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Welcome to The Company...

Since our founding in 2006, The Company has risen from the murky waters that are internet gaming communities to take its place among the internet's finest. We are a community that prides itself on being inclusive: Every Age, Every Skill, Every Gamer. 

In January 2010, we released The Company Live! Every week on Tuesday nights at 8pm cst we give you the opportunity to have you say on some of the biggest gaming news.  Listen live on our Ustream channel, join the show live on our TS3 server or listen at your leisure by downloading the cast into your iTunes. 

We are quickly becoming an cornerstone of the PC gaming community and also a get place to grab a few rounds on a server. Please feel free to explore our site and consider joining the fun by registering and then introducing yourself in our Join Today! forum. We hope you enjoy your stay ...
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The Company is more than just a news, mapping, and modding site.  We are an active gaming community.  As such we have our own servers that not only host our members and public, but are a showcase for some of the great maps and mods found in our Download section.

We have a number of great servers available for you 24/7:

  • Call of Duty 4
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  • Battlefield Bad Company 2 (Coming Soon!)

To make your gaming experience the best is can be we had dedicated Admins and all of our servers run Punkbuster and stream to PBBans to make sure the playing field is always evenly balanced.
Gamer Nation...

In June 2009, Gamer Nation was born! More of a community concept than an actual website, Gamer Nation is dedicated to all PC gamers. We understand that PC gamers are some of the most dedicated gamers you will find. With that in mind we started to create an atmosphere on our site that shared this spirit. 

Our Clan Portal section is unique and 100% dedicated to PC gaming clans and communities. In here you will be able to make contact with other clans for matches or just a good time. If you happen to still be looking for a gaming home, you might be able to find it here. We also have a downloads section that is constantly growing with your help, where you can find anything from custom maps and mods to custom skins.

EXTRA! EXTRA! EXTRA!  Looking to catch up on the latest gaming news?  Check out The Company Live!  Not only is it our very own podcast, but we have news articles streamed in from all across the gaming world.
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Tired of being a lonewolf? Don't know where to look to find a great clan? Look no further than the Clan Portal.

If you are in a clan/community that is looking for new members or just a good scrimmage, you should consider signing up with the Clan Portal as well.

Altogether, our Clan Portal is a valuable resource for both players and clans.  We certainly encourage you to take a look and find out how the Clan Portal can benefit you or your clan.
Downloads...

We are firm believers in community and we constantly strive do our best to make sure our members and visitors always have the latest updates, newest maps, mods, & patches right at the tip of their fingers. Anything you need to make a great clan/community can be found within our directory.

While we will constantly add content, ultimately this directory is built by you, Gamer Nation. You have two ways you can build the directory.  If you have the ability to host your own files, you can just post your link OR you can upload your file to us and we'll take care of it for you!  Either way you build the directory thus helping all PC gamers get the tools they need.

We encourage you to constantly add new content and make this the undisputed #1 location for anything PC Gaming.

 
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Hey gamers need to wear clothes too!  Have you always wanted that great gamer tee or that funny mouse pad.  Look no further!  Shop at The Company Gear Shop!

We have a great selection of items for not only your gaming machine, but also to show everyone else that you are a 100% hardcore gamer.  If you can't find something you like, let us know and we will design something just for you!  Now there is no reason you should have a great shirt on right now!
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You have found the home of The Company Weapons Modification, Weapons Skins, and Uniform Skins...

Our weapons mod is a simple script edit to all of the Call of Duty 4 and Call of Duty: World at War weapons. With the help of community members, some which have extensive weapons experience and military backgrounds, we have made numerous adjustments to the current armory in both games that brings them one step closer to realism.

In addition to doing weapon modifications we have done many weapon re-skins and uniform skins and to date, we have done several collaborations with some of the best map makers in the "Call of Duty" community.  All our our custom skins are available for you to preview in their own galleries.  Furthermore, all of our mods and skins are available for you to download in our Download section.
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The Company Live! is our very own live call-in podcast.

Once a week we give you the opportunity to sound off on the biggest gaming news of the week.

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We would like to welcome all community members and guests to our site. It not only has a new look but we have strived to create a place that is designed to keep you in the loop, no matter what community program you use. Join us by registering and then feel free to explore.

