BF2 on the horizon...

[Twisted_Firestarter]

This looks to be a great game that many of us are anticipating. TG will have a server up as soon as it is available. Now is our chance to start salivating and hoping that the release date is not pushed off.

Heh, has anyone else upgraded their computer system specifically for this game?

[Usarion]

You betcha!! I am glad to see this section finally open up. So let me start it of by posting a little sample of what we have seen so far. Most of which I have taken from what Maximus has gathered from other sources over the last few months.

38 Sweet Screenies!!

http://battlefield1942.filefront.com.../News/18315/10

Nice little video to see a little of the action.

http://files.ea.com/downloads/eagame...reative_hi.mov

Some views of the commaders screen.

http://www.thegamerssyndicate.com/viewtopic.php?t=1431

Interview from planet battlefield.

Q: Regarding the artillery, will there only be stationary arty or both stationary and mobile (Paladin, MLRS)?
A: There will be only stationary artillery.

Q: Can you give us a definitive answer as to what the system requirements are?
A: Minimum System Requirements are 1.7 GHZ CPU, 512mb of RAM, Video card that supports 1.4 shaders. That is Geforce FX and higher, Radeon 8500 and higher. (Geforce 4 Cards will not work).
Recommended System Requirements are 2.0 GHZ to 2.5 GHZ CPU, 1gig of RAM, Video Card that supports 1.4 Shaders.

Q: Can you give us any information on the demo's status, what it will contain, anything?
A: Demo will be out in mid-June and will contain one map.

Q: Have there been measures taken so that a squad leader won't be able to take helicopters over an enemy base then let their squads spawn into the chopper and spam the enemy base with paratroopers?
A: No, but there is enough anti-air power in the enemy's base to make sure that this does not happen.

Q: How does the LCAC work?
A: LCAC has been cut out of Battlefield 2.

Q: Will Battlefield 2 support the use of Force Feedback joysticks? In previous versions this was unsupported.
A: No, BF2 will not support Force Feedback joysticks.

Q: How much have fog settings changed in BF2 in comparison to BF1942/BFV? Can you see farther once you are higher up so that air-to-air combat is improved?
A: You cannot see farther once you are higher up.

Q: What kinds of environment effects have been added? We've all noticed the birds flying out of the trees.
A: You will notice birds flying out of trees, waterfalls, burning buildings, and the sky moving.

Q: How does the helicopters feel?
A: The helicopters felt like a little between DC / BFV. The AH-1z was very manoeuverable, as I was able to go in between buildings, under bridges, etc.

Q: How destructible are the Battlefield 2 environments?
A: The BF2 environment is not fully destructible. That means you can't just destroy everything. However you can destroy key points such as bridges, which can be repaired by an engineer.

Q: Can you give us full details of how BFTV Recorder will function? How big are the files for say 45 minutes of gameplay footage? Is it simple and easy to use?
A: The BFTV Recorder will function on the server side, as the server will be recording everything. The size matters on how long you are recording and the quality of settings you have on. It is simple and easy to use.

Q: Will the Battlefield TV, the streaming portion, be put in later patches? It has been highly successfully for Half Life and CoD with an average of 150 people viewing a popular match, and during the CPL the numbers were in the thousands.
A: The streaming portion may be put into later patches, if the demand from the community is there.

Q: Will BF2 ever have the functionality whereby clients connecting to a server running a custom map will be able to download said map from a predetermined source while in the game (whether it be the game server or an alternate ftp server)?
A: Maybe for a patch.

Q: What sort of server administration tools will be included with BF2 and how will they compare feature-wise with Blackbag Ops' BFSM/BFRM?
A: There will be a server administration tool available for download when BF2's release date comes closer.

Q: Has the stairs bug been fixed? (The player walks down a set of stairs, then loses health as it appears to the game that he has fallen.)
A: Yes the stairs bug has been fixed.

Q: Will we be able to control the zoom in / zoom out of the minimap better than BF42 and BF:V? Often the 3 levels it allows are either too far out or too close. More control would be nice, especially on a circular minimap.
A: It is only 3 level system again.

Q: Will there be any weather effects added? Some of the mods for Battlefield 1942 have mastered this to include rain and snow.
A: Nope.

Q: Are there any plans for a night map? Possibly for an expansion?
A: Maybe (Answered by Stealth97)

Q: With the unlock weapons system, how would this work for people playing in clan matches? Would they be able to turn this feature off via server-side options?
A: They will be able to turn this system off via server-side options.

