Question about Future of PR.

[Hotrod525]

Ok, like every one who ever read the forum, we all seen thounsands of thread talking about switching PR engine to an other one.

Now, with the new Battlefield series announced on PC, the question became more ground-to-ground, i known its too late for says "Yes we are moving to Frostbite"/"No we dont". There is too many information missing, like how many people would be able to play online on PC, did the game will had complete or limited editor ( i mean by complete an editor that allow you to create more than only a map!! ).

I personaly love the Frostbite engine, but, i must admit, a more powerfull engine, mean more hardware whore game, and may be a more complicated thing to mod. Except the nearly destruction of everything there and the incredible map view distance (72km)... i had nothing to said

Comments ?

[Mora]

Lets first see if there comes a editor or not.

[Oddsodz]

Unless it can handle more then 64 players on a server. I Don't see the need to try.

[Conman51]

maybe the devs cab start recommending ideas for the modding community, like editor, server size,etc....i hope they do something like the arma engine where it just renders what you look at, but idk if that's really how it works

[cobrax25]

this "new" battlefield is not BF3.

it only supports 24 players...and in all likelyness will not even have an SDK.

[Hotrod525]

I'm not talkin about Battlefield 1943. I'm talkin about Battlefield Bad Company 2.

[Priby]

Unless it can handle more then 64 players on a server. I Don't see the need to try.

Agreed!

[Rhino]

from what I've seen of BF1943 it dose not meet anything near the main core requirements of what PR needs, 24 player limit probably being one of the biggest factors in there.

[space]

I think we need clarification on weather or not BFBC2 for PC is basically BF3. I would have thought that they would have gone with the BF3 name, if anything just for marketing purposes.

Im sure that the FrostED will be released to modders at some point, and whatever people say, Im sure all the PR modders will be trying it our as soon as they get the chance.

In the same way that it much harder to develop commercial games now due to the increased capabilities and expectations, Im sure it will also be much harder to mod games in the future. but Im not sure that PR or any other mod has the choise of not moving up at some point.

[Water_Is_Poison18]

Right now, I think the most likely candidate will be ArmA 2 (depending on how it actually turns out). Granted, it probably won't be an official PR mod, however I have a feeling that the game will be a natural progression for realism/milsilm fans. Not only will it be great for modding, but it will also support a larger number of players in game.

[cobrax25]

I'm not talkin about Battlefield 1943. I'm talkin about Battlefield Bad Company 2.

Bad Company 2 will likely have a 24 player limit also.

as for Arma 2...well the engine would be perfect....except for the fact that Arma is already a simulation...modding PR into it would be redundant.

[Flanker15]

While ARMA/ARMA2 do have the simulation elements in place, it lacks the robust structure and organisation of PR. Arma matches are very chaotic with people acting by themselves most of the time (getting organised squads and C2 is up to the players, so it doesn't happen outside of clan matches).

Bf 2142 engine has several perks:
-It'll still run on older computers which PR players may still be using.
-It's most likly very similar to BF2 for programming.
-It has features that would allow things that are greatly sought after but impossible in the BF2 engine.

[Flanker15]

"deleted dupe post"

[Fatal1ty]

I think the current engine is fine as it is

also: is it true that the next BF (3) is going to have 128 player maps? one was called Baghdad burning i think

[RustyBandSaw]

The game play would suffer with the limitation of 24-players (as previously mentioned). I could see a small mod done for squad size play, with nothing greater than HMMWV's in terms of vehicles.

[Comptons]

I think the release of Battlfield 1943 for PC will be a chance for the DEVs to see how the frostbite engine behaves on the PC platform, and maybe even start some future project considering that both games, Bad Company 2 and Bf1943 use the same engine. I dont think that ARMA2 is a candidate for PR, because as alredy mentioned, ARMA 2 is already focusing on realism and PR would be redundant.
ps: I doubt that the frostbite engine can handle only 24 player, I would say that this quantity is related to gameplay and not to an engine limitation, but thats just a guess...

[Outlawz7]

Bf 2142 engine has several perks:
-It'll still run on older computers which PR players may still be using.
-It's most likly very similar to BF2 for programming.
-It has features that would allow things that are greatly sought after but impossible in the BF2 engine.

BF2142 is a BF2 mod with some extra code stuff that DiCE threw in so that it wouldn't completely resemble a BF2 mod.

[RedAlertSF]

Frostbite can handle 96 players IIRC.

From BF1942 stats (3 maps, 24 players) you can clearly see that it's just a beta test to tell does FrostbiteDX work well. Then we are getting BFBC2, a lot more players, probably SDK can all that stuff. Then we can see could it be good engine for PR or not. I don't believe BFBC2 would have only 24 players online, DICE would never destroy a BF-game that way.

I don't see ArmA 2 as option at all. It's already realism based.

[ThePieSpy]

pretty sad how a BF1942 had 64 player support way back in 2002, hell even Starseige: TRIBES had like 50 player servers and was released in 1998. Here we are in the age of high-speed interenet a decade later and 24 players is the best we can get on the PC?

[eggman]

I have no idea what Frostbite on PC will look / behave / mod like. But I would be surprised if they invested significant efforts into large scale multiplayer (larger than 64p I mean). But BF:BC2 certainly has potential to be a very cool game and mod platform.

EA has not been supportive of the mod community. Key elements of the BF2 business model (ranked servers, boster packs) are major inhibitors to the mod scene. Additionally PR is a very succesful BF2 mod; far and away the most played BF2 mod. We've not been contacted about mod support / features / wish lists for any of these Frostbite based games. I always kinda regard that as a slap in the face... I would have thought they'd be interested in engaging some of the mod teams on a very regular basis. It's really a shame because DICE started out as a small mod crew.

==

ArmA 2 has potential, but to be honest.... hrm..... I dunno if PR could be succesful on ArmA 2. There is a realism mod community there already.. the actual model for modding in ArmA is *very* different than BF2.. I mean that it's not the same sort of "pure" multiplayer game that the BF series is. People expect to mix and match mod elements for co-op and multiplayer play, as opposed to download a single monolithic mod and join one of several dedicated hosts.

the ArmA netcode .. well... it has issues imo, I hope they fix that in ArmA 2. My concern is that they are focussing on the "story" to help sell the console version and less on large scale multiplayer.

But ArmA is, imo, an outstanding game with a few major issues and a bunch of minor issues that add up to really hurt the game. Maybe those get fixed in ArmA 2? Who knows...

==

Personally I'd like to see PR become a stand-alone indie game. Moving to mod another platform would be a tremendous amount of work (Frostbite is likely going to be radically different than the BF2 engine from a mod perspective). And we'd still be stuck with whatever limitations and/or business models are tied to the platform.

The TGEA engine, which we have some possibility of winning a license for, is potentially the best engine choice for a PR game. The Tribes heritage has seen a lot of the basic concepts for a multiplayer FPS already built into the engine. Even if we don't win, it's affordable (but certainly for our non existant budget the bundle of tools would be a huge help). Additionally there are a LOT of free and commercial resources built up around the TGEA engine. If we were smart about planning (which we would be) we could actually get set up in a position where the majority of the work would be like modding.

HOWEVER.. it's still a gargantuan task.. a lot that we take for granted today in PR comes from BF2. We'd have to re-create much of that (simple stuff like voice recordings and the mechanisms to support voice-to-player-actions is an example of an entire subsystem we'd have to re-create from scratch).

Ultimately PR on BF2 is going to die out. There are still people playing BF42 mods, but I think it would be a terrible waste of the community and the development talents if we don't do something.. the most interesting and ambitous of which would be to develop a stand alone game.

egg