Battle Field 2142

[SlyDave]

I got into the Tuning Beta and I have to say, its a MASSIVE improvment over 1942, whilst it remains vuritally the same game, its alot slicker, smoother and all round faster.

However its loading times leaving something to be desired and you really need to hike up the mouse sensitivity on everything so it doesn't feel sluggish.

Titan mode is basically UT2K4's Onsalught - capture nodes then take out the core.

All in all I'm shocked that I'm impressed concidering how much I don't like BF2 :)

I also love the ranking system, kill more, play more, work as a team more, get ranks get better gear - its what got me hooked on ET so long ago.

[spazmochad]

I'm looking forward to quake wars more tbh. The beta 2142 client is floating around on BT atm, but it needs a registration key :(

[SlyDave]

If QW is the same as ET but in the future I will fall in love with it however I think its going to be more like 1942, which saddens me :(

Until UT2K7 is out, BF2142 is the freshes thing around.

[tuBBymAN]

I also love the ranking system, kill more, play more, work as a team more, get ranks get better gear

Thats the whole idea in BF2 surely!

[(KKND)Solid Snake]

i am in the beta but i am just waiting for my pc to be finished before i start playing what specs are you using for the game because i might play on my old amd 2500xp

[BirdofPrey]

Hmm, I was invited into it after beta'ing BF2, but I dont have the time. From what ive seen though it looks like a UT/BF2 cross, which cant be a bad thing.

[SGT_Snacks]

I dunno, I see the BF series as a look of reality "1942 - World war II, BF2 - Modern war" So I couldn't really see how 2142 could do the same, but could still be fun all the same.

[BirdofPrey]

I think there going for reality, with cool gadgets, stuff that could have been invented by then.

Anyway theres mechs in it, so im happy!

[SlyDave]

Heh, The mechs are indeed cool. Takes a lot to take one out and they can take out everything (tho it needs a second person for anti air).

Tubby : Yes, but BF2 Sucks Goat Cock, the tracking, the aiming, to play that game it helps to be blind. Its STILL fulla bugs and you can do stuipd things with it - the age old problem of not playing your role - BF2142 enforces you to play your roll, no using anti-tank to take out men, no using AA to take out tanks etc. Much nicer.

I got 2Gig of memory and BF2142 uses 80% of it. and it has dire loading times, let hope they fix that. Its also got huge memory leaks after an hour or 2 its not uncommon for Windows to complain about memory or for the game to crash with access violation errors. The servers appear to have the same problem, after every 3-4 rounds they are rebooted.

Still good fun.

[BirdofPrey]

I got 2Gig of memory and BF2142 uses 80% of it. and it has dire loading times, let hope they fix that. Its also got huge memory leaks after an hour or 2 its not uncommon for Windows to complain about memory or for the game to crash with access violation errors. The servers appear to have the same problem, after every 3-4 rounds they are rebooted.So nothings changed there then...

[tuBBymAN]

BF2142 enforces you to play your roll, no using anti-tank to take out men, no using AA to take out tanks etc. Much nicer

Yeah but sometimes you need to play out of your role and it can be useful to take out a huge bunch of people but i guess that can be annoying.

[BirdofPrey]

But AA IRL could take out a tank, and a milan anti tank missile still contains quite a bit of explosives....

[tuBBymAN]

true must admit i'm a little out of touch with gaming after loosing lots of data in my hard drive calamities i had the other month not played any PC games at all. Not played any console games either but that all changes soooooon hehe

[SlyDave]

But AA IRL could take out a tank, and a milan anti tank missile still contains quite a bit of explosives....

Yes, but I'd like to see you angle a AA battery at a tank, their guidence systems arn't designed for tanks, they wouldn't know what it is.

The way it is done in BF2142 is very nice, the AA turrets can take out people, but it takes a LOT of shoots, this is becuase the damage the AA turrets do is mainly EMP which people are basically immune too. Tanks suffer emp damage, but this just causes them to become sluggish in controls or stops them in their tracks - no actual damage is done - thus the AA turrents are pointless against them.