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The Company Live! - Cast 3 "Beta Thoughts"

The Company Live News

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 The Company Live - Cast 4 "Beta Thoughts"

We are back for our 4th cast, and once again too much news around BFBC2 to ignore. The beta has been released since our last cast so I give my thoughts on it, as well as we hear from Lefty and gamers. Everyone has great points and from what I’ve experienced and heard around the community, this is going to be a great game. There are bugs in the system right now, we know that, DICE knows that, but overall this is going to be a hit. There is no reason every community shouldn’t be gearing up for the release of this game in March.

We also talked about some news articles swirling around out there regarding BFBC2 and Crysis 2: - Battlefield is the best multiplayer FPS period - There will be no prone, so you can stop asking - Co-op will be added to BFBC2 - Crysis 2 simply the best graphics, hands down

As always we had a lot of fun so it’s definitely worth a listen. At just under an hour in length there is a lot in there that we discussed that I missed here in the write up so take the time, give it a listen and join us live next week!

As always ways to get in touch with us: Teamspeak: 75.102.34.106:9988 Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Twitter: tc_thecompany

Thanks for the great show! See you next week!

Jag_Five-O

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The Company Live! - Cast 3 "The Beta Cometh"

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 The Company Live - Cast 3 "The Beta Cometh"

We are back from our week off and ready to go. This time we decided to work some different formats into the cast in the forum of YouTube videos. I apologize for all those who are going to listen as you certainly are going to hear the audio, but miss the video. Apparently, Ustream did not catch our video either so here are the links to the videos we watch:

*NEW* Battlefield Bad Company 2: Singleplayer Gameplay http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SKH1eHep7c

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Squad Rush Mode http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ED2EiCAMTs

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Patrick Bach Interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm5eJM5CY7U

Since we have been off the air for two weeks we have seen some changes. DICE has revitalized their blog, a BFBC2 single-player trailer has been released, BFBC2 PC beta info has started to trickle out, and many other things! We touched on some other things we’d like to see with the upcoming release and thoughts about the future of PC gaming in general. I know I normally do a larger write up, but this time since we viewed a bunch of videos I really think it’s best seen not read.

As always ways to get in touch with us: Teamspeak: 75.102.34.106:9988 Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Twitter: tc_thecompany

Thanks for the great show! See you next week! Jag_Five-O

Jag_Five-O

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Audiophile's Guide to BF:BC2

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Below is a very informative article from DICE audio tech katamakel

    Hi there!

    I'm one of the audio programmers at DICE responsible for the audio tech in Frostbite. We know there are many people out there who care passionately about audio in our games, so we thought it'd be nice to give you some information on how our audio engine works and why we do things the way we do. Hopefully with this information you'll know how to get the most out of the audio in Bad Company on whichever platform you choose to play it on. It's going to get quite technical, but I'll try to summarize each section to make everything crystal clear.

