Thoroughly enjoyed the show, fellas. Hadn’t come across your podcast until today.

So I have a story for you that is particularly epic, though not exactly related to actual raw Borderlands gameplay experiences.

My friend who I play tons of games with is on dialup, and it’s a constant headache for us to get stuff working (he lives in a rural area where the only options are dialup or satellite). Despite this, we often manage to overcome the odds and get stuff to work, but we aren’t always so lucky. We desperately wanted Borderlands to function well enough for us to play together, but our initial runs with the PC version were abysmal. I recall his hunter doing about 5 melee attacks after a skag was already dead because he was still desperately trying to kill it. A very sad sight indeed (if rather hopelessly amusing).

We scoured every source we could think of, changed every value we could think to change in every .INI we could find, but to no avail. Between the PC version’s completely non-functional in-game console and total lack of connection feedback (I love your game, Gearbox, but WTF?), it was apparent the game just didn’t want us to play it.

But being pigheaded and desperate for some shoot n’ loot, we persevered and somehow eventually figured it out. This being an Unreal engine game, we changed the netspeed value from 10000 to 3000, but that didn’t help. But I thought, “This game likes to have its own way, maybe those values get changed every time you boot up,” and sure enough, when we bound the command to a key (the only way to get anything to execute thanks to aforementioned broken console), he was able to get the netspeed setting down so the game will actually function.

We then proceeded to play the game for a good 3 hours, I found a shotgun that occasionally set people on fire, and we giggled like schoolgirls whilst making angry looking guys explode in fountains of glory. Pure happiness.

So for those in need of a fix to make the game run on dialup, simply add the following binding to your WillowInput.ini:

Bindings=(Name=”F9″,Command=”netspeed 3000″,Control=False,Shift=False,Alt=False,LeftTrigger=False,RightTrigger=False,bIgnoreCtrl=False,bIgnoreShift=False,bIgnoreAlt=False)

Of course, change bound key to whatever you like. You may also need to fiddle with the exact numbers as 3000 might not be the sweet spot for you, and I can’t guarantee your success… but this worked for us after a whole string of things that really, really didn’t.

Cheers guys and thanks for the show!

So I’m still waiting for BT games to get stock so I can play, damnit.