Q: With the BF2 Ranking system can players be demoted?
A: Players can be demoted such as if they decide to team kill alot.

Q: For sniping is there one set limit on scoped view, or will you be able to zoom in and out under scoped view?
A: Limited scope.

Q: Exactly how does the Laser Designation Kit work in Battlefield 2?
A: Laser Designation was cut.

Q: How does the lock-on system work?
A: When you approach a vehicle such as a plane, you will see a box targeting it. Once you have secured a lock-on it will say shoot. When you see a friendly vehicle it will have a box but with an X in it indicating it is a friendly vehcile.

Q: If you are locked onto an air vehicle and you have a friendly vehicle nearby, will the target veer off its intended target and attack the friendly vehicle?
A: It will go towards its intended target.

Q: Will the AI in BF2 be able to fly helicopters, understand the chain of command such as Commander, etc.?
A: AI will be able to understand the chain of command, as far as being able to fly helicopters, I am assuming so.

Q: Can you have multiple levels of water for maps?
A: Yes, you can.

Q: Will you be able to edit the code outside of the editor?
A: You can still be able to edit the "con" files if you wish.

Q: Will there be an ability to create your own keybinds?
A: There are no plans for this yet.

Q: Will there be an ability to pass new fields from the menu to the game?
A: There are no plans for this yet.

Q: Will you be able to do 3D pathmaps?
A: Yes, you will be able to.

Q: How does the mod tool save files? Does it rebuild files like Battlecraft or does it edit lines like Editor42?
A: It currently rebuilds the files but you can select to save it in sections.

[><JohnGalt><]

Q: Can you give us any information on the demo's status, what it will contain, anything?
A: Demo will be out in mid-June and will contain one map.

I am not getting too excited..................

[CingularDuality]

Originally Posted by ><JohnGalt><

Q: Can you give us any information on the demo's status, what it will contain, anything?
A: Demo will be out in mid-June and will contain one map.

I am not getting too excited..................

Why not? We played the hell out of the BF:1942 demo here and had a blast doing it!

[><JohnGalt><]

Originally Posted by CingularDuality

Why not? We played the hell out of the BF:1942 demo here and had a blast doing it!

I am not too sarcastic.........

[asch]

Originally Posted by CingularDuality

Why not? We played the hell out of the BF:1942 demo here and had a blast doing it!

I didn't even know BF1942 had a demo.

[Apophis]

This stuff bugs me:

Q: Exactly how does the Laser Designation Kit work in Battlefield 2?
A: Laser Designation was cut.

Q: How much have fog settings changed in BF2 in comparison to BF1942/BFV? Can you see farther once you are higher up so that air-to-air combat is improved?
A: You cannot see farther once you are higher up.

I was really looking forward to the laser designation kit.

[Mateo]

Originally Posted by Apophis

This stuff bugs me:



I was really looking forward to the laser designation kit.

Yeah...not that I won't get it, and hope it runs, but some of the features that would have been a marked improvement on the original, didn't happen.

[><JohnGalt><]

I wonder why no Laser?
i wonder what the reasoning behind the decision to keep the pea soup?
The screen shots look great. The detail on the vehicles is a marked improvement, as is the substition of the field of view graphic for the arrow in the radar. Also note that there will be HUD avionics for the aricraft.

[TG_JBRanger]

Seems with the fog you'll need to be constantly aware of your gauges. IFR BABY! Anyway, yea I'm chomping at the bit for this game....

[><JohnGalt><]

I am looking forward to getting to know TGers that dont play the same games as I do. Looks like BF2 is going to bring the community together as a whole.

[asch]

Nice planetbattlefield writeup of Bf2

[Tempus]

This doesn't look good:

A few minutes into a round, all I was seeing was the enemy soldier jumping about five feet into the air, shooting, and killing me. So I re-spawn and guess what same thing happens again. On my screen I view an enemy jumping about five feet in the air and while jumping, the enemy is shooting and kills me. Now you’ll think to yourself well when in the air, your aim will not be so good. Well I can tell you it’s not that hard to stay on your target while jumping. I extremely disliked the jump height and when asked if it will be changed the answer was no. As well as I saw a lot of dolphin diving. This is where you go into prone mode, start shooting at your target and to make it worse they stand right up after going into prone mode. This was virtually an instant kill, and the only way to really defeat this was to shove it back into their faces. So after awhile I started to jump about five feet in the air while shooting them, and started to dolphin dive and got quite a few kills out of it.