The anti-tank turrets are rail cannons, they'll take out people no problem, IF you can hit them, remember that a rail cannons impact point is damn tiny, so you need a perfect shoot, and I mean damn perfect even more than the sniper rifle, attionally the anti-tank turrets have a slow tracking speed, you can out run it with ease, couple that with a very slow reload time - they are simply designed to take out tanks. Oh and they don't have a very large vertical angle so you can't use them for AA, unless the planes are very far away (in which case it'll most likey move before the shot arrives at the plane) or are very low to the ground - in which case its dead meat :D

There are a few expections, tanks can kill men easily, but have horrid horrid reload times. the walkers can kill anything and everything, but are the most effected by EMP, a EMP granade from foot troops can totaly stop it from moving or fireing for a good few seconds, an EMP blast from a APC can take it offline for 10-15 seconds. a big weakness but then it can own men, planes, tanks with ease. so its quite balanced.

[Wedgeh]

All I want to know is am I going to have the usual thing of 5 second shooting battles with a person 3 feet away from me and a complete feeling that the guns are useless. This hopeless shooting model has always kept me from enjoying the other features of the BF games, some of which are imo equally flawed. I'm a skilled simulation pilot yet the only productive thing I could do with the jets in BF2 was to fly them straight into whatever I wanted to kill in a kamikaze attack...

[SlyDave]

All I want to know is am I going to have the usual thing of 5 second shooting battles with a person 3 feet away from me and a complete feeling that the guns are useless. This hopeless shooting model has always kept me from enjoying the other features of the BF games, some of which are imo equally flawed. I'm a skilled simulation pilot yet the only productive thing I could do with the jets in BF2 was to fly them straight into whatever I wanted to kill in a kamikaze attack...

Nope Wedgeh, not any more. if someone is 2 feet away and you open fire, they WILL die, and very fast - the whole pace of the game has been sped up a lot, you can hit things from miles away without much problem now, even with the crappy guns, there is a nice indicator telling you which way you are being shot from too which is very handy and very important. Cover plays a huge part now, you can't simply run at your opponent and he who has the most ammo for spraying wins, becuase chances are someone in a APC or a chooper will gun the crap out of you with its chain cannons :P

Flying is much easier, but the whole speed of them has been slowed down a little to make them more controlable - the beta doesn't have any "jets" in it only hover choppers, of which 1 is a transport and one is a combat fighter (1 pilot with missles and emp, 1 gunner with chain cannon and guided bomb - same as in BF2) however the combat fighter takes some skill to be good at shooting and flying :) it also has rather limited ammo, designed for hit and runs, which is good as it means you can't just spray an aera with rockets, you need to actually aim at your target :)

[putty_thing]

Have a friend at work who signed up to be a fileplanet subscriber minutes after I told him about this beta :)

!droppods!

[SlyDave]

hehe, the drop pods are quite possibley the coolest thing in the game, oh apart from the mech :)

and the fact the squad leaders can unlock a droppod beacon for midfield reenforcements just owns :D

Getting a subscription just for BF2142 is a little excessive tho >.<

[eaterofpies]

Getting a subscription just for BF2142 is a little excessive tho >.<

Subscribing to fileplanet is excessive for any reason.

[BirdofPrey]

Hmm, I think the ballancing issue in any battlefield game has allways been a challenge. Mainly as it involves real world weapons, physics, and locations; and real world weapons are designed to kill people very efficently, real world physics make killing harder, and most battles have never been fought on totally even stakes or locations.

Now set it in the future and its a different kettle of fish, you get to invent the weapons, there good and bad points, make the terrain and use technological advances to genrally piss about with the laws of physics, ie you can make a much more ballanced game.

[welshbloke]

Anyway wot about the in game ads

"The initial EA title to incorporate dynamic in-game advertising via IGA is Battlefield 2142(TM)"

[eaterofpies]

If a server admin gets controll of and cash from the adverts I dont really have a problem so long as they fit into the game (billboards / posters in levels etc) and so long as the textures are high enough quality so they look good in game. If EA get the cash then thats just EA being a bunch of money grabbing bastards (again) and the people who thought it up deserve to be shot (again).

