Project Reality Forums

Schlumpfy wrote:Doesn't matter anyway, my PRMM just closes after 2 mins ingame for no reason.

that'd be in singleplayer right?

Well i can't find any multiplayer servers.

Once the 1.3 patch is released, we will adjust PRMM 0.2 to be compatible with it and then release. 1.3 should be coming in the next few days hopefully.

requiem wrote:Once the 1.3 patch is released, we will adjust PRMM 0.2 to be compatible with it and then release. 1.3 should be coming in the next few days hopefully.

I was hoping that would be the case!

I just hope 1.3 doesnt screw too much up.

Have you guys seen the 1.3 review on IGN??

Doesnt sound like a great deal has changed.... if you take into account what progress small mod communities make (i.e. PRMM) how come a multi billion dollar company such as EA can't make significant improvements in fairly short time scales.
ANSWER: Their budget for supporting the product post-sale must be tiny.

I'm a stock control database developer, part of a 2 man development team - we have to make complex reports & program functionality day in day out... If we can make such progress in our field, surely the biggest game developer in the world can do better than this.

Grrrrr....

gnwbumblino wrote:I was hoping that would be the case!

I just hope 1.3 doesnt screw too much up.

Have you guys seen the 1.3 review on IGN??

Doesnt sound like a great deal has changed.... if you take into account what progress small mod communities make (i.e. PRMM) how come a multi billion dollar company such as EA can't make significant improvements in fairly short time scales.
ANSWER: Their budget for supporting the product post-sale must be tiny.

I'm a stock control database developer, part of a 2 man development team - we have to make complex reports & program functionality day in day out... If we can make such progress in our field, surely the biggest game developer in the world can do better than this.

Grrrrr....

These bugfixing mentality reminds me of the autoindustry. You buy the car, you find the bugs ??: - We fix it...after you had a breakdown. Instead of preventing...If these guys had more time programming the game, it would be more flawless. It's the gamers fault, too. They want games, better yesterday than tomorrow.

gnwbumblino wrote:I was hoping that would be the case!

I just hope 1.3 doesnt screw too much up.

Have you guys seen the 1.3 review on IGN??

Doesnt sound like a great deal has changed.... if you take into account what progress small mod communities make (i.e. PRMM) how come a multi billion dollar company such as EA can't make significant improvements in fairly short time scales.
ANSWER: Their budget for supporting the product post-sale must be tiny.

I'm a stock control database developer, part of a 2 man development team - we have to make complex reports & program functionality day in day out... If we can make such progress in our field, surely the biggest game developer in the world can do better than this.

Grrrrr....

The difference between you and them is the target audience and scale of the project.

Database development isn't anywhere near as complex as game development. The reason being, you are using a technology (such as Oracle) whereas game development relies on literally creating a technology. The BF2 game engine is developed inhouse, so think of it as actually developing a fully featured programming language (well, not to that scale, but I think you get the idea).

The technology you are using, whatever it may be, has probably been tested for years by thousands of people. Their budget for such testing is much larger than a video game developer, not to mention testing a video game is different than testing server technology. Consider that there are analysts who have built their entire profession around such things -- whereas game developers can pay some geeks minimum wage to sit around and play the latest and greatest video games while submitting bug reports.

The next thing is that database development doesn't come anywhere near creating stand alone applications, because there you are always working within the constraints of the application that will be using the data.

For example, if you're developing for a web based environment, you know exactly what can happen and when. Browsers have a way of interacting with the server, servers have a way of interacting with the database. Each of the technologies (client/server/database) are created by seperate companies that do their own testing.

It's like taking BF2 and giving the server to one company, the single player to another company, and the multiplayer to another company -- and let them all do their own testing, each one having someting to gain thus using it's own budget. That literally means that, when working for the web, the testing budget is multiplied by the 3 times -- and if you're using open source technologies then testing personnel are multipled by about 5,000.

Because EA is a mammoth of a company, they have alot of regulations that need to be followed in order to get things done in an organized way. They can't tell each studio that they own "just do what you want, and let us know when you release the game". If that were the case, the company wouldn't be able to keep track of their finances and efficiency.

The larger a company gets, the farther their reach, but the slower their expansion.

So for every little feature that the team for BF2 adds, they have to do a ton of testing to make sure that it went through ok. And even then, things will slip through and bugs will emerge. If you've done any application development at all (on a large scale), you will understand where they are coming from. The relationships between different modules and objects of the application get so fucking complicated, you need a 1000 page manual just to get the jist of it all.

