asch

General tips & tricks
1) Install the latest drivers for your BIOS, video card, sound card, motherboard, etc.
2) First try out the game with all video and audio settings set to off or low. Slowly increase a setting one by one, testing out the playability on a full 64 player server.
3) Battlefield 2 Tweak Guide
4) Disable or correctly configure any software firewall. (ZoneAlarm Thread)
5) Under options --> Game options, select "Cable 256KPBS or better" and NOT "T1 (lan)". Many users have reported that this causes additional network lag. The reason is not completely known.
6) Disable or shut down any background processes that are not needed for this game.
7) Check for and remove spyware / adware.
8) Defrag your hard drive.

For Intel based systems
1) It has been found that hyper-threading on some Intel based machines will cause the game to crash. The exact reason isn't known, but many users have been able to solve this problem by going into their BIOS and disabling this feature.

d3dx9_25.dll error
Try some of these solutions.

1) Install DirectX 9.0c

2) Navigate to the /directx folder on the BF2 CD/DVD
Open the file: Apr2005_d3dx9_25_x86.cab or Apr2005_d3dx9_25_x64.cab (files vary based on an x86 or 64bit system)
Copy the compressed file called d3dx9_25.dll to the /games/Battlefield 2/ folder.
Open the file Feb2005_d3dx9_24_x86.cab or Feb2005_d3dx9_24_x64.cab (files vary based on an x86 or 64bit system)
Copy the compressed file called d3dx9_24.dll to the /games/Battlefield 2/ folder.

Additional Threads
http://www.tacticalgamer.com/battlefield-2-technical-support-faqs/55256-d3dx9_25-dll-not-found.html
http://www.forumplanet.com/planetbat...92&tid=1671127
http://www.forumplanet.com/planetbat...92&tid=1671194

How can I change my in-game name?
Each individuals name must be unique and is tied to the email address that you created the account with. Here are several possible solutions...

1) Create a new account with a different email address. At this time, this is the most effective solution.

2) The theory is that the accounts you create are gamespy accounts. Try logging into GameSpy with the account you want to change and then go to the user profile and change your in-game name. I have not personally tested this however.

When I delete my account why can I not use the same email address to create another?
Deleting your account only deletes the profile from your machine. It does not delete the account that was created (at GameSpy?). At this time I do not know of a solution to this.

How can I decrease the system lag that I'm experiencing in-game?
This is more of an art than a science as each machine behaves differently based upon the system specs. Here are a couple things to try to alleviate lag.

Inproper audio setup will cause lag.
If you have hardware rendering turned on and your sound card / chip does not support hardware rendering, you will experience lag. Change this to software rendering.

If you have your audio settings set too high and you use software rendering, you may experience lag. Software rendering uses your CPU to process sound and will decrease performance. Turn sounds down to low and slowly work your way higher, testing each setting.

If you have EAX enabled and your card does not support EAX, then you may experience lag. Disable this features.

Environmental Audio Extensions. This is the trademark name for Creative Technology's audio API for their own range of sound cards. Initially developed to offer a reverb effect for all sounds; it has expanded to cover a range of audio features such as occlusions, reflection, or obstruction.

Soundblaster -- About EAX
Soundblaster -- EAX in Gaming
Soundblaster -- EAX in BF2
EA -- Partial list of sound cards that do NOT support EAX

Inproper video setup will cause lag.
This is a difficult one to solve. The best route is to turn all video settings off or set them to low and test your system out on a full 64 players server. Slowly increase your settings and test out your system. These settings vary based on your system setup.

The same goes for the view distance. Drop it to 75% and slowly work your way up from there.

Depending on the memory of your video card, you may need to adjust a BIOS setting. Go into your bios and look for the AGP Aperture Size setting and set this equal to that of your video card.

Video drivers greatly affect your video performance. In some cases you will want to install the latest video drivers. This is not always the case however and you may need to rollback to a previous version.

The in-game sounds seem choppy or crackle
The leading culprit of this is that the audio setting is set to hardware rendering when your card does not support hardware rendering. Change this to software rendering vary your sound quality based on performance testing.

Can I copy the profile from another account for from the demo version?
Yes.
1) Navigate to your \My Documents\Battlefield 2\Profiles directory. (Note or your \My Documents\Battlefield 2 Demo\Profiles directory). Inside that folder you will see 0001, 0002, etc. There will be at least one for each account you created.
2) Locate the profiles you wish to copy by navigating into each 000x folder and open the profile.con file. You will see the nickname / email of that profile.
3) For copying from the demo to retail, just copy the 000x folder to your retail profiles folder. For copying within the same version, just copy the contents of the folder to the new profile.

How can I turn off the pre-game movies?
There is no in-game setting to do this, however you can easily change the name of the files on your machine. Navigate to your \Program Files\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2\mods\bf2\Movies (or \Program Files\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2 Demo\mods\bf2\Movies) folder and rename the move files as listed below.

Retail
Dice.bik --> Dice.bik.BACKUP
EA.bik --> EA.bik.BACKUP
Intro.bik --> Intro.bik.BACKUP
Legal.bik --> Legal.bik.BACKUP

Demo
demo_bf2legal.bik --> demo_bf2legal.bik.BACKUP
demo_bf2release.bik --> demo_bf2release.bik.BACKUP
demo_demolegaltext.bik --> demo_demolegaltext.bik.BACKUP
demo_locknload.bik --> demo_locknload.bik.BACKUP

To restore the movie files, just rename them back to the original.

How can I remap the control keys for the game?
Simply use the mouse to select the control you wish to bind. You are allowed two keys to perform the same function. Once you select the control, then select the key, mouse button, joystick button, etc. that you wish to bind.

I can't bind a key because I have a conflict.
Find the conflicting control. Use the mouse button and select the control that is conflicting and hit the ESC key. This will remove the bind.

I keep getting kicked for a punkbuster error that says I'm not updated.
Occassionaly your system does not automatically download the latest punkbuster files as expected. In this situation, follow these steps.

1) Download pbweb.exe (for windows users) to your \Program Files\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2\pb folder.
2) Execute that file and allow it to run it's course. Your machine should have the latest PB files now.

Also check out this thread for an alternative to the pbweb.

I cannot install / start the game because I'm told I have a CD/DVD copy application installed.
BF2's copy protection system has several CD/DVD drives and applications (i.e. CloneCD) blacklisted and will not install/run when those are present.

The game freezes after the map load at the gun / squad selection screen.
So far the likely culprit is a bad profile. We're not exactly sure why this is happening, but many have found the fix by going into their profile and resetting their controls to default. Once that is done, try it out again. If that works, go back and set your controls to what you like.

Crash / Close to desktop
Our friendly neighborhood snake, er Black_V!per has put together a few tips to help with the crashing to desktop problems. These are each independant of each other and may or may not help your situation.

Full crash (causing reboot)
Researching

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asch

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Gaming Videos by Tactical Gamers

Fear the Frog! | Kill the Frog! | An Inconvenient Truth

"Support game play in a near-simulation environment. Where the focus of play would not be solely on doing what it takes to win, but doing so utilizing real-world combat strategy and tactics rather than leveraging exploits provided to players by the design of the game engine, regardless of the level of advantage, if any, it gives over the opposing team." -- Tactical Gamer Primer