Project Reality Forums

Well it will be worth changing. Also the voip system will be "clan-firendly"

- VoIP, friends list, in-game IM-client and “extensive clan support”

Squads could also be improved:

- Squads and Commanders are present, introduced are “Battalions” which consist of three to four squads.

Have that information from the leaked info letter of bf3:
Breaking: Battlefield 3 Leaked Info » DigitalBattle

Ah man I can't stop thinking about bf3 r xD Just imagine the gameplay... Tanks which could REALLY BLOW STUFF UP =) No hidding behind 2cm thinn metall walls

[R-MOD]Brummy wrote:There are no plans yet for PR to move to BF3 anyway as far as I know.

I wouldn't believe so. It would be silly to hang along a outdated engine when BF3 with Frostbyte DX comes out. Q is when it will come, my feeling is bad as there are so little info given out and no TBA. I think people will run away from BF2 and it's mods now when games like Mass Effect with stunning graphics are released, it just feels like playing a game that is ancient.

Question is how long will it take for PR to be converted to the Frostbyte DX engine. Will it take some months or a year before we see PR on Frostbyte DX. If it takes long to convert will we have to wait before everything is done or will there be a one map release, at least so we can get a fast wrap of it?

Although there is long time to wait. I predict BF3 in mid 2009, and are adding that EA once again turned it's back on it's most hardcore players and concentrated on games like Bad Company instead of giving BF3 right now in June.

The major issue with BF3 is its system requirement. An huge open field with lots of trees, buildings and all other objects will require a NASA pc to run nice and smooth on the highest settings.

I mean i can not even run BF2 maxed out while i should be able to so.

I don't think Frostbite is that advanced and that it will require a high end PC. Besides today you can highend upgrade your PC for very cheap $, even cheaper if you get the stuff used.

Actually BF3 was planned to be released for about the end of 2008.
Think i'll upgrade my pc only for it

I dunno why people would want to move to Bf3... the leaked info looks like they're doing another bF2142 and taking the players further down to a max of 48 players... a full 16 players (more than 1 squad per side) less!~ PR is moving towards epic gameplay, we don't need to be cutting back on player numbers

^^^^

Sigh... that's what I get for posting after a 8 hour shift finishing at 3am and then making the post at 4:30am...

Psyrus wrote:I dunno why people would want to move to Bf3... the leaked info looks like they're doing another bF2142 and taking the players further down to a max of 48 players... a full 16 players (more than 1 squad per side) less!~ PR is moving towards epic gameplay, we don't need to be cutting back on player numbers

Tell me if i'm wrong, but i read "40 players on EACH side".
That means 80 in total

btw i think i'll remain ALSO in PR.
It will ever be installed in my pc by default

They don't release the source code for a few reasons. Number one is ideological. Companies are really kind of like perfect capitalists and that overriding psychology is rather sociopathic and fascist. They love control and they don't want to lose control of their intellectual property. Its funny cause in economics the fiscal conservatives love to tout the natural competitiveness of the capitalist free market but really the irony is that a successful capitalist venture leads to extreme conservatism (don't want to lose their established profit margins) and as a result they don't take risks (risks cost money and if it doesn't pan out it costs them more money... that means making less money actually but they view it as real money even if it isn't brought in yet). The second oddity of the result of a successful capitalist venture is that it tends to not only hate competition (competition is a threat to their existing profit margins) but as a result of self defense destroy it by several means. Which leads us to our second reason why they won't release the source code.

Competition. Why was a C&C Generals mod remaking Starcraft ordered to cease and desist? Why do most Stargate SG-1 mods get shut down also by MGM? Why did Ubisoft not release the source code to Silent Hunter 3 like it did for SH2?

Its a simple reason. They view mods as competition for their market base. Mods which improve their products actually attack their market share because it is feared it will inhibit the future sales of new releases which will ostensibly be meant to address the very issues that mods do.

Take Silent Hunter 3, a WW2 Atlantic U-boat sim. The biggest hurdle in modding that game is the lack of source code. But also the developers and publishers KNEW that all sim game communities are fanatic modders who are never happy with their own work let alone vanilla. So wouldn't an SDK improve sales? Not really when you consider the fact that the community of Silent Hunter 2 (the previous release) took that code and created a fully realized and amazingly well done mod called Pacific Aces, depicting life for the Silent Service in the Pacific Theatre. This was a threat to Ubisoft with SH3 because guess what the next game in the Silent Hunter series was... you guessed it; Silent Hunter 4: Wolves of the Pacific. Any attempt to create a pacific mod, which inevitably would have happened, would have significantly hindered sales of an inferior one which, despite the increased numeral, was still made within the same slightly modified engine.

So you see its a paradox. The consumers which buy the product are inevitably, in their minds, the competition which keeps us from buying their next game cause we apparently make something better than they do and they're not willing to satiate us. I guess its kind of similar to why they've invented everlasting light bulbs but are never going to sell them.

