The anticheat was a form of IRC client that was able to send screens of the game play to “requester” and scan any user  on request. Detection system was very simple but it was functional to some extent.

First public version of SW4TCH was released at 13.feb.2006.

SW4TCH GUI

The SWAT4 comunity was full of cheaters so any kind of anti cheat was salvation. However SW4TCH did not grow popular and there were only 50-100 users who used this anticheat.

That was no showstopper for me, and I did grasp for more simple solution. Anticheat that did only screenshots.
That’s where UAC1 was born.
It was released at 19.apr.2006 and at the time, everyone liked it, it was simple and it did provide the minimal protection of screenshots.

UAC1 GUI

Soon it was not enough, at 13.jul.2006 UAC1 was transformed in to UAC4SWAT , it combined the user friendly GUI of UAC1 and detection system of SW4TCH.

That was the starter of the whole UAC project as we know today. Initial site of UAC was www.uac4swat.com.
Soon after release, UAC4SWAT was used in every existing SWAT4 league and grew very popular.

At some point in year 2006 I was contacted by Snipes who was league admin at Clanbase at the time and he did propose that he will create online database system that will log user logins, screentimes, ip’s etc.
At first it was only for informational purpose and players did not had any access to this database.
However due to vast usage (about 8000 users) we did gather extreme amount of data.
Snipes  built a site that did display this data to all administrators and it did not contain any useful stuff, only time of scans , detections etc.

UAC4SWAT GUI

Approximately month after that, Snipes created pages for UAC where users needed to register (yes, all previous UAC’s were used without registration) and thus new site was started (www.uac4swat.net).

The site grew up to 15000 users, and there were many of updates and changes that made it almost perfect.

UAC4SWAT Site

Site was active for 3 years, and I was continuously contacted by several leagues to create the same anticheat also for their game like Call of duty 2 and counterstrike. So we decided to build “Universal AntiCheat” for all games and not just SWAT4.

The development of UAC2 started around December of 2008, Snipes created new site and I created the application, with much better detection system and the same old well known interface.

The development  lasted around 4-5 months and we did have apx.10 internal testers and translators.
Due to vast feedback from users, UAC2 was optimized and changed so all BUGS and twists that users hated about UAC4SWAT were removed.

UAC2 GUI

1st public beta of UAC2 was released at 15.jun.2009 20:00 CEST , it was a blast !
Everyone started to use it, supported games portfolio grew exponentially (32 supported games).

New site was www.uac2.com
It was almost perfect.
Though due to vast use, we did stumble upon some major issues.
Since our service was FREE of any charge and we want to keep the cost as low as possible, we had used all the time just basic commercial hosting that was not suitable for such vast usage.
Database was super slow after time, there was no space where to store the screenshots and server was easy overloaded if there were 100+ users online.

We did switch several hosting companies and nothing did really solve our issue, we only avoided inevitable.
In september of 2010 hard drive of our server crashed, we lost almost all data, backups were around 1 month old.

At this time Snipes decided not to continue on UAC development due to personal issues and due to fact that it was extremely time consuming.
Nobody was up to the task to fix our site and database.

After a week or two, my friend and colleague did volunteer for the task, however he was not aware what is ahead.
It was shii, he fixed the UAC2 site and proposed several changes that inspired me to create UAC3, much more secure and tuned anticheat.
That’s where it started, shii had built a whole new site and we decided to move to cheap dedicated server hosting.
Development of UAC3 was fast, because it was reprogrammed UAC2 with additional detection system and functions and much more optimized for multi game use than UAC2 where 3-4 games were expected to be used.
At 4.dec.2010,we had started new site and 1st public BETA was released.

UAC3 GUI

It was a major success, the improvements done were superb and UAC3 was accepted by many leagues and it does grow even today.

Also site and database was optimized to the extreme, and since we did run on dedicated server we had tweaked the OS of the machine to give us the needed performance so we can provide good and fast pages.

At first UAC3 had domain name www.uac3.com , however the numbering concept within the domain name is not practical so we moved permanently to www.uac.ac where also future UAC’s will have their homepage.

We do not stop here !

Over the time of UAC3 existence we did gather even more requests for functions, changes and many experience what players/admins want and need.
We did design very advanced detection system ever used in UAC series and from old detection systems only small fraction was left for the next generation since the new system used is so much better and accurate even for the most hard to detect cheats. And sadly I can’t show you any pictures of the next UAC due to copycats.

It was decided, work on UAC4 has started, with excellent results after 3 months of testing, the development did slow down and stopped.
That was partially due extreme amount of work needed around UAC3, our user base was doubled (around 200 000 users) and there are just to much things to deal with every day.

