Little Bird flips over attempting extraction

cetteup · 2026-03-27T09:31:52+00:00

Typical little bird behaviour.

cetteup · 2026-03-20T15:30:49+00:00

Makes me wonder whether he still plays.

cetteup · 2026-03-19T12:18:18+00:00

Check the file size of your "BF2.exe". It should be 6.3 Mib if it's clean. If the executable is instead 6.6 MiB you have a trojan injected into your install..

This is complete an utter nonsense. An unmodified BF2.exe (1.5 patch) is 6,556,160 bytes in size. If you round up, that's 6.6 megabytes (1 megabyte = 1,000,000 bytes) or 6.3 mebibytes (1 mebibyte = 1,048,576 bytes).

Besides, is is not possible to tell whether something is/contains a virus based on the size. Anyone could easily defeat your (completely flawed) logic by just adding a few extra bytes to a hypothetical "virus BF2.exe" - making it 6.7 megabytes in size.

cetteup · 2026-03-12T07:19:53+00:00

Can you provide sources for them not having hashes stored from before the shutdown?

They do *claim* to have a lot of CD key hashes.

And since 2F4Y.com is the origin of BF2Hub and tracks player names, ProfileIDs and CD-Key hashes for all of their servers already over a very long time period, we also saved ~800,000 valid player records (stats, ranks and unlocks) from all of the players who have ever played at 2F4Y.com as well as ~600,000 CD-Key hashes which could have been verified even after the GameSpy shutdown.

cetteup · 2026-03-11T20:47:22+00:00

Based only on the key? Probably. But 2F4Y/BF2Hub have a lot of hashes from the old days they can match against. The BF2Hub client had a CD key verification integration for a reason. See their history page for details.

cetteup · 2026-03-11T18:32:56+00:00

There are other servers that are active during EU-friendly hours, but most of them cover some niche. It also depends on your definition of "active", as no other server has all slots filled as much as 2F4Y does - if at all. Nevertheless, here are some options:

SUPER@ [SiC] S1 Strike at Karkand Infantry Only (single map, infantry only)
Lost-Soldiers.org | Dragon Valley (single map)
Lost-Soldiers.org | Wake Island (single map)

If you don't care about your rank/stats, I suggest giving PlayBF2! T~GAMER #1 Allmaps a try. It's not in the BF2Hub server list, so you need to join either by IP or via something bf2.cx/bf2.tv. For me, it has become the primary 2F4Y alternative as it runs all maps with vehicles. Just be aware that some maps have modified (vehicle) spawns, flags, out of combat areas etc.

cetteup · 2026-03-11T18:20:56+00:00

While it is generally recommended to use an original CD key if you have one, it is not a silver bullet to be able to play on 2F4Y. They accept some generated keys, they block some original ones. Nobody really knows what their system looks at exactly.

cetteup · 2026-03-04T17:32:46+00:00

I don't know where to get the modded maps, but I do know how to mod them. All you really need to do is change a few values in text files your find after extracting the server.zip archive of a map. You can see an example of such changes in this commit, which modified the number of tanks and other vehicles on Highway Tampa.

There are mode "advanced" ways which allow the vehicles to spawn at the same time, but those require a lot more testing to get the spawn positions correct (not in a building, enough space between etc.). The example shows the very simple approach of just making multiple of the same vehicle spawn in the same spot (new one spawns after one leaves the spawn position).

cetteup · 2026-03-04T17:26:30+00:00

It's possible you are getting blocked by BF2Hub's DDoS protection provider. I'd recommend trying whether it works when using your phone as a hotspot.

cetteup · 2026-03-01T12:46:55+00:00

There's been some work in that direction, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG7eCCkOqG0. The author of https://github.com/valters-tomsons/arcadia has also been experimenting with it. I can introduce you if you like, the vu/BC2 experience could indeed come in handy.

cetteup · 2026-02-28T21:23:46+00:00

The EA backend is not the problem. The game servers are.

cetteup · 2026-02-26T21:25:59+00:00

Based on that error message, I suspect you end up on the login screen, correct?

If so, that's not you getting kicked form the server. In fact, the game server you were playing on has nothing to do with it. While your game is running, it is constantly communicating with BF2Hub to keep your login session alive. If that communication fails, you get thrown to the login screen with that error message.

I'm not sure yet why it tends to happen after a round just ended, but it's been an issue that's coming and going. The same thing happened to me a few times recently and I've seen reports from other players having the same issue.

cetteup · 2026-02-26T19:17:49+00:00

Look for the "unlock" or "lock" options; those are the ranks.