And lastly, consider working for a company like EA... it's huge. You have to follow specific rules and guidelines with your code and aren't allowed to be creative in the least. This is where the line between work & play because a big fat elephant -- thus making the programming enthusiast hate his job and not give a good shit about the project he's working on.

Such is the trend in all big business.

Instead of commenting on how long it takes to release bug fixes, consider this:

How many games like BF2 even exist? BF2 is a shit ton of games rolled into one. There are games strictly based on infantry combat and games strictly based on vehicle combat. BF2 merges all of this, while still retaining a rather large weapon selection, big maps and outstanding graphical quality.

You'll agree with me when Operation Flashpoint 2 is released, riddled with bugs. It's an inevitability for games on such a scale.

My only complaint towards EA & DICE is that they chose to go the path of action-shooter with the series instead of a realistic approach. Then again, I'm thankfull that they allowed modding capability so that mods like PR can shine!

I see what youre saying, however EA owns a number of dev studios and you can't tell me that they don't exchange information concerning graphic and gameplay advances. Battlefield has been around for quite some time and I think the point that was being made earlier, is that instead of getting better with each new generation, battlefield has instead gotten progressively worse ( in terms of gameplay ) with each release.

It seems to be the same things needing fixed every time a BF comes out. You would think they could look at what people asked for or needed concerning web browser support and mod support from previous titles and factored that in when creating the new game ( they never do ), the game access and ability to sift through servers has always been a problem in BF titles and has always been one of the first things they fix. If they had taken time and considered what worked in previous games, a lot of the aggrevation could be avoided. Certainly creating a new engine and game creates new problems, but they never seem to remember about old problems and fix it before it breaks.

It seems they failed to learn and subsequently had to start from scratch. The server browser problem was in BF42, they fixed it. When they released BF:V, I remeber discussing with a friend, that I hoped they would have solved that problem, we decided that they must have as it was an issue in 42. They hadn't, it's the little things they seem unabale or unwilling to learn that piss people off. BF2 is a beautiful looking game with a great deal of promise, it's just a little unfortuante that Dice wouldn't ( or couldn't? ) take the time to put a little polish on the game before release. Instaed they intend to charge us all another $30 - $50 to polish it with the expansion and you just know that it will be full of the same problems as the Vanilla release, because they don't listen or learn.

DAWG wrote:I see what youre saying, however EA owns a number of dev studios and you can't tell me that they don't exchange information concerning graphic and gameplay advances. Battlefield has been around for quite some time and I think the point that was being made earlier, is that instead of getting better with each new generation, battlefield has instead gotten progressively worse ( in terms of gameplay ) with each release.

It seems to be the same things needing fixed every time a BF comes out. You would think they could look at what people asked for or needed concerning web browser support and mod support from previous titles and factored that in when creating the new game ( they never do ), the game access and ability to sift through servers has always been a problem in BF titles and has always been one of the first things they fix. If they had taken time and considered what worked in previous games, a lot of the aggrevation could be avoided. Certainly creating a new engine and game creates new problems, but they never seem to remember about old problems and fix it before it breaks.

It seems they failed to learn and subsequently had to start from scratch. The server browser problem was in BF42, they fixed it. When they released BF:V, I remeber discussing with a friend, that I hoped they would have solved that problem, we decided that they must have as it was an issue in 42. They hadn't, it's the little things they seem unabale or unwilling to learn that piss people off. BF2 is a beautiful looking game with a great deal of promise, it's just a little unfortuante that Dice wouldn't ( or couldn't? ) take the time to put a little polish on the game before release. Instaed they intend to charge us all another $30 - $50 to polish it with the expansion and you just know that it will be full of the same problems as the Vanilla release, because they don't listen or learn.

I agree with everything you say, but at the same time try to factor in development time.

I've developed numerous applications and, for the larger ones, the policy has always been, "do the important stuff first, but make the application extensible enough to add on tools for usability later".

Although this may seem unfair to some people, such is the world of any development (gaming or not). Yes, bugs will be overlooked, features will be unmade, etc... it happens all of the time for every game release for every genre in every country for every company.

The good thing is that the developers are still here supporting the game and releasing patches. BF1942 was a polished ***** after all of the patches, which is great.