Does not sound much to you? well we are only 2 guys working on app that is used by 200 000 users… imagine the amount of work.
However the major slowdown is caused by me, I had many personal things to deal with.
Now it is almost over and rest assured UAC4 will be released even when there is no release date set yet.

if you did get to this point you must be a big fan of UAC since it’s just several lines of boring history

Sooooooooo, happy birthday UAC …

We anticipate that this work will take no more than 3 hours to complete, and will commence at 07:00AM (UTC + 1).

[UPDATE]

The maintenance had ended around 10:30 CEST . We had updated several server components and teweaked few settings.

Our initial tests show 25% improvement in server speed which is great !

I did told you last time that the status is about 85% finished. Current status is about 87% , so there was almost no progress in the last two months. And why is that?

All the main major stuff is already done, detection systems are in place and working, new definition file layout and system, server – client communication. Though we miss one vital part , which is screenshot system. For testing  purposes currently UAC4 uses the same system as UAC3 which has the black/gray screen issue (BSI).

I can’t wait any longer to release UAC4, I already feel the need for several features that UAC3 is missing and UAC4 will have so we can ban cheaters forever and deliver much better detection rate. That is why I decided to continue even with the BSI. The code will be open to changes so after we will have the solution it can be added anytime.

Anyways, the new UAC4 will support games for DX9 at first  SWAT4 after that COD2 and COD4 etc… and we will add support for new games once the def file for them is finished.

So yes.. we are back on track of development!

The multiplayer is something almost epic, very nice and detailed maps, superb sound, and under my opinion even better graphics than in the singleplayer.
Multiplayer of BF3 is in many ways superrior to any previous battlefield multiplayer game. I did not expect such good game out of it. Now I don’t want to review the multiplayer here because that is task for several hours and I do suggest to look on other sites for the full reviews.

For those who did not buy the game yet, here is a link where they sell CD key for under 20€ (game is downloaded from origin)

http://cdkeysmarket.com/battlefield-3-cd-key-buy

enjoy!

So I think I really have the full picture about it now.

First of all the taste of console was everywhere “press enter to start” at main screen was just a leftover from console version and their longer loadings. However the looks of the game are way to much superior to any console version since the consoles have 6year old VGA’s in them and low RAM and yes there is a need for new box and station since the games are degraded due to outdated hardware in the consoles.

Enough about outdated hardware and let’s talk about the game, I am happy that the game did run much more faster than the BETA. With ULTRA settings I was able to enjoy all the effects with playable 30-50 fps, that is very positive. Though I was shocked that the cut scenes were done with pre rendered vids that do not look that well, it is easy to determine when do you look at pre rendered video since once you enable FPS display you see 200FPS in the cut scene and 40 in-game, but what ever it’s not a big deal.

Thing I noticed at first was the sound which is lovely. I doubt there is any other game that has so stunning and well done sound effects. The graphics, how can I put this … did not met my expectations. They are awesome, but there are so many “empty”  looking spaces, there are other AAA game titles that have more emptiness than BF3 but somehow it just did not felt right. Even the buildings that were “off scene” were looking super mega poor, once again I know that that’s not the main point but I did expect more. Now there are moments of where you go WOW, very nice done scenes with lots of action and stunning graphics, yes I did like those. Don’t know if it’s just the VGA drivers or something but the lighting was not as great as shown in the trailers.

The story seems to be ok with a bit of mystery but it felt like they took the most very good idea from COD Black Ops and used it their way, you will see what I mean once you play the game in first 5 minutes of game-play

So far so good so it seems, until now I did wrote almost only about the good things and now the bad things …

Game-play, oh good god, every single opponent that I met can be killed with one single shot from pistol and if you shoot with machine-gun they need 3-5 shots to get killed, I mean WTF! At first I thought that it is due to NORMAL difficulty, but it was all the same on HARD setting. Opponents are mega ultra stupid most of the time, just like you expect from any other FPS game, in normal setting there is almost no way to die even if you play RAMBO style, however the opponents are deadly, if you get to near them or they manage to get near to you, you can expect finding your self in a pool of blood with knife in your neck.

Progress through the levels poses almost no challenge (at least for me), it’s just strait forward, go there, kill that and get back etc… everything is guided so you can experience the game just like you would an action movie.

Final thoughts : I do beleave that this is AAA game that looks awesome and has pretty good ingame moments, however so were and will be the other FPS titles within their single player campaigns, the true power of this game will be in the multiplayer. I will get back to you with report about multi player in comming days.

After download which was very fast and suggests that EA was ready for the load, the testing had begun.