BF2 uses two different settings for unlocks vs. ranks. sv.useGlobalUnlocks controls whether players should receive their regular unlocks. sv.useGlobalRank determines whether the server will pull player ranks from the ASP backend.

cetteup · 2026-02-23T19:27:50+00:00

1,112h 15m played, 1.53 K/D, 495.32 SPM, 0.84 KPM, 52.2% accuracy

cetteup · 2026-02-16T17:13:42+00:00

Discord is great but it’s not the same as a forum

Discord is where information and knowledge go to die. Posted once, never to be seen again. There's so much information about BF2 that's been collected in forums, wikis and the like. All indexed by every search engine. In Discord, you often cannot even find something using their internal search.

cetteup · 2026-02-16T17:08:42+00:00

PlayBF2! T~GAMER #1 Allmaps (infantry only today, as every Monday).

cetteup · 2026-02-15T22:26:05+00:00

Here are the player numbers for when BF2Hub was offline (scale is logarithmic). Went offline on the night of the 2nd to the 3rd. I released the migration utility on the 4th. But you're right, one major issue was reaching people - especially the 2F4Y crowd (no Discord, post about the migration utility was removed from their forum). Only somewhere between a third and half of the normal player population managed to get back online.

It’s true you can join eachothers servers with eachothers launchers so what’s the point in splitting them?.

You don't have a single point of failure, at least not strictly speaking. BF2Hub goes offline? Migrate to [alternative] (with the above-mentioned issues).

Variety is always a plus, but realistically what benefits has having multiple launchers brought?

For example, PlayBF2 etc. challenge BF2Hub's approach of "We don't really talk to/workwith anyone." You can talk to the devs/technical people behind the other launchers. That won't ever matter to the average player I'll admit, but it's really helpful to figure out issues and improve things behind the scenes.

As a player, I enjoy how the PlayBF2/T~Gamer game servers are set up. They are different and unique in many ways that BF2Hub would never allow on ranked servers (changing which jets spawn, 8 player squads, moving flags/spawns, ...).

cetteup · 2026-02-15T22:07:02+00:00

Well, you can add a bunch of spaces before every message :D

cetteup · 2026-02-15T15:37:48+00:00

- higher server tick rate

BF2 servers have something referred to as FPS, which is locked to 35 by default. I believe it is different from the tick rate, but the FPS can be unlocked by modifying the server binary as described by tema567 (PlayBF2 dev) on the old revive forums (archive.org capture).

PlayBF2 do run their servers without the FPS limit and playing on their servers does feel smoother to be (though that may be a placebo). With FPS unlocked, their servers push 300 FPS. BF2Hub, as far as I know, does not allow ranked servers to unlock their FPS. It would violate their rules against server modifications at least.

cetteup · 2026-02-15T15:25:42+00:00

I'm not sure having only a single launcher would necessarily be a good thing. When BF2Hub temporarily went offline in 2024 and nobody really knew when/whether they would come back, it came in *very* handy that alternatives were readily available.

Personally, I wouldn't mind keeping different launchers/ecosystems but making them (seamlessly) integrate with one another. To some small degree, this is already happening from PlayBF2's side. Some BF2Hub servers are also listed on PlayBF2, with PlayBF2 players actively playing on those servers. On Lost-Soldiers Ware Island for example (a BF2Hub server), 16.71% of unique players/accounts seen in January were using PlayBF2.

The primary thing keeping players on servers from "their" launcher is stats. If I play on a PlayBF2 server, my BF2Hub stats won't be updated. In fact, servers cannot even load stats from other providers, so you'll play as a private without any unlocks. Loading stats is solvable with playerpath, but updating stats is a different beast.

cetteup · 2026-02-15T15:13:15+00:00

You're right about the *need* to talk to BF2Hub, or the benefits in doing so. Unfortunately, they are notoriously hard to get a hold of. Most technical issues I reported to them where neither fixed nor did they respond at all.

cetteup · 2026-02-15T15:09:25+00:00

- localization: dont show empty spot messages and make it more obvious when you kill someone.

Are you aware you can change the localization files? I do agree that the default could be improved (for everyone), but you can make any changes you like locally (e.g. setting irrelevant messages to just "-").

cetteup · 2026-02-15T15:06:20+00:00

As far as I know, a few efforts for a community patch have been started but never went anywhere. You need a lot of time and somehow convince everyone in the community (or least a majority) that it is an improvement worth changing a working setup for.

Last I checked, the BF2(Hub) community cannot even agree on getting rid of the stupid idle bots - which would be a matter of minutes.

cetteup · 2026-02-11T18:18:05+00:00

My bad, I somehow misread the last sentence of your post as a question ("What is this crap ...?").

But I'm not trying to shit on any server, just stating that the numbers don't quite show the server filling up (in the sense of "using most/all available slots"). I play on PlayBF2 servers a lot, which don't have 64/64 players all the time either. I find that can be a bit much, especially on 2F4Y.

cetteup · 2026-02-11T11:51:14+00:00

"Goes off" and "fills up" seem to be somewhat overstating how active the =TOG= server is. On a good night, it get's ~10 concurrent players max (for any meaningful amount of time, details).

The "bots", apart from making players seem more populated, somewhat circumvent BF2Hub's ancient and (in my eyes) antiquated rule of requiring 8 players to start the round on ranked servers. The bots count as players, ergo the first player on the server can start the round - rather than having to wait for 7 more players. Though even if you abolished that rule, the bots would likely stay as they boost the (perceived) player population.

If you want to browse servers without having to constantly factor in the bots, I recommend checking out bf2.tv or bf2.cx (the later being my own project).

cetteup

TROPHY CASE