There's a term in economics called planned obsolescence. Built in life of the product so that you have to buy a new one eventually. Why else are there ovens from the 20s still in rental homes working beautifully but anything you buy today at Sears breaks in less than 10 years?

Or as Chris Rock said once: "They're never gonna cure AIDS, cause there's no money in the cure. But they're make it manageable! In 50 years you are gonna be sayin' 'Damn! My AIDS is actin' up again!'"

Fabryz wrote:Tell me if i'm wrong, but i read "40 players on EACH side".
That means 80 in total

btw i think i'll remain ALSO in PR.
It will ever be installed in my pc by default

My apologies, I'm very tired and fired off the post without double checking. 40 a side is in fact very good news, thanks for clarifying

Well i dont see PR a threat to EA or DICE.

EA will never release a realistic battlefield game.
So they can release the code only for the PR mod.

"Man PR is cool I really wanna play"

Buy BF2 -> $
Download mod -> Free
tell friends -> Free
rinse repeat...

Mods do nothing more (financially) than keep existing games around long after there shelf life and selling.

I came to this thread to read about its topic, not BF3 being cool or not.


:/

PFunk wrote:They don't release the source code for a few reasons. Number one is ideological. Companies are really kind of like perfect capitalists and that overriding psychology is rather sociopathic and fascist. They love control and they don't want to lose control of their intellectual property. Its funny cause in economics the fiscal conservatives love to tout the natural competitiveness of the capitalist free market but really the irony is that a successful capitalist venture leads to extreme conservatism (don't want to lose their established profit margins) and as a result they don't take risks (risks cost money and if it doesn't pan out it costs them more money... that means making less money actually but they view it as real money even if it isn't brought in yet). The second oddity of the result of a successful capitalist venture is that it tends to not only hate competition (competition is a threat to their existing profit margins) but as a result of self defense destroy it by several means. Which leads us to our second reason why they won't release the source code.

Competition. Why was a C&C Generals mod remaking Starcraft ordered to cease and desist? Why do most Stargate SG-1 mods get shut down also by MGM? Why did Ubisoft not release the source code to Silent Hunter 3 like it did for SH2?

Its a simple reason. They view mods as competition for their market base. Mods which improve their products actually attack their market share because it is feared it will inhibit the future sales of new releases which will ostensibly be meant to address the very issues that mods do.

Take Silent Hunter 3, a WW2 Atlantic U-boat sim. The biggest hurdle in modding that game is the lack of source code. But also the developers and publishers KNEW that all sim game communities are fanatic modders who are never happy with their own work let alone vanilla. So wouldn't an SDK improve sales? Not really when you consider the fact that the community of Silent Hunter 2 (the previous release) took that code and created a fully realized and amazingly well done mod called Pacific Aces, depicting life for the Silent Service in the Pacific Theatre. This was a threat to Ubisoft with SH3 because guess what the next game in the Silent Hunter series was... you guessed it; Silent Hunter 4: Wolves of the Pacific. Any attempt to create a pacific mod, which inevitably would have happened, would have significantly hindered sales of an inferior one which, despite the increased numeral, was still made within the same slightly modified engine.

So you see its a paradox. The consumers which buy the product are inevitably, in their minds, the competition which keeps us from buying their next game cause we apparently make something better than they do and they're not willing to satiate us. I guess its kind of similar to why they've invented everlasting light bulbs but are never going to sell them.

There's a term in economics called planned obsolescence. Built in life of the product so that you have to buy a new one eventually. Why else are there ovens from the 20s still in rental homes working beautifully but anything you buy today at Sears breaks in less than 10 years?

Or as Chris Rock said once: "They're never gonna cure AIDS, cause there's no money in the cure. But they're make it manageable! In 50 years you are gonna be sayin' 'Damn! My AIDS is actin' up again!'"

listen dude I know what you mean but holy **** that was not the question!

TY2D2 wrote:I came to this thread to read about its topic, not BF3 being cool or not.


:/

honestly, people can't read?

DICE gave out the source code to bf2, thinking it is useless today.

BF2 uses the same engine as the new brand game, BF Heroes. They just keep on hard modding it, its like the golden goose for them.

They aint likely to give it away sorry

PFunk wrote:They don't release the source code for a few reasons. Number one is ideological. Companies are really kind of like perfect capitalists and that overriding psychology is rather sociopathic and fascist. They love control and they don't want to lose control of their intellectual property. Its funny cause in economics the fiscal conservatives love to tout the natural competitiveness of the capitalist free market but really the irony is that a successful capitalist venture leads to extreme conservatism (don't want to lose their established profit margins) and as a result they don't take risks (risks cost money and if it doesn't pan out it costs them more money... that means making less money actually but they view it as real money even if it isn't brought in yet). The second oddity of the result of a successful capitalist venture is that it tends to not only hate competition (competition is a threat to their existing profit margins) but as a result of self defense destroy it by several means. Which leads us to our second reason why they won't release the source code.