[Usarion]

Wow I am really surprised at the response so far. Personally I am pumped for this game, and from all the reading I have done from people who have played the game, and who are not EA fanboys, it sounds awesome. For the most part most of you all are bummed out about "whats not in the game". Perhaps there is a little BFV aftertaste still going around. Keep in mind that there are a ton of MODS already underway for the game, and you know some of them are going to be fantastic.


Here is another first hand account of the game written by some one, but posted by Maximus at our place.

Let's begin with the all new point awarding system. Dice threw away their previous one and looked at other possibilities. They came up with the following idea. For each kill you get 2 points, if you rob 50% of a player's hitpoints you get one assist-kill point. I experienced this a great number of times, I actually think that one round, I scored more assist-kill points than kill-points. You know what type of kill you made by a small warning text message that comes up in the left-centre of the screens. When you capture a flag, you get 4 points. Two for blaking it and two more if you can capture it entirely. When some lame guy waits until others do the dirty work for him and comes in the flagzone when all is safe, he only gets one point: a flag-assist point. Even the flag defenders aren't forgotten in Battlefield 2 because they get a flag-defence point for each enemy killed in the flagcapture area. Teamkillers are a pain in the ass in every game. DICE has tried to take the discouragement for tk-ing to a next level: If you take about 50% hitpoints from a friendly soldier/vehicle then you'll get a -4 score. If you continue and eventually kill the team-member you'll get a whopping -8 score. At one point I was confused about the colour of his team-mates (in BF2 your team *always* appears blue on the minimap), so in all his ignorance he started killing a bunch of his own guys resulting in an -36 score, a situation that you won't easily be able to set straight. So all the players with a sensitive mousebutton be warned! This game will be your worst nightmare! Furthermore, you'll get points for supporting your team, meaning: you'll get 1 point for healing 100 hitpoints or when team-mates pick up a medikit (could be dropped by medic)(healing yourself won't increase your score), you'll get 1 point when your team-mates pick up a box of ammunition that was dropped by a support class soldier. (enemies are also able to pick up that same box but you'll receive no points) You'll also get 1 point when you're driving a car/ tank or when you are piloting a jet/heli if the person in your vehicle is able to kill someone (2 points for the killer) and you'll also receive 1 point for reviving a killed team-mate and at the same time, you'll prevent the loss of one of your teams tickets. The next new feature in line is the all new global ranking system. If you're playing on a ranked server, all of your points will be saved on a server that will be supervised by DICE. This will have the effect that you'll be able to see your rank and statistics wherever you are and whenever you want. The ranks will be closely controlled by an automated procedure making it impossible to cheat, even if there are unusual scores these will be manually observed and adjusted. So if you're wanting to tamper with your score by let's say reviving your team-mate over and over again then you're risking that DICE/EA will clear your scores or even worse, ban your account on all ranked servers. In this system DICE has introduced a completely new feature, awarding medals! Aside from the standard gold/silver/bronze medals you'll get special medals for achieving a certain amount of points and playing hours. You'll also get medals for being involved in specific situations. Some members of LRRP were already dreaming of achieving all those medals but the time that will be needed to achieve that goal was not known even by the CEO of EA, good luck to the fanatics! The next game play feature that has been changed is the spawn times. Everyone that gets shot down will fall to the ground facing the sky and you'll be lying there for around 20 secs, so medics have time to revive your body. After the 20 seconds have passed, your team will lose 1 ticket and you'll respawn immediately. As it was before in previous bf games, spawning in waves and different times is no more. A small change in the game but this will have a huge influence in gameplay: Raping a certain area will be a lot harder.

Another change in game play that will get a hold of you is the fantastic atmosphere of the game. Previously where you would play 32 player maps it would take some time to find and kill enemies, it's quite the opposite for BF2. You'll get the feeling of being in a real-time warfare the moment you start the game. The sounds are just so clear and crisp you'll duck under your desk whenever someone is shooting at you. Guns blasting in the distance, explosions and many other voice sounds from team-mates will struck you the moment you enter the arena.