[welshbloke]

I think this is EA about making money WE may get a reduced cost software if we are willing to accept servers with adverts. The other cynical thing they are doing around 2142 is allowing preorder customers to download the demo 24 hours before it is released to the general public via the EA Downloader thingy.

[eaterofpies]

The demo will be availible be on a torrent 10 mins later

[BirdofPrey]

But it wont be playable, unless theres a hacked server software.

[SlyDave]

I'm highly opossed to any form of ingame ads, I play games to get away from real life, I do not want real life to infirdge on my escapeisum.

Ads in games that are game related are ok, such as Quarf in Eve-Online or the nurmours ads in X3. they arn't really ads for anything, but add to the lore of the game - being a commericalised environement for example.

I suspect they'll be blockers and the like for it anyway :)

[welshbloke]

Personnally I could not give two hoots about advertising assuming that they place it strategically within the game and they do not pop up like a message. After all I have been playing DODS and CSS with sprays and they are more likely to offend and annoy than any ad.

The main benefit to me will be if I get something back such as a reduced game purchase cost but this would imply that I could only play Ad games and we would have two kinds of players so not sure how this will work and suspect they will claim to be recouping server costs or something like that.

[SlyDave]

You really think they would lower the cost of buying the game in the first place? you're dreaming, they'll still charge ?40 for them, and then just rake in the extra money from the ads, this is EA we are talking about here, the poeple that view there brand name as so important they don't even let you skip their logo at the start of a game you've loaded a thousand times and know full damn well it was published by them.

[welshbloke]

No but that would be the only benefit to me as a customer although I am sure that the marketeers amongst you would say I would benefit from the "Targeted" advertising . I think paying full price then allowing a second revenue stream would be a poor decision.

I remember in game visual advertising in CS which worked well not sure what Valve thought of this though as they modified the maps by sticking spinning graphics in game. Of course advertising has being going on for while now that is after all what a MOTD and the Server graphics do in addition with 3rd party tools you can easily display messages. I suspect this is a step further and will almost certainly be intrusive or hell what would be the point.

[eaterofpies]

The reason I dont care so long as they fit within the game is that I block out billboards and posters so I probably wont even notice them in game after the initial novelty has worn off.

This will probably decrease the worth of the adverts over time unless they become much more intrusive.

Im really glad that im not the only one who has a really low opinion of EA. ;)

I dont think ive ever seen an advert im interested in or clicked on on the web. having said that targeted advertising tends to get really confused by the transparent proxys you get on ntl.

[BirdofPrey]

Personnally I could not give two hoots about advertising assuming that they place it strategically within the game and they do not pop up like a message. After all I have been playing DODS and CSS with sprays and they are more likely to offend and annoy than any ad.

The main benefit to me will be if I get something back such as a reduced game purchase cost but this would imply that I could only play Ad games and we would have two kinds of players so not sure how this will work and suspect they will claim to be recouping server costs or something like that.Movies dont get cheaper whem more product placement is included! Also being that the adverts are either going to be streamed or hard coded into the graphics i dont expect there going to be too hard to removed. Also the transparent proxies arnt going to be an issue, were all a target audience if were playing games, so we can all watch the same ad!

[tuBBymAN]

well a thought that has occured to me is that once you buy the game with adverts in it surely if you only ever play the offline single player then you will only ever have the same adverts which will of course become very dated and probably totally useless after a few months. If your on a server with adverts or hosting your own i.e. big game style, then what is going to happen? Will you have to download new advert packs each week from EA so they are current and relevant? surely this will impact on the pings of people playing etc not to mention the bandwidth of who is hosting the server. This could cost people money if they are a just a few people hosting their own little server somewhere with a smallish pipe. Don't they get enough money out of people already!

[BlackDemon]

Some SWAT style game has already used these in-game streaming ads.


It's not intrusive at all, they just replaced default pictures on billboards and posters in buildings with the real-life ads.
They blended into the game so you wouldn't even notice them unless you looked closely.
They logged how long each player looked at each ad for in each match to see which ads weren't attracting attention.


