official Battlefield: Bad Company 2

[SMELTN]

Says who, I wouldn't expect to see it before 2011

I read it somewhere, got it in an email from one of the gaming sites, I want to say it was from one of DICE's guys in a Twitter post or something..

I can't find anything in Google.. hmm I do remember reading it though.

[Sethos]

I read it somewhere, got it in an email from one of the gaming sites, I want to say it was from one of DICE's guys in a Twitter post or something..

I can't find anything in Google.. hmm I do remember reading it though.

You probably can't find it because no official sources have given a release time-frame. The only official word is, it will be released "after" the end of the fiscal year 2009, which is March 2010.

Then you have to take into account, EA aren't retarded; they won't release a direct competitor to their own game in the same time-frame. So at the very,

very earliest I'd say Christmas this year or else it won't be until the end of Fiscal year 2010 which makes most sense for both number padding and pure business logic.

So don't worry about having to decide between the two unless you are one of those people with only enough money to buy a game every other year. You will have played BC2 more than enough

by the time BF3 even has a release date.

[SMELTN]

You probably can't find it because no official sources have given a release time-frame. The only official word is, it will be released "after" the end of the fiscal year 2009, which is March 2010.

Then you have to take into account, EA aren't retarded; they won't release a direct competitor to their own game in the same time-frame. So at the very,

very earliest I'd say Christmas this year or else it won't be until the end of Fiscal year 2010 which makes most sense for both number padding and pure business logic.

So don't worry about having to decide between the two unless you are one of those people with only enough money to buy a game every other year. You will have played BC2 more than enough

by the time BF3 even has a release date.

10-4

So I guess I still want to know some of the answers to my original questions then which is:

How long is the beta suppose to be? <br style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">If I buy the game in the stores, will I be able to add the key to steam so it will load it as a "steam game" and will be able to join my friends on steam?

[Spookie]

will I be able to add the key to steam so it will load it as a "steam game" and will be able to join my friends on steam?

You can add your friends to the in game friends list and join them directly from there.

[Sethos]

Happy Birthday Spookie (Y)

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

From first attack area (spawn) to town:

Frames Time (ms) Min Max Avg

3823 90000 30 65 42.478

From town to harbour:

Frames Time (ms) Min Max Avg

1817 49226 28 67 36.911

Fighting in harbour:

Frames Time (ms) Min Max Avg

3945 90000 30 58 43.833

Final push:

Frames Time (ms) Min Max Avg

3807 90000 29 63 42.3

This is with everything set to medium, except effects (which is set to high), HBAO off, and 2xAA/8xAF @ 1680x1050 with a Radeon HD 4870. I'll see how it runs later with everything set to high.

[Toxicfume Veteran]

Don't you need the Beta Key to be able to play the Beta PC version? Or have they since lifted that requirement?

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

Don't you need the Beta Key to be able to play the Beta PC version? Or have they since lifted that requirement?

Yes, you need one. You can get one from these retailers by pre-ordering the game.

[Spookie]

Happy Birthday Spookie (Y)

ty :)

Can't get enough of this, got 7 people who I use to play CS totally in to this. Some annoying moments when the bullet reg goes awol. But when your friend has ran off and suck a dart on to the Stationary AT so you can fire a RPG from a mile away and kill the user. Ugh, lush. :p

[Spookie]

Sorry for the double post can't edit.

"repi: .@Hotcooler The 'high' texture detail level isn't implemented in #BFBC PC beta. Is in the final release so will be a bit sharper"

Just saw that on twitter.

[SMELTN]

Happy B-Day spookie

[ViperAFK]

They also said a lot of optimizations aren't present in the beta and they may patch some in.

my PC gets great fps as it is though, becuase I have a quad. all high settings never drops below 40 fps, usually 50-70 fps. The graphics would be really great with the improved textures, thats the only thing thats really ruining it for me right now. Especially the ub3r pixelated trees.

[Spookie]

Only caught the end of the round unfortunately. :p

[ViperAFK]

heh my highest accuracy has been like 20% but I play assault and engineer.

[HostileGamer]

This should be called an "alpha" IMO. I really hope that they are able to release a polished product by March.

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

Sorry for the double post can't edit.

"repi: .@Hotcooler The 'high' texture detail level isn't implemented in #BFBC PC beta. Is in the final release so will be a bit sharper"

Just saw that on twitter.

If that's the case, then we can expect lower performance. That's assuming they're going to use a similar build as the beta. Thankfully, that won't be the case. The build used in the beta isn't the latest because of stability concerns. I'm sure the final build will have performance optimizations for NVIDIA and ATI video cards. Then there's driver optimizations that could result in even better performance.

This should be called an "alpha" IMO. I really hope that they are able to release a polished product by March.