Background   When we started building our "Next Gen" engine, Frostbite, we thought about what "Next Gen" would mean for us on the audio side of things. We came to the conclusion that we wanted to be able to use more filters in order to be able to create more dynamic sound behavior, and we wanted the same functionality and result across all platforms we target. This meant doing all the audio processing ourselves. We'd previously used software mixing in BF:1942 and hybrid hardware/software mixing in BF:Modern Combat on the PS2 (to be able to add some filters and 16 more "voices"), but before this point sound in games was mostly just playing back wave forms almost completely unaffected except for volume and pitch alterations.   This of course meant that we wanted sounds to be able to have an arbitrary amount of filters and submixes in any order, which hardware accelerating audio pipelines simply didn't/doesn't support. We felt confident in the fact that all our target platforms either had moved (Xbox360, PS3) or were about to move (PC) to software-based audio pipelines, instead of having fixed-functionality hardware pipelines (Xbox, PS2, some sound cards on PC), so software mixing was the obvious choice for us.   So in short, we went down a path that let us do things exactly the way we felt we needed to do it in order to continue to deliver a high-quality, innovative aural experience in our games and I hope you all agree we've succeeded!   Performance   Naturally, doing all of the audio processing in software puts the CPU under some extra strain. Since Xbox360/PS3 has fixed hardware and both have multiple cores available to do many things in parallel, you could say this is only an issue for the PC SKU where we may end up having less cores than on console. In Bad Company, all audio processing is performed sequentially on a single hardware thread regardless of platform. For PC this means that a CPU with a higher frequency will help more than one with more cores. But of course, there are other areas of the game that execute in parallel, so having more than 2 cores will help the game in general. This is an area we're constantly looking to improve and the results of our efforts will show up in future titles.   The bottom line is that as long as your computer lives up to the minimum spec for the game, things will be just fine. If you're on console there's obviously no need to worry about this stuff at all.   Fidelity   As is common today, we do all audio processing in 32-bit IEEE floating point (at 48kHz) in order to maintain the highest fidelity possible in the final audio stream we deliver to the platform's underlying audio driver. Our source wave forms are encoded using different codecs depending on what is most optimal for each platform. Those codecs are what affects the quality of the audio that the game produces the most. Once we've passed the audio to the underlying audio driver, any difference in fidelity depends on how that driver mixes our audio in together with other audio streams from other active processes and what gear you have. On PC we convert our audio to 16-bit PCM before sending it to DirectSound instead of relying on DirectSound to do it for us. This is mostly a legacy workaround for compatibility/quality issues with some sound cards, but adding support for more than 16-bit output would result in an invalidation of many years worth of tweaking and tuning done to reliably output quality audio through DirectSound, without any noticeable improvement in final audio fidelity for you guys and a massive increase in QA work for us. I'll dedicate the entire next section to this 16-bit "controversy" so those of you who are already in the know, or simply don't care, can skip it easier.   As I already mentioned, the gear you listen to the game through will of course affect the audio fidelity. If you're really keen on audio, you will want to either avoid using the internal DAC that is on your sound card (PC) or in your console. This is simple to do, just make sure you use digital audio output! It's only once you need to go from digital to analog (like to the speakers) that you will need to go through a DAC. You'll also want to keep the DAC outside your computer/console to reduce the induction of noise from other components. This could be as simple as using an external sound card (PC) or a hi-fi/surround system (consoles or PC if your sound card supports digital output).   The next thing to remember is to turn off as much post-processing as possible and make sure you have nice speakers. Any "enhancements" made to the signal after we send it to the audio driver may introduce unwanted artifacts, so turn off "Cinema" modes, "Crispalizers" and such. This goes for sound cards in PCs, home theatre systems and TVs alike. Our sound designers take great care to mix and even master the game thoughtfully, so make sure to select the "Sound System" setting in the audio options screen so that it corresponds as closely as possible to the gear you have! This way the game will adapt its EQ settings and dynamic range to try and make sure the game sounds as clear as possible through your speakers.   Let's simplify all this down and say that 5.1/48kHz/16-bit will get you the best experience on PC, and on consoles a mid-range sound system will do just fine. The game was made with 5.1 (and stereo) in mind, so there's no need to invest in a fancy new 7.1 system.   Bit Depth   I will try to keep this section short, but in doing so I'll have to make it quite technical. In digital audio, bit depth refers to the dynamic range of each sample in an audio signal. So 16-bit PCM gives us a dynamic range of about 96 dB (the simplified formula is 6*bitCount). Don't confuse bit depth with bit rate (number of bits per second) or sample rate, which decides the highest frequency possible to represent as half the sample rate. The human ear typically has a dynamic range of about 120 dB. So our 16 bits won't fully cover the entire dynamic range of the ear. Now if you simply look at the numbers you might feel that since 96 < 120 it would be obvious to want 24 bits (32-bit DACs aren't really used in consumer products) since the dynamic range would be a whopping 144 dB! In reality however, most consumer DACs will have an SNR (Signal-Noise Ratio) below 96 dB and only if you have a really fancy card it'll have an SNR above 96 dB, if you're lucky. And those are measurements done in an optimal environment, not inside your machine! What that means is that you'll start hearing the noise louder than the intended audio signal as it gets that quiet. You could of course reason that turning the volume up would make even the quietest signal audible, but consider that even if you might be able to get your sound system to play back a 0 dB FS signal (loudest possible output from a sound card) much louder than 100 dB SPL, you wouldn't be able to stand listening to it for long without your ears hurting. Indeed, around 140 dB SPL would mean painful damage to our ears.   So OK, getting the quietest 16-bit signal loud enough in your speakers to be easily heard isn't the most difficult thing to do, but noise will not be far behind and what you'd hear would not benefit your gaming experience in any way. In fact, the HDR audio system in Frostbite culls sounds on loudness during processing, so the 96 dB of dynamic range that 16-bit PCM gives us is more than sufficient to represent our final mix. Also worth mentioning is the fact that it's more important to have a larger dynamic range earlier in the audio processing chain. For example, recording in 24-bit has clear advantages over 16-bit because you'll want your source material as detailed as possible. This is also why all our processing is done in 32-bit floating point, it will retain our source material's dynamic range as well as possible throughout all the processing that we subject it to. But once we've mixed and mastered everything down to a single "full scale" audio stream, 16 bits means plenty of dynamic range.   In short, don't stare yourself blind on numbers on a box with shiny labels, but by all means make sure you have a nice DAC (high SNR) and some nice speakers.   Hardware Acceleration   I touched upon this briefly in the Background section, but it's worth clarifying. Hardware acceleration has been trailing the obvious development in how audio is treated in games for years, unlike graphics acceleration that instead has pushed that area continuously forward. Nowadays even GPGPUs suit the needs of contemporary audio processing better than do hardware accelerating sound cards and we're very excited about the opportunities that something like Intel's Larrabee might give us.   Also, the main benefit that hardware accelerating sound cards has provided to date has been environmental effects, such as reverberation. We believe that we get equivalent or better, more consistent, results from our software solution for a modest CPU cost by today's standards. Even the software APIs available for these cards are lacking in many areas, mainly by retaining the structure of DirectSound that even Microsoft themselves have now abandoned for game development in favor of the more up-to-date XAudio API.   There's nothing to say these APIs couldn't be updated to support the type of functionality needed for advanced audio processing, but the hardware would really need to approach a more general-purpose processor than what today's cards have and then we're back at Larrabee or simply a regular CPU with more cores.   In Closing   Everyone here in the audio department at DICE are very passionate about what we do and on behalf of all of us I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your encouraging comments and interest in audio in our games, be it on the blog, forums or in comments on videos!   We'll keep an eye on your comments for thoughts that might inspire another post about audio in Frostbite.   Thank you.  
 Source: Battlefield Blog
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Bringing Battlefield Bad Company 2 to the Front

