[RELEASE] B3 1.6.0: full support for Homefront!

B3 1.6.0 is available for download!

What changed?

Homefront support :
B3 now fully supports your Homefront server (HF). Since the latest homefront patch introduced private messaging, we're glad to announce that all core B3 functionality is now fully present!

For new comers discovering B3 with Homefront we advise you to install the following plugins :

PoweradminHF plugin : brings HF specific features to B3. One of them being voting retaliation for the cases where players try to vote ban an admin !
Banlist plugin : allows you to enforce and share banlists from other servers/communities (also support Rules of Combat banlist)
VAC ban plugin : kick any players having a VAC ban (even for other games)
Follow plugin : help your admin crew following suspicious players

Also we would like to bring to your attention that the banlist plugin has been updated so it can use the banlist files from Rules of Combat automagically, in combination with our other community shared banlists.

Altitude support :
B3 has beta support for a non-FPS game for once : Altitude which is a 2D plane game. Note that this is a work in progress and we release it with B3 1.6 as a preview.

New binary installer:
This version comes with a new windows binary installer. The installer will attempt to install B3 in the root of the system drive (mostly C:\). This is done to avoid permission issues in the "Program Files" folder. So don't install it there! The new installer will keep all files in one folder, so the conf/ folder will no longer be in the Userdata folder, but inside the B3 folder. Use the installer to make a fresh installation in the root of the system drive (or any other folder that is not permission restricted!) and move your old configs to the new location. Always make sure you keep backups of the config files before upgrading the bot!

New setup procedure:
The setup procedure now supports game specific templates. The templates are available in the conf/template folder and look very similar to the .xml files, yet they differ in a few area's. So be careful changing the templates. Templates provide a way for GSP's to make life of their clients easier by pre-entering information specific to their setup in the templates.

changes for other games:
- Support for World of Padman 1.5
- Bugfixes to CoD series parsers

detailed changelog : http://github.com/BigBrotherBot/big-brother-bot/compare/v1.5.0...v1.6.0

!!Upgrading Note!!
Database update: This version uses unicode, if you use an existing (pre 1.6.0) database it is important that you update the database. To do that you must run b3_run.py --update or b3_run.py -u once. (Mysql 5.5 users can run into issues due to locked tables, to avoid that you should make sure no webtools like echelon or xlrstats are accessing the database at the time of the update.)

Downloads
http://www.bigbrotherbot.net/forums/downloads/?cat=3
mirror : http://ftp.snt.utwente.nl/pub/games/bigbrotherbot/releases/

Many thanks to all B3 contributors and beta testers!

On a side note, we also are now publishing the B3 server locations on a globe. See http://master.bigbrotherbot.net/globe/ (requires decent web browser)