I have no problem with this at all, of course I know us as end consumers won't get any reductions in prices etc. and until they start popping up in your face when you're trying to aim or something then who cares. If you're really against it, just list all the ads you see in the game and then boycott those products for a year :?P

Also Tubbyman, the actual size of the ads is totally minimal and will in no way impact upon ping times or bandwidth costs. And they way it's been done before is that it just uses the default images that come with the game if it's not connected online.

[Wedgeh]

Does ANYONE look at the billboards in a game? I would class that as a tactical error...

[BlackDemon]

Exactly why it doesn't bother me :?)

[SlyDave]

They logged how long each player looked at each ad for in each match to see which ads weren't attracting attention.

.

This suggets code to calcuate the time you look at a texture that is flagged as an "ad".

In which case you're using extra CPU cycles on something that isn't the game, which means higher requirements, and/or less gfx/effects ect. Also means the developers spend time working on that and making it transparent rather than working on the game. and as we all know game development time is limited enough without having to work on other "EA style requirements".

Server adds when I join a server in the MOTD, when the round ends, reload of the maps etc, fine. ones in side the game, not fine.

[Ghostly]

hey guys... sorry but how can set a picture in my profile?

[welshbloke]

Click on userCP top leftish and then you can add picture.

[Blackstar]

Also try not hijacking threads. If what you want to know isn't applicable to any open thread (use search to check) then start a new one.
Thanks

[BirdofPrey]

This suggets code to calcuate the time you look at a texture that is flagged as an "ad".

In which case you're using extra CPU cycles on something that isn't the game, which means higher requirements, and/or less gfx/effects ect.TBH its not that much more, its probably only as simple as having a door openable, or a crate movable, without the strain on the gfx engine, or actually performing the action.

[tuBBymAN]

i guess these days with advertising everywhere we are immune to it, i mean how much attention does anyone pay to a billboard in real life!? As someone said putting them in games is just about making the games more like real life which is supposed to be a good thing obviously this would only work in certain games i mean your not gonna see a billboard for sony pop up somewhere in everquest or WoW are ya!

[eaterofpies]

i guess these days with advertising everywhere we are immune to it, i mean how much attention does anyone pay to a billboard in real life!?

I dont appear to be immune to spam on forums. I get the urge to inflict large ammounts of pain on people who post advertising spam messages.

[tuBBymAN]

yeah thats true but other forms of advertising go un-noticed. Most people are walking billboards anyway with branded trainers, t-shirts, jumpers etc not to mention the phone you use and the car you drive. Advertising is one of those things that happens as part of modern life so its perfectly reasonable to assume it will happen in gaming to.

[eaterofpies]

The reg has some more info on ingame advertising in EA games. Looks like its going to be EA trying to make a shedload of cash without any benefit for the gamers.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/08/massive_eagames_deal/

[putty_thing]

Looks like its going to be EA trying to make a shedload of cash without any benefit for the gamers.

Surely not!?

[BlackDemon]

If it counters companies losses from piracy, thus allowing more and better games to be developed by more companies in the future then I'm all for it.

[Wedgeh]

If it counters companies losses from piracy, thus allowing more and better games to be developed by more companies in the future then I'm all for it.

So if I pirate the game, but look at the adverts, it's all good :D

[Blackstar]

lol I like the theory!

[BlackDemon]

Yeah exactly, I can live with that :?)

[SlyDave]

Thats the message that will go out if EA use the "we use ads to combat pricay lose" argument. More people will simply pirate the game "why by the game? the company gets money from on going adds within it"

Of course this could spur a new generation of marketing/game making where the game is free and fully covered by ingame ads - very possible for an online only game. However a risky straegy for the developer and I suspect would result in a much larger amount of episoicaly games, and many many clones, and less new game engines.

IE: I think in game ads will be more damaging the industry then people think - yet very profitable.

[Blackstar]

Check here for lots of mirrors to the newly released Battlefield 2142 demo!

http://www.filemirrors.com/search.src?type=contains&file=2142&action=Find

[welshbloke]

I would not rush BF2 is still the better game the demo is serverly crippled. They give you a taste but do not allow unlocks or any advancement. If anything 2142 is a beefed up booster pack.

[Murat24405]

do any of you speak Italiano?

[M_D_K]

nope we speak *fuck off* :)