I can put down a lot of the new intense atmosphere to the way the new maps were built up. It contained 6 spawnpoints in a relatively small map space, therefore concentrating all of the action in the middle part of a map. Let me put it this way: try to image the maps Hue or Berlin from the previous BF games and then place 6 spawn points in that area. Get the picture? But the leveldesigners didn't lose the spacious feeling that was so typical of the first 2 Battlefield games. You STILL can easily go out of town and take a long walk around it just to surprise the enemy from behind. That's why battlefield will always be better than any other multiplayer FPS out there. (Yeah, I'm kind of a fan of the Battlefield franchise)

Let's get down to the infantry part then, shall we? My biggest fear that this part would be screwed up, the killing would be too easy, it would all become too fast, stuff like that. Well luckily ... I was wrong. From the moment I first spawned, I noticed the space between the inner parts of the crosshair was a lot bigger than in the previous games. To compare it you'll have to start BF:V , run around with your M16, swing your mouse about and mind the crosshair while doing this. The opening you'll have at that point is more or less standard in BF2. The overall difference this creates is immediately noticeable. Shooting an enemy from 100 meters has become a lot more difficult. You'll have to lie down to get a reasonable precision. Off course, you can use the right mouse button and the new ironsight will appear. But I had to estimate where the bullets would impact, and I wasn't good at it ... yet! It seemed to me that some practice would be required to master this. But that never stopped most of the die-hard gamer now, has it? A next interesting new fact is that most of the guns will have different fire modes: single shot, burst and full-auto. Single shot mode and burst are quite useful over long distances whilst full-auto is ideal in close combat situations. I had serious problems adapting to the M16, it lacked the ability to shoot in full-automode and I hated it. I almost felt like hanging myself when a Chinese soldier killed me for the twentieth time with hill fully automatic AK. A big fat curse rolled over my lips. Ironically the programmer who was responsible for weapons balancing was right behind me. When I realised my reaction he calmly told me that you would be albe to select another gun when I got a certain score. Phew, what a relief. I guess when I'm US I'll go defend some flags until I'm awarded enough points to switch guns in the assault class. The player models are very detailed, as everyone has already seen in the released screenshots. What those screens don't reveal are the superb reloading animations. A MEC assault unit, for example, throws his ammoclip from one hand to the other before he places it nicely in the gun. Nicely done! Some LRRP proposed that a "oops, I dropped my ammoclip" animation should also be build in. Lars Gustavsson had a : "you think you're quite the comedian, eh?" look on his face ... It was a funny thought though Smile The run, die and shooting animations are truly superb. The way the soldiers run, jump and move elegantly is magnificent to see. Sometimes these moves were the only way for me to spot the enemy from a greater disctance because the camouflage colours on the uniforms actually work in this game. Again, I believe it takes some time to get used to. Top of the lot is the sniperclass. I couldn't believe my eyes the first time I was that guy running around. Let me explain that part ... One time, I noticed the empty swimming pool I recognized from several trailers, so I went over to check it out. When I jumped inside, there was a small bush of something plantlike on the floor. Even before I could think "weird bug" it jumped upright and a knife came out, scaring me to death. In my girlish panicky reaction I shot everything I had in it. A sniper dropped dead before my feet ... Next thing that deserves some attention in this review is the all-new squad system. It's a piece of cake to enlist yourself in a squad. The advantages you get out of this are numerous. From now on, the squadleader can serve as a movable spawnpoint, your squadmembers are much clearer on the 3D map because they appear in green and if your squad consists of a good medic you'll always be in the frontline. Right where the excitement is. This is how the game should be played, the intensity is incredible. Consequentially, and this has to be said, the lone wolf player will cease to exist because he won't win ANY confrontations with a decently organised squad. The Dice-guys always formed squads whilst I was wandering hopelessly alone on the maps and they creamed me each and every time before I could even kill ONE squadmember. Even if I managed to get one of them, the medic quickly undid my work. To make things short, lone wolfs are utterly useless.