The reason I'm so passionate about this is because I look at a game as more than just a game. I look at it as a piece of software that was developed. Even the pricetag is amazing in my opinion.

Take a look at applications that deal with simple shit like simple text editors or web page generators... the minimum for that kind of stuff is usually around 20-30 bucks. The higher end pieces of software like Photoshop is $600.00 -- and what differences, as far as complexity, does it have to a video game like BF2 that has 3d engine built from scratch? Not to mention, Adobe (now known as Macrodobe ) gets the same complaints that a game like BF2 gets regarding support and bugs.

I'm satisfied with the fact that we can mod this game and that the support is coming in like it always has. Yes, we get our share of corporate greed added to the mix -- but that goes without saying for anything run by a company like EA (but without EA or DICE, BF2 wouldn't even exist).

he's right, they do deserve credit for there even being a BF2. also remember that EA doesnt throw all its resources into a single game, if they did theyd risk a flop that costs their whole company. they try to reach a wide audience and theyve done it. theyre under pressure to meet deadlines set by their company and within those they get the best thing that they can out to us. then they can further improve through patches. things will improve

On a different note:

requiem wrote:Once the 1.3 patch is released, we will adjust PRMM 0.2 to be compatible with it and then release. 1.3 should be coming in the next few days hopefully.

Thank god. It's hard watching all these people going with out thier new version of PRMM (which is amazingly better than the first, hope thats vague enough) to get to them. Soon! ( I think)

haha fig a comment like that could prove suicidal at this point, youve seen how anxious people are getting.

Also- back to the EA trying to please a wide audience: i was looking on the website and it has a poll asking where youd want to fight next in BF2. the choices and voting percentages are as follows:
Middle East (already covered) 5%
China (already covered) 2%
Russia (actually a plausible location) 15%
Europe (not remotely possible) 37%
United States (do i even need to say it?) 41%
total votes 34254 (last time i checked)

those are the people EA is trying to please, tens of thousands of people have voted and nearly half of them want to see military combat in the least likely of places. With that many people showing support for the utterly unrealistic, we're lucky to be able to have a mod like PR that sticks to what could/has/is happening, rather than worrying about china invading boston.

main idea: be thankful there are mod tools to be had.

Quite frankly, I would rather that BF2 would lean into an unrealistic approach as long as mods like PR exist..

Since, from what I have seen, the PR team isn't out there to please the "community", but stick their promise and standard -- they can pull off a mod of realistic warfare much better than the BF2 team ever will.

BrokenArrow wrote:haha fig a comment like that could prove suicidal at this point, youve seen how anxious people are getting.

Dude, I was horrible anxious and impatient a month ago when I wasn't a tester. I really feel for these people! Feel my sorrow people... and somehow feel better!

....and suicidal to me as in I'd take it back, or suicidal as in somebody is gonna killthemselves out of anxiety like 4 hrs before .2 comes out?

omg fig, you better not be joking there

only 4 hours you say...............then its sniper time.

4 hours till...............BOOM! Headshot!

4 hours till...............well, everything changes

Yes, I'm sure Fig said PRMM.02 will be out in 4 hours....
He is actually gonna leak the internal! NOT!

hahahaha.....

You can have a realistic game with a fictional setting, I've been wanting a Sci-Fi game thats based on realism for a long time, something that tries to simulate what real combat might be like in some fictional universe.

people pick USA and Europe cause everything else has already done. Personally I have been wanting a USA based game/mod for a long time. I'm tired of fighting in some dusty Middle Eastern Village, let me hold the line in defense of Boston, or try to invade DC. Who cares if the story is a little unlikely, its the gamplay thats important

dam fig our secert deal has been blown, go to plan b!

See look how desperate they are! I make an example of somethign that I didn't even phrase into making it sound like it would happen, and we have someone who thinks its gonna come out and if it doesnt ill leak it to him...

PRMM for the People! God knows they'll hurt/kill/maim themselves otherwise!

lol fig.

plan b is still on.........

by suicidal i meant youd have an angry mob of PR community members out for your blood

snake i personally doubt youd ever hear the idea of PR bringing the battle to the US simply because largescale combat in the US isnt very likely. nor is it extremely likely in europe at this point in time. my point was aimed at proving EA has to provide a game to please a very large audience, some of whom want to see arcade like gameplay in the US and europe. Because of this, people who want to see a realistic mod (both in plot and gameplay) are lucky that mod tools have been released.