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 Battlefield Bad Company  2 brings the spectacular Battlefield gameplay to the forefront of next-gen consoles and PC - featuring best-in-class vehicular combat set across a wide range of huge sandbox maps each with a different tactical focus.

The sequel to last year’s blockbuster title. In this installment, the Bad Company crew again find themselves in the heart of the action, where they must use every weapon and vehicle at their disposal to survive. The action unfolds with unprecedented intensity, introducing a level of fervor to vehicular warfare never before experienced in a modern warfare action game.

In Battlefield: Bad Company 2, the‘B’ company fight their way through snowy mountaintops, dense jungles and dusty villages. With a heavy arsenal of deadly weapons and a slew of vehicles to aid them, the crew set off on their mission and they are ready to blow up, shoot down, blast through, wipe out and utterly destroy anything that gets in their way. Total destruction is the name of the game, delivered as only the DICE next generation Frostbite™ engine can. Either online or offline, enemies will soon learn there is nowhere to hide. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 will be available for the Xbox 360® videogame and entertainment system, the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system and the PC.   Now on to the glorious details...   New vehicles like the All Terrain Vehicle (ATV) and the UH-60 transport helicopter allow for all-new multiplayer tactics in the warzone, extensive fine-tuning ensures that this will be the most realistic vehicle combat experience to date.   Tactical destruction is taken to new heights with the updated DICE ‘Frostbite’ engine. Players can now take down entire buildings or create their own vantage points by blasting holes through cover, thereby delivering a unique dynamic experience in every match.    Competitive Game Modes: Players can also compete in 4-player teams in 2 exclusive squad-only game modes, fighting together to unlock exclusive team awards and achievements. Spawn on your squad to get straight into the action, and use gadgets such as the tracer dart in-conjunction with the RPG to devastating effect.    Excellence in the battlefield is rewarded with an extensive range of pins, insignias and stars to unlock along with 50 dedicated ranks to achieve.   Variety also extends into the range of customizable kits weapons and vehicles available. With 4 distinct character classes, and weapons, gadgets and specializations players have over 15000 kit variations to discover and master players will be able to fine-tune their preferred fighting style to give them the edge in combat.   All of these features combine to deliver spectacular and unpredictable action moments found nowhere else in a modern warfare experience.    The game also sees the return of the B Company squad in a more mature and intense single player experience where the stakes are higher than ever.   Source: Battlefield Bad Company 2  
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The Company Live! - No Cast 1/19

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 The Company Live - No Cast 1/19

Sorry guys but due to schedule conflicts there will be no cast tomorrow 1/19.  However, continue to send me your links to great articles and get ready cause we are gonna have lots to talk about with the week off!

Listen to us live as we stream over Ustream and if you want to be on the air join us on our Teamspeak 3 server at 75.102.34.106:9988.  Also, got more rumors or news you want to pass along before the cast?  Send it to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

See you on January 26th!

Jag_Five-O

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