Okay time for some Xploring

I know mod Wildwest for years now. I traced back my ww files and come to 2003 but maybe it was a few years later I started playing it. For me and my friends it served mainly as an alternative to default RtCW. Memories consist busy servers of about 10v10 players (but 4v4 is needed at least for a decent game imho).
Personally I did enjoy the changed surroundings for time to time. So playing this mod was more exploring instead of full war mode. My friends (^CeeV0X and ^W4rG1rL) en I did not play it too often as we simply disn't know our way in the WildWest.
Even now in fall 2013 I have the plan to check it for players every now and than, just so see whether there are players around.. And to look around once more.
Now, what I also remember is that The Wildwest mod first was part of RtCW like any other: The game interface had now Wildwest pictures in it and ofcourse the Axis and Allies were Bandits and Cowboys and had voices that fitted them. Apart from all annoying updates RtCW and PunkBuster needed, The Wildwest needed an updates too. All updates together seemed to make ppl leave The Wildwest.
In 2012 many of us RtCW fans had huge problems when the masterserver of ID Software was put offline. I haven't got a clue about what happened to the Wildwest. The mod that really made the game totally different in a way. And was a nice alternative.  
Through the years Wildwest had long periods in which no players or even servers would show up. Also, at some point other players started to present this mod. Maybe they have developed new parts of it or are the only left players that like to pass on (or play ;) this mod. I haven't got a clue. But one thing is that this mod suddenly had it's own wwstarter. First there was no need to use it and it shared it's serverlist with regular RtCW 1.4. But later with a new version the starter seemed to only scan IP's of certain servers. (This all over years..) For a noob player like me the first starter seemed a reason to call WW a Standalone mod. And maybe this seperating from RtCW and these starters had good sides, I never liked it though. First versions were on demand, so you could instantly hop from RtCW to WW. If I recall well, this nice feature was gone with latest starters. 

The last 2 or 3 servers I saw last 5 years were mainly empty but I'm also certain about that at some point there was an update I didnot know about. So I was just disconnected from WW and I didn't have a clue about what was up.
Anyway, Now in the end of 2013 I once more searched internet for the mod. As expected many versions and dead links can be found but here are also some nice ones.

HeH WW Board last act half2013
http://forums.wildwest-game.com/

Latest news Oct2012
http://brian-horning.com/category/game-design/rtcw/ww/

Downloads
v1.6 beta - http://www.gamershell.com/download_20603.shtml
v1.613 (Windows, Linux & Mac) http://returntocastlewolfenstein.filefront.com/files/Return_to_Castle_Wolfenstein/Mods/Total_Conversions;466
1.613 http://www.strategyinformer.com/pc/returntocastlewolfenstein/mod/30760.html
The2012 installer has PB in it (preconfigured)?
1.613_Complete_v23 HeH http://forums.wildwest-game.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=642 with a seperate scanner http://www.the-wildwest.eu/files/ww16/scannerv1.zip wtf

? http://www.smokin-guns.org/downloads Game w active community and many elements of RtCW WW like id and Quake logo's
for Mac http://forum.smokin-guns.org/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=3336


So I started testing.
First 1.12 and the incremental update to 1.14 (for 1.12). No luck, it goes fullscreen and leaves me a black destop.
Reminded me of the problem I'm currently having: I cannot play RtCW fullscreen since my latest W7 install. My 560Ti (hawk) video card seems related to OpenGL problems tells Google me. The system hangs whenever I enter fullscreen mode in RtCW. The weird thing is, that this very same system did run it full screen with a former install of W7!
So I tried 1.5 hoping it wouldn't go fullscreen. It did. Black too.
No luck. So.. Reinstalling newest mainboard and video drivers etc. now also including all 150 W7 updates. Testing RtCW @ full. YES! wtf.

And so I tested latest version of WildWest. And immediately I remembered the annoying server browser that once was added to the WildWest. It showed no servers but I know there was an alternative scanner so.. I noticed that like old times the WW-starter in windows systemtray had no way of shutting it fully down. Always hated that.
The alternative scanner gave the IP's of 2 online servers, so I added them to the FAV's and tried to join. Didn't show up in the list.
I figured that WW maybe wouldn't use the new masterserver.

Just for testing I made a copy of my RtCW dir and copied the folder c:\rtcww\WildWestStarter\WildWest in there. And the servers showed up. No need for the annoying WWstarter in the systray.
So I added both server IP's from the new HeH-scanner (1 eu, 1 us). And I joined and ran around a bit. Nobody there.
So finally it works. And atm there's even servers online. :)
Afterwards I discovered that the WWgui doesn't show the default 1.4 list anymore, so you need to restart RtCW for regular RtCW play.
I hope to find a by-pass in an older version of WW. Using the 'main menu' option MOD is also a way to return to default. In all these years never used that option MOD, but I will xplore it a bit lol.

Too bad I miss 3 maps so I cannot join:
ww_yuma_dev4.pk3, ww_elrio2.pk3 and saloon_final_2.pk3. Can't find'm via google and the HeHserver and Breezies Mapdownloader do not support downloading these maps.

It works just like any other mod (like A-team, AoD etc..). Imho perfect like it is. But for those that like that Standalone thing. Inside that installed map rtww/WildWestStarter/ is an .ico-file you can copy to your 1.4 folder. Now copy a shortcut of RtCW 1.4, rename it and bind the ww-icon through the properties of it. Also inthe field 'target' add [[[ +set fs_game WildWest ]]] without the brackets and it will startup WW instantly! :)


Btw.. I saw that WW unpacked is about 600 MB..
And over 2GB of pk3's or certain amount of files RtCW gives an error. Maybe it's better to make a copy of RtCW 1.4 folder just for WW. (it won't use