The Launcher and Updater

[Psyrus]

Can someone explain to me what's the deal with the video settings?

Could you expand upon that question?

[Souls Of Mischief]

Could you expand upon that question?

Will we be able to change all the settings or just a few?

What was the reason behind locking certain video setting from being altered?

[Psyrus]

What was the reason behind locking certain video setting from being altered?

I can only answer this one as I don't speak for the devs.. but basically anything that could be used as an exploitable setting (low/off) was disabled to level the playing field a little more, as PR is quite an old game and the % of people playing it with rigs that can't handle at least all medium is a tiny % of the total. The overall benefit outweighs the unfortunate cost to some peoples' performance, or so it was concluded.

I hope that answers your question. And before you ask, it was extensively tested/debated upon

[Ambush]

I can only answer this one as I don't speak for the devs.. but basically anything that could be used as an exploitable setting (low/off) was disabled to level the playing field a little more, as PR is quite an old game and the % of people playing it with rigs that can't handle at least all medium is a tiny % of the total. The overall benefit outweighs the unfortunate cost to some peoples' performance, or so it was concluded.

YES! YES! Y-E-S !

I'm pretty thrilled about this!

[Souls Of Mischief]

I can only answer this one as I don't speak for the devs.. but basically anything that could be used as an exploitable setting (low/off) was disabled to level the playing field a little more, as PR is quite an old game and the % of people playing it with rigs that can't handle at least all medium is a tiny % of the total. The overall benefit outweighs the unfortunate cost to some peoples' performance, or so it was concluded.

I hope that answers your question. And before you ask, it was extensively tested/debated upon

What settings were disabled?

[Psyrus]

What settings were disabled?

Terrain, Geometry & Lighting @ low. It's either Medium (the new "Low") or high. This prevents most visual exploits. It of course comes at a performance loss for very low-spec PCs.

[Souls Of Mischief]

Terrain, Geometry & Lighting @ low. It's either Medium (the new "Low") or high. This prevents most visual exploits. It of course comes at a performance loss for very low-spec PCs.

What kind of visual exploits?

Especially interested in lighting. Also, are the FPS drops, encountered by quite a few in the BETA, associated with these changes or...?

[Vista]

What kind of visual exploits?

Especially interested in lighting. Also, are the FPS drops, encountered by quite a few in the BETA, associated with these changes or...?

One of the exploits could be smoke and overgrowth not rendering.

[SShadowFox]

Which are Effects and Geometries issues, nothing to do with the bloody FPS killer, AKA "lighting".

[{ZW}C-LOKE]

I can only answer this one as I don't speak for the devs.. but basically anything that could be used as an exploitable setting (low/off) was disabled to level the playing field a little more, as PR is quite an old game and the % of people playing it with rigs that can't handle at least all medium is a tiny % of the total. The overall benefit outweighs the unfortunate cost to some peoples' performance, or so it was concluded.

I hope that answers your question. And before you ask, it was extensively tested/debated upon

Yeah, and my rig just so happens to be one of those small percentile! I could barely play PR back before beta, on all low settings, lighting and shadows all off, really everything the lowest I could put it (with the exception of texture quality, which didn't affect performance noticably, so of course this was high). Oh yeah, and view distance at 100% is a MUST, so of course that's 100% and there's no compromising.

Intel HD graphics 3000 LOL. My laptop is all high end aside from that little obvious haha. This is a "responsibilities come before pleasure" laptop. Haven't got money by any means for anything different. Oh how I miss the baller days of 2004-2009! My last gaming rig was back from the initial BF2 release days, also my "devel" rig...

Pentium 4 HT 3.4ghz 800mhz FSB,
4gigs 1000mhz ram,
Nvidia Nforce 4 mboard,
two Nvidia 8800 gtx in SLI.


I have however found the only workaround for these unforgivingly malicious graphics enforcements, and that's changing my display resolution all the way down to 800x600 But even then, it's still kinda unbearable at times, especially if there's a gang of geometry!

[Psyrus]

What kind of visual exploits?

Especially interested in lighting. Also, are the FPS drops, encountered by quite a few in the BETA, associated with these changes or...?

I'm just a CON, so I don't want to overstep my bounds and divulge dev team discussions. If a dev wants to comment further, they're free to do so

The FPS drops were primarily due to some of the memory hacks done to get the extra features (the old TR.exe stuff) running with a low sleep() interval or the like, which got bumped up and thus reduced the CPU usage overall... improving FPS for the majority of people towards the later patches of the open beta.

Yeah, and my rig just so happens to be one of those small percentile! I could barely play PR back before beta, on all low settings, lighting and shadows all off, really everything the lowest I could put it (with the exception of texture quality, which didn't affect performance noticably, so of course this was high). Oh yeah, and view distance at 100% is a MUST, so of course that's 100% and there's no compromising.

Intel HD graphics 3000 LOL.

Don't worry, I know your pain... exactly!

http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee94 ... chmark.png

[tankninja1]

So thats why it was so laggy in the beta. My PC can only play on mixed medium (and some low) settings and this new redo of the graphic settings were causing the lag. I thought it was the 100p servers.

[AfterDune]

It was probably a combination of 'everything': 100p servers, large 4km maps, medium settings, etc.

[Insanitypays]

that looks really professional. when you consider what a botch skyrim's UI was, and how much better yours is, you could easily get a high up UI job in a studio at this stage. congrats AM.

I would say though with EA's lack of support and bad publicity, now is probably the most opportune time to request the BF2 source code so project reality can be standalone, or do whatever negotiating is necessary. you'll never get something unless you ask for it.

Yea, that would be cool, but EA would probably try to wiggle their fingers in a little further.

[Doc.Pock]

Doesnt need to be open source, just give us the engine under a licence and people will still buy bf2 while pr devs can work their magic and implement dem fastropez alerady