The commander mode. This aspect of the game surprised me most. I expected the commander to be a non-visible person like in that other RTS - FPS game "Savage". Well, the commander doesn't work like that. It's just a player of your team who lies down in a safe place and brings up a screen with the overview of the battlefield. That overview starts out to be the same map as the minimap but after zooming in twice, it changes into a birdeye view of the map, using the 3D engine. Tanks are easily spotted but the infantry can easily hide for the commander guys. From this view I would estimate that the infantry aren't much bigger that say in the infantry in Red Alert. Thus, the commander isn't all-seeing, which imo is a good way to balance this mode. We also noticed that the main task of the commander consists of providing the squads with support and information. If we rule out part where a commander can give a squad orders, there are 3 main options he can use: calling for artillery, deploying UAV and dropping a resupply crate that we recognize as the "spawnbox" from Battlefield: Vietnam. The artillery is an impressive weapon, it consists out of 10 huge rounds that impact around the target, notice the word "around". This is not a very precise weapon, we've seen a demo where a tank was targeted and it nicely undertook evasive moves and thus did not get much damage inflicted. The cooldown periode of the artillery was about a minute and a half. A bit too short for my taste, I wouldn't mind it lasting of minute or three. Next up, the UAV. The commander can target a region on the map wherein his teammembers can see the opponents. It's ideal stuff to set up a trap against attacking enemy squads.

Until now, I haven't mentioned anything about the game's most unique feature, that what makes it so much more than every other FPS can ever be ... Vehicles. This is where the overall gameplay is determined. Will there be balance or not? If not, the results would be disastrous, you'll get vehicles raping infantry without being in immediate danger. Now, is there balance in Battlefield 2? It seens so! All the heavy tanks from BF2 are a lot faster than their brothers from the year 1942, but at the same time they are not quite faster than the tanks from the Vietnam game. The aim of the tanks was, as could be expected, more straight than we were used to. The shells have a very flat curve, especially losing height after a few hundred meters. Even more important to notice is that the reload time has increased with about 50% , if you compare it to a T52 from the BF: Vietnam game. Small difference on paper but a HUGE effect when you're in a stressful situation. Another noticeable fact is that the tanks have become quite immune to simple grenades, even more so than the Tiger from BF:42, from now on you'll have to destroy tanks with high explosive materials. Just pray your squad is accompanied with a support-class soldier (or you'll have a though job hiding ), because this guy is about the biggest weak spot of the tank, together with other tanks and airplanes of helicopters. The fast jeeps are the stuff the next stuntmovies will be made of. You can take jumps with these things that are true eyecandy, but it doesn't end there, after they touch down they bounce several time before they can continue monkeying around. The feeling of the jeeps has undergone serious changes. You can't drive them around full throttle for about 99% of the time anymore. If you want to make a descent turn, you'll have to slow down. It's a hell of a job to keep those things of a road with many hairpins. But if you think the BF-way, like me, you'll just jump that darn thing of the ridge, eject and deploy your parachute ... Don't you just love this kind of freedom? ^ _ ^ Last but not least, the helicopters. As I was proud to be able to use them to transport peeps "safely" in BF:V I figured it wouldn't be so difficult to fly them in BF2 either, even with the crazy mouse - keyboard configuration ... WRONG! My first heli experience went as following: First I raced a teammember to a heli and jumping into it. Then I figured I was the pilot so I gained some height and I started jerking the mouse around. My intention was to make a little swing to the right so I could make a lot of speed whilst diving over the big gorge leading to an enemy flag. The result was a little bit different. The helicopter didn't react to my quick mouse movements and just started to lean to the right, my fast movements didn't help levelling the darn thing either. Ten seconds later I crashed the machine halfway to the centre of the Earth, making an ass of myself for all the Dice peeps out there. Joy! Of course, after a couple of more tries I managed to master the controls. It's quite the same for the jets, the good old BF42 pilots will have no problem with these jets because they behave more like the WW 2 planes than the almighty jets we all know from BF:V. The afterburner adding just that extra burst of speed that is often needed to outclimb or outmanoeuvre stingers and enemy fighters ... The flying goodies are like Sean Decker told us: "We've made them easy to fly but hard to master". The jets and heli's aren't almighty as well. They are plenty of playthings that can take them down in a jiffy. Stingers, tanks, stationary stuff, you name it!

To conclude all this I would say that Battlefield 2 provides a very intense gameplay due to the new way the spawnpoints are placed and the superb supporting sounds. The new rankings, the ingame formation of squads and the commandermode will give the game the essential challenge they need to keep playing this game for the next year(s) to come. Already Battlefield 2 will be my game of the year. Where Half Life-2 will disappear in gaming history as overhyped, Battlefield 2 will single-handedly rewrite gaming history, just as its predecessor ...

[asch]

Damn that was a long quote.

Tempus... in that review, the statement about the jumping & going prone... it's the same as in BF1942. The person giving the review was just hoping they had changed that.