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Welcome to the 29th Infantry Division |
The 29th Infantry Division is a realism unit in the online World War II game, Darkest Hour: Normandy 1944. Realism is the conducting of a gaming group as close to real combat as possible.
Above, you will find our primary navigation menu with five links on it. For each of the links, a submenu is provided on the left of the page with related links.
For more information about the 29th, read our About page. | |
| Sunday, January 3, 2010 |
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Forum Upgrade by
Lt. Col. Wilson
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In case you haven't noticed, we have upgraded our forums to the latest version of SMF. To many of you, this means a few colour tweaks and cool new features. But for me, it is much more than that.
When we first switched to SMF from our old phpBB forums, I began learning PHP in order to modify our forums - very slightly - to add things like 'posting absence' and such. I gradually learnt more PHP and added more features, but as you might imagine, modifying the forums with very little knowledge of how things worked led to inconsistent and inefficient coding - aka a mess.
Even worse, all the modifications that were made pretty much bound us to SMF v1.1.1, because if we upgraded even one version, we would have lost all of those, or it would have been quite difficult to upgrade.
Ever since shifting to the 'personnel system', I have been striving to make it independent of the forums, and simply work with the forums. But there were certain things, like the calendar, that I never thought I'd get around to. Well, I'm pleased to say that I have, and as you can see, I've made all of our custom features independent of the forums. The only custom bits on the forums are things required for forum functions (i.e. avatars, announcements, etc.).
Overall, things are far more efficient now, and we can upgrade much easier in the future. The forums should run a lot faster, as I've also decreased their size from 3,821mb to 197mb (I know..wow), and now I only pull custom 29th records where necessary in the forums.
I'm sure you'll run into bugs. SMF changed plenty of variable names, so I'm sure there are a few 'typos' in our system as a result. Please report these bugs here and I'll fix them as soon as I can.
Enjoy the new features and all the stuff 'under the hood' ;)
25 Comments
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| Tuesday, December 22, 2009 |
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Expanding to a 3rd Company by
Lt. Col. Wilson
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I am pleased to announce the addition of Able Company to our roster, formed by the ever-growing Third Platoon of Charlie Company, which was created for its European-friendly drill times. Our 230 members are now organised into three companies: Able, Baker and Charlie.
A little over eight months ago, we began surveying the unit to find out if we would have enough European players (or North Americans who preferred earlier drill times) to form a 'European Squad'. We found enough - it was roughly 8 if I remember correctly. However, we knew it would soon have a few more with retired members returning and European cadets from Basic Training, so we planned for it to be its own platoon, starting out as a single squad. I was able to talk T/4 Cranston into leading this squad-sized platoon, and it proved to be one of the best moves I've made.
As we have seen, the Darkest Hour community produced countless European players or North Americans who preferred earlier times, and the ranks of CP3 filled up very rapidly. With 50+ players, they quickly became the largest platoon in the unit. We saw them expand to a fourth squad (over the realistic limit), and still overfill the squad numbers to as high as 15 members per squad.
Clearly it was time for a second European platoon. But adding one to Baker Company would seem silly, as if it were its own Company, it could have its own Company Drills, rather than two platoon drills per week. This route making more sense, we began the planning for an expansion to a third company. Fortunately, we had strong leadership that was ripe for moving up. 1Lt. Cunningham, Charlie Company's XO, was proving invaluable to his company and quite capable of even more, thus he was chosen to lead Able Company as its Commanding Officer.
Staff Sergeant Cranston was able to hold the largest platoon in the unit together, alone in its platoon headquarters, for eight months, without any platoon leadership training like our officers have received. Through this and many other things he's done in the unit, he's proved his qualification for Officer Candidate School, and is now training to became a Lieutenant. Sergeant Egerton has also proven to be a very valuable asset to CP3, a member from its beginning and a role model to the entire platoon. He has been chosen to lead the newly formed Second Platoon of Able Company.
The hard work of these leaders allowed us to structure CP3 into the size and format that it is meant to be. But it was the hard work of all members of CP3 that made this necessary in the first place. The 70% attendance of drills, the hard work of its squad leaders, and the huge amount of recruitment taking place. I would like to thank our recruiters from CP3, especially its top 3, for filling up the platoon so much that it had to expand to a third company!
