DocJon wrote:
I thought BF2 was up to 1.41. . .sorry I can't help with the key issue though. I trust you used you Google-fu. . .
Ah yes.. google-fu.. I had not yet stretched that aspect yet. Indeed I learned a number of items most useful for a password cracker.. like the CD-Key is encrypted in a M5 algorithm making a Key-Hash and you can run a simple yet effective
python program to get all the Key-Hashes from all users on a server.. and a rainbowtable to decrypt said keyhashes.. or your own keyhash if needed. Although not put into practice by myself there is a
standalone utility that provides your own personal keyhash for a number of EA games..
Also found is a nice
Performance Guide which contains nice little tidbits like the way to turn off the movies and autolog in to your account when starting BF2, decreasing the memory load as well as annoyance factor of escaping out of them. Two methods; either rename the movies file or add +restart to the shortcut.
Disabling the Intro Movies
The introductory movies to BF2, although fun to watch the first couple of times, fast become quite annoying, adding to the startup times for the game, as well as the memory usage (the main movie is 135MB in size). To disable them permanently, I don't recommend deleting the movie files - this may cause problems with verification of client information on certain servers and/or with Punkbuster.
Instead, simply rename the relevant files in your \Program Files\EA Games\Battlefield 2\mods\bf2\Movies\ directory to something else (e.g. rename the Intro.bik to Intro.backup). The files to rename are: Dice.bik, EA.bik, Intro.bik, Legal.bik and Welcome.bik. This will mean the intro movies are all skipped as BF2 starts to load. If you find the movies playing in the background of the Login screen and Settings screens annoying, you can also rename the menu.bik and menu_loggedin.bik to something else as well.
If you've also renamed/removed the menu.bik and menu_loggedin.bik movies, and don't want a dull grey background in the in-game menus, then download this small BF2_Menu_Logo.zip file (201KB), extract the contents and copy them to your \Movies directory. These small files show the BF2 logo in the background, and look much nicer. Thanks to EdisLeado for preparing these files.
Removing all the original movies from the game can save over 250MB of data being loaded up during the start of the game and being placed into memory - this will help smooth your gameplay particularly for those with less RAM. If for any reason you experience any problems with the game after renaming the movies, simply rename them back to their original names.
Update: Instead of the above, you can simply use the +restart command line command in your BF2 startup icon. See the Advanced Tweaking section.
Automatic Login
If you want to automatically be logged in each time you launch Battlefield 2, edit your BF2 Command Line as follows (See the Advanced Tweaking section for how to edit the Command Line):
"C:\Program Files\EA Games\Battlefield 2\BF2.exe" +playerName your playername +playerPassword your password
E.g: "C:\Program Files\EA Games\Battlefield 2\BF2.exe" +playerName DogMaN +playerPassword Banana1
Basically by using the +playerName and +playerPassword parameters in your command line - along with any other entries you want to put in there - you will automatically be logged in as soon as you start the game, skipping the requirement to click Login on the login screen.
Update: Dennis has emailed me and pointed out that for this to work, the playerName and playerPassword commands are case-sensitive. That is, you must enter them exactly as shown, for example +playerName, not +playername. Furthermore your username and password are case sensitive as well, and must be entered precisely as you have them shown on the login screen. This method works with all versions of BF2, including the 1.12 patch onwards.