First of all the installation needed Origin, which is EA alternative to STEAM… no big deal but another client?  Ok , let’s say that this is not a big deal for most of the players, but then you need to install browser plug-in in order to access features on http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/  so you can join server via web browser… weird enough but I see what is their aim. Since people use facebook or google+ or any other social network it is only logical that EA thought that the interface and look of  BF battlelog will appeal to the users.

Ok ok, that is not important, everyone want’s to know if the game is any good.

So I did get to start the game and join the server super fast without issues, again sign that EA was ready for the load of players. That’s all good but the game started in window, that was odd. Fine, re-size to full screen was super fast, probably due to new engine. I did set the game to ULTRA settings and tried. Was not that bad, 25-32 FPS , it is playable but not smooth, when disabled AA and filtering lowered to 4x, everything went 30-50fps. (using : i7 2600, 8GB RAM, Radeon HD5850).

First thing I did notice was inability to set any options while dead, so if you want to setup button layout, graphics or anything else, you have to LIVE ingame, if you get killed while changing the settings the menu will close, canceling your changes, great…. If you want to correctly exit the game, again you must be alive to do so or else there is only ALT+F4 option which works (thanks god).

The graphics are a bit odd for my taste but I got use to it  in about 30 min of game-play. Ability to customize the guns and the menu system is not much confusing but certainly different as it was at BF BC2. I am use to hardcore mode so the guns did feal a bit weak for my taste but that’s fine. But after just few minutes of play I noticed so many bugs that are just absurd for game that has to be on the shelves next month. Sure it is BETA, but it did sound like PRE ALPHA to me. White flickering of whole screen, clipping problems, I did walk under the map for a while, walking with exploded weapons that extend several meters above the players body etc. Even the chat edit window was super odd.

Generaly I am not happy what I did saw, however there are some super cool featuers that are done very superficial and I realy hope it is only due to the BETA.

[UPDATE]  I did play it today on PS3, and the game feels much more better on the console , controlls feel right even the menu system makes a bit more sense.

What are your thoughts on the BETA?

That is why I had to add support for these new features in to RTPC.

The new features are extended EXIF info view and added support for GPS location data that is stored within the EXIF information.

Now you can use RTPC to view the GPS position of the place where photo was taken within google maps, all embedded in to RTPC.

Additionaly there will be ability to upload photos on to picasaweb and maybe to other popular web picture storages.

There were few user friendly changes done, like saving the multi compress options and the language selection menu is easy accessible within the main menu.

Click here for free DOWNLOAD

I was watching about 2 hours from that presentation and I did like some of the new cool features like ISO and VHD mounting, new awesome task manager, multi monitor settings and behaviour , the “up” button in directory structure etc…

There were also things I did not like at all, and that goes for the ribbon menu for the explorer (not talking about the IE) that you know from Office 2007 and newer. Also I am not a big fan of the Metro UI, even though I know that normal “user” will be happy with it  and it can be disabled. But Microsoft does really push the developers to develop apps for this UI.

There will be also alot of cloud services going on, you will be able to login to any PC with your Windows Live account and it will setup the way you like, and you will have access to all your files that are on the cloud and even on other computers or devices (phone, tablet etc.).

Generally, seems nice and usable. Anyways you can see for your self. 

Here are official links to download Windows 8 dev preview version.

Windows8 x64 64bit + dev tools DOWNLOAD  (4.8 GB)

Windows8 x64 64bit DOWNLOAD  (3.6 GB)

Windows8 x86 32bit DOWNLOAD  (2.8 GB)

For those who do not want to test it, here is the link for the presentation http://www.buildwindows.com/

[UPDATE]

I had finished testing both 32 and 64bit versions on virtual box. All worked well, except you need to set 128mb of VGA ram and intel network card to have network running. VGA drivers from the host additions are not functional yet. It did not work using MS Virtual PC at all … so , yeah… lol.

After I tested few things, and the boot-up is really 6-9 seconds long, wow … I must say, that I hate it… , mainly because of absence of START menu, inability to use desktop as it was in any other previous windows, and the Metro UI… only good for “non super users” , but do not take my words seriously try it by your self.

Now I was at Sahara for the first time this year, and I was overwhelmed by the amount of vehicles and tanks that were present.

Some of them were not functional but most of them, like 90% was fully functional in excelent condition.

For everyone who is interested in military stuff and does live near Slovakia and town Senica this is a “can’t miss” event.

Shooting from old guns, machineguns, explosions and tank fire using live ammo, now that was real fun.

I already packed in to the player some anime related radio so it is not so plain.

You can download the player here : DOWNLOAD