Able Company Recruiting Hall of Fame
1. Cpl. Tuomainen with 66 recruits
2. T/5 Vandewalle with 34 recruits
3. SSgt. Cranston with 29 recruits
Congratulations to all members of the new Able Company, and to all members of the 29th Infantry Division, past and present, for bringing us to where we are today - a battalion sized unit with three companies!
17 Comments
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| Saturday, December 5, 2009 |
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300th Training Platoon by
Lt. Col. Wilson
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 Tomorrow begins the 300th Training Platoon, marking quite an accomplishment for Lighthouse Corps and the 29th Infantry Division. A training platoon (TP) is a class of cadets trained for one week at Basic Combat Training. The first TP was 101, and any 29th members who were around before we labelled TPs were considered graduates of '100'.
Tomorrow marks that since Lighthouse Corps began four years ago, we have recruited, trained and graduated two hundred classes of cadets!
To celebrate, here's a bit of 29th history. When I joined, Basic Combat Training (BCT) was instructed by SSgt. Glackin, and consisted of (from what I can remember) scrimmages, public play and a few other tips and tricks. Attendance was not as important as attitude. When I took command, the Drill Instructors (DIs) and I sat down and redesigned the programme. We tried many different options until we found one that worked.
The first one we tried, TP 101, lasted two weeks - 14 days straight. We called it 'October I', and the second two-week programme was to be called 'October II'. We then found that the DIs got just as worn out as the cadets, so we limited it to one week - 7 days straight - the 102nd TP. We soon found the same issue. Keep in mind at this time we only had 2 DIs. So we finally found the magic number - 5 days - and we've been doing it that way ever since.
Before I conclude, I think we should all give a 'thank you' to our Lighthouse staff - not only the current staff, but all the DIs, ADIs, enlistment liaisons, secretaries and chiefs of the past four years. Without them, we would not be celebrating this 300th TP, and we would not have 220 members. Putting so much of yourself into a set of fresh-off-the-boat cadets for five days straight is quite admirable, and quite necessary; I can't thank them enough.
I look forward to celebrating our 400th Training Platoon in one hundred weeks from now!
22 Comments
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| Friday, November 20, 2009 |
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Does Age Matter? by
Cpl. Tuomainen
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 Now that the 29th has reached the milestone of 200 members, it's nice to take an inside look as to who those members are. Besides being a 29er, everyone has real life, which we tend to forget sometimes when playing for the unit. Now, tell me, does there exist any gaming community that combines multiple nationalities and also big age span? It's like in real army, you fight with the guy next to you and he might have a whole different background that you have. A great example of this is a 19-year-old employee at McDonald's and a 66-year-old retired Colonel of the US Air Force. We also have busy high school and college students, but then we have others in the middle of unemployment with nothing but time to devote to the unit.
We recruit everyone who feels they are fit for realism. Sure, we have to agree in order to let a cadet graduate from Basic Combat Training. The purpose of our BCT program is to weed out immature and not-realism-material applicants. An example of this would be from the last BCT class where a couple of cadets were failed due to their inappropriate attitude and actions with relation to realism. We value high standards within the unit, so we expect that everyone who carries the [29th ID] tag acts in a mature and respective way. BCT might feel like child's play, especially if you have played the game since the days of RO, still our BCT has something to offer. It teaches you the basics about the game, teamwork, and the 29th which is something that not every kid or grown-up will experience.
If you're looking for a mature unit, congratulations - you've found one! We really don't care about your age as long as you act with a mature manner and can follow simple rules. Our unit's average age is around 25 years. The main part comes from the ages 16-21 when we still have almost all the ages from 15 all the way up to 66 years. In fact, I was amazed at one point when I found out one member's age that he was "only" 16 when he could have been much older based on the way he acts. This proves, that anyone can become a soldier of the 29th. Your actions and backgrounds in real life do not really matter to us. It is what your actions in the unit and in-game that are what makes you a winner or a failure in the unit.
8 Comments
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