOD_Kalt

 Schedules for Next week will be out 12-29-06

Merry Christmas too all

Just a quick update TPG will be taking off the week of 12-26-06

TPG will resume play on 1-2-07  the map for that nights match will be posted by 12-28-06 here and schedules will be out by 12-30-06

 

TPG is looking to hire an admin to run a 3v3 DoD Source league.  The proposed night is Thursday, so that it won't interfere with any other popular Source leagues.  This night, however, might change.

 TPG currently runs a 3v3 DOD 1.3 league and is looking to model its 3v3 DoD Source league the same way as its popular counterpart.  TPG's 3v3 DoD 1.3 league currently features a 3 second spawn timer, 12 minute rounds, and no snipers or MGs.  This results in fast-paced high action matches.  We are hoping to duplicate this popular format with the DoD Source game.  You will receive excellent training from TPG's 3v3 head DoD 1.3 admin and TPG's 6v6 Head DoD Source admin.

To apply visit TPG's forums:

http://forums.tpgleague.org/showthread.php?t=360

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).

The map for Week 2 will Be DOD_CAl_Anvil2

We will be taking the week of the 26th off for the Holidays.