Brief Hands-On Report--Aspyr Released Call of Duty 2 v1.3 Patch for the Mac

Finally, Aspyr Media's Call of Duty 2 v1.3 Patch for the Mac is available for download from this MacGameFiles.com Web page. It will fully update any previous version of Call of Duty 2 to version 1.3 and it is recommended for all users. It brings the Mac version up to the Windows version.

According to Aspyr,

The Call of Duty 2 1.3 patch fixes some multiplayer game and level issues, raises the gamestate from 16k to 128k and addresses the PunkBuster GUID issue where players were not being assigned PunkBuster GUID's of exactly 32 characters.

Notes for Mod Users:

• It is recommended that any user modifications that have been installed to the Call of Duty 2 directory be removed before installing this patch. These modifications are not supported by Activision and may not be compatible with some of the new features that are included.
• Call of Duty 2 does not support mods that have spaces in the mod's folder name. Be sure that the folder that contains your mod does not have spaces; otherwise users will not be able to download the files. For example, a mod in a folder called "My Mod" would be invalid, whereas "MyMod" or "My_Mod" would work.

Multiplayer Fixes:

• Raised the gamestate from 16k to 128k
• Added loading bars to maps mp_harbor and mp_rhine
• Addressed the PB GUID issue where players were not being assigned PB
  GUID's of exactly 32 characters.

mp_rhine map changes:

• Fixed player getting on top of broken wall and seeing through second story of bombed out building.

mp_harbor map changes:

• Reduced overall fog density
• Fixed missing water texture
• Fixed player not being able to shoot through lower portion of the first gap in a railing found on east side of map.
• Fixed player not being able to shoot through lower portion of railing found on east edge of map.
• Fixed a partially floating crate and a couple holes in sandbags.

Known Issues:

• When hosting a PunkBuster enabled server for the first time after installing the 1.3 patch, you may experience stability issues. To avoid this, launch the Multiplayer application, wait 10 - 20 seconds, then quit. Once you relaunch Call of Duty 2 Multiplayer, you will be able to host PunkBuster servers without any issues.

The v1.3 patch downloaded and installed with no problems. The first thing we noticed when we launched the multiplayer edition is that it launches must faster than v1.0. Second, there are now nearly seven thousand servers instead of 300+. This is because the Windows version has been at v1.3 for some time and most servers had been updated for some time as well. Third, maps load a bit more quickly and, finally, now one has to "Click to Continue" after a map loads to begin play, a small annoyance.

We played several hours of Call of Duty 2 v1.3 over the weekend. We ran into servers with several more "old favorite" maps from the original Call of Duty, like Harbor. They, too, had been modified a bit from the original but were fun to play. We didn't run into any new serious glitches but the "mooing" .45 caliber automatic pistol is back along with mooing sounds during large explosions that we first encountered on our MacBook Pro while running the original Call of Duty 2 under Rosetta. Call of Duty 2 was free of this until adding the v1.3 patch. Otherwise, v1.3 of Call of Duty 2 plays just as well as v1.0. [Bill Fox]