How so? It's stable, yes - and it definitely has bugs (which can be fixed). The whole purpose of the 'beta' is to iron out these bugs and discover new ones. It's pretty much a given that the game will be polished by March.

[Spookie]

Thankfully, that won't be the case. The build used in the beta isn't the latest because of stability concerns. I'm sure the final build will have performance optimizations for NVIDIA and ATI video cards. Then there's driver optimizations that could result in even better performance.

Apparently the build is 6 weeks behind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NCQek4fWV8

[SMELTN]

BTW question about screenshots. How do you take them and were are they saved?

Non steam game btw

[Richard Hammond]

I see the tos*ers have started playing the game already, getting their friends to put C4 on UAV and flying it to the MCOM boxes and blowing them up before the round has even started properly. Hope this doesnt turn into MW2.

[HostileGamer]

How so? It's stable, yes - and it definitely has bugs (which can be fixed). The whole purpose of the 'beta' is to iron out these bugs and discover new ones. It's pretty much a given that the game will be polished by March.

I say this because most betas I have been apart of are "usually" a bit more polished than this game & has more time to iron out the bugs before release. I do know that this is an EA game and it's probably going to be alot like BF2 in the sense that they will release it buggy and issue a substantial patch after 3 months with will make the game alot more enjoyable.

[Spookie]

Few confirmed statements from DICE:

Flashing water and terrain on Crossfire

Fixed in retail game.

Particle shadows disabled on SLI + DirectX9

They used to cause a huge performance drop. Fixed in retail game.

DirectX9 crashes

We have improved stability some in the retail game, particularly when "losing" the graphics device due to alt-tab

WinXP 32 / WinXP 64 compatibility

We have done a few crash fixes, although we have no data specifically on XP64 yet.

Updater fails downloading patch and gives a nonsensical error message about "unable to download patch, check your internet connection"

Fixed in the retail game. The problem is both in the game's installer and in the updater.

Closed Beta workaround: launch the Updater as Administrator.

Some or all of WASD keys stop working

If you have a joystick connected, and it is not perfectly calibrated, then it will signal tiny movements in some direction. These tiny movements overrule the WASD keys. We are aware of the problem.

Closed Beta workaround: Disconnect your joystick

Crash during level load on ATI x1900 cards

The game requires driver version 9.12 or later to function. 9.11 crashes hard inside the driver. Unfortunately there are no new enough drivers available for the X1900 cards.

Closed Beta workaround: Rename BFBC2Game.exe to BF2.exe, and launch BF2.exe directly.

Sometimes you keep moving even after you have released a key

Noted. We have reproduced it at the DICE office too. As a side note: this never happened to a single developer during the past 6 months' worth of testing. Strange.

"Connection to server has been lost"

This one is tricky. We have no solution yet.

Some sounds are played in the wrong speaker

Audio team are investigating.

Crackups in sound

No data yet.

Weapon balancing and tuning

When we created the first Closed Beta, we picked the most stable build we had. (Well, you have all seen how well that build fared when it faced the real world...) We had to choose either stability or new content -- and stability won. Due to this, all content in the Closed Beta was some weeks old already at launch.

Weapon balancing is on-going in the retail game, and we are following what's happening on the forums.

HBAO is very GPU hungry, resulting in low framerates on high-end machines

We are working on faster versions of the filter.

Closed Beta workaround: disable HBAO. Looks less pretty, runs better.

The game has high framerate on a machine, yet the input is very laggy

We have a fix in the works.

[Sethos]

Few confirmed statements from DICE:

Flashing water and terrain on Crossfire

Fixed in retail game.

They could at least send out an update before the beta closes :(

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

Thanks for that, Spookie. I really hope the retail version runs better. Better yet, I hope they update the beta so it runs better.

BTW question about screenshots. How do you take them and were are they saved?

Non steam game btw

At first, the only way I could take screenshots was to minimize the game so it shows up in windowed mode. Now, I use FRAPS.

I say this because most betas I have been apart of are "usually" a bit more polished than this game & has more time to iron out the bugs before release. I do know that this is an EA game and it's probably going to be alot like BF2 in the sense that they will release it buggy and issue a substantial patch after 3 months with will make the game alot more enjoyable.

Fair enough. I'd hate to play the retail version with major bugs. I can tolerate minor bugs as those can be squished fairly quickly.

[John Freeman]

Bah, now im confused... Did actual benchmark with fraps and results were rather good. Especially considering its mostly high (except effects - on medium), no aa.

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg

6995, 123405, 32, 90, 56.683

But in reality it feels really choppy. Nowhere as smooth as it should be with numbers like that. Anyway, im shutting up about that now :p

[SMELTN]

Could actually be the server John. Some servers I play on the game play is perfect, smooth as a babies butt, others I play on, its choppy as crap and makes you think its your FPS when its really the server.

BTW anyone been joining servers that have everything locked out. I mean no leveling or anything?