Competition. Why was a C&C Generals mod remaking Starcraft ordered to cease and desist? Why do most Stargate SG-1 mods get shut down also by MGM? Why did Ubisoft not release the source code to Silent Hunter 3 like it did for SH2?

Its a simple reason. They view mods as competition for their market base. Mods which improve their products actually attack their market share because it is feared it will inhibit the future sales of new releases which will ostensibly be meant to address the very issues that mods do.

Take Silent Hunter 3, a WW2 Atlantic U-boat sim. The biggest hurdle in modding that game is the lack of source code. But also the developers and publishers KNEW that all sim game communities are fanatic modders who are never happy with their own work let alone vanilla. So wouldn't an SDK improve sales? Not really when you consider the fact that the community of Silent Hunter 2 (the previous release) took that code and created a fully realized and amazingly well done mod called Pacific Aces, depicting life for the Silent Service in the Pacific Theatre. This was a threat to Ubisoft with SH3 because guess what the next game in the Silent Hunter series was... you guessed it; Silent Hunter 4: Wolves of the Pacific. Any attempt to create a pacific mod, which inevitably would have happened, would have significantly hindered sales of an inferior one which, despite the increased numeral, was still made within the same slightly modified engine.

So you see its a paradox. The consumers which buy the product are inevitably, in their minds, the competition which keeps us from buying their next game cause we apparently make something better than they do and they're not willing to satiate us. I guess its kind of similar to why they've invented everlasting light bulbs but are never going to sell them.

There's a term in economics called planned obsolescence. Built in life of the product so that you have to buy a new one eventually. Why else are there ovens from the 20s still in rental homes working beautifully but anything you buy today at Sears breaks in less than 10 years?

Or as Chris Rock said once: "They're never gonna cure AIDS, cause there's no money in the cure. But they're make it manageable! In 50 years you are gonna be sayin' 'Damn! My AIDS is actin' up again!'"

Sweet post dude, every conceivable reason why they wont give out the source code. Didnt get the Chris Rock bit, but otherwise it sums it up nicely.....

The only way PR is going to get the source code is if EA\DICE think they can make some money out of it.....

Mescaldrav wrote:Sweet post dude, every conceivable reason why they wont give out the source code. Didnt get the Chris Rock bit, but otherwise it sums it up nicely.....

Hey thanks. The Chris Rock thing is referring to drug companies and how they aren't going to cure anything because they don't get a renewed prescription from a cure but a disease thats manageable thanks to their wonderful drugs has you buying hundreds of dollars worth of it a month.

Mods that solve problems in a game engine and thus basically eliminate the desire for a new release by the developer makes them seem irrelevant.

Really think about it. If we made a perfect mod because we could mod absolutely everything in the engine, including the graphical niceness which is possible as can been seen with other mods with open code games, then how many of us really want to buy the next BF? We aren't, but if the next game engine is just a bit better then maybe we'll move our mod to that engine and subsist on that til they give us a slightly better vehicle for our esoteric little tastes.

And you have to look at the broader context. It isn't just PR, but also every other mod for BF2. In fact I shouldn't say that they hate mods altogether, but I'm sure parts of their organization do, but that they fear them. By limiting us to what we can do without hacking the .exe they pretty much ensure that we'll all one day buy a copy of BF3 when PR moves to that engine, if it does. And of course lots of other mods will too.

PR is an anomaly so it doesn't count as the average. Most gamers would move to the next engine and make/remake a mod there too.

@Hughjass
I wasn't answering the first post as much as the subsequent comments as the thread evolved. I might be weird but I tend to look at threads like dynamic conversations where if you answered the first thing said after its been going on for 3 or 4 hours it would probably not be as much in context as what was said over the last few sentences/posts.

Plus it does kind of tie into this doesn't it? Why will we or will we not move to the next game engine? If they gave us the source code it would almost guarantee that we wouldn't move to any new BF iterations for the foreseeable future while this imperfect vessel we have here in BF2 leaves enough to be desired that we will probably move on much sooner than later.

These guys decided from day one to not make their games happy to modders. You either decide to be a mod haven or a mod hell and as such that is descriptive of your sales model. Look at Valve and the Source engine. A very different idea cause they're looking to use modding to draw in their sales and the Source engine is going to last a lot longer than the BF engine.

Open or closed is a totally different mind set. Its also an exercise in opposite view points. I'd say that the EA attitude is very cynical of its customers while the Valve one is more intelligent and celebratory. But thats also probably a result of their personal experience. Just look at some of their most popular games. CS, the so called most popular online game in the world, was a third party mod which they bought. Day of Defeat was a 2001 winner of a third party game design competition focused on using the HL1 engine (I think it was a modded Quake engine?).

Sorry to be so verbose, but I do think it ties into things, if only in a round about kind of way.

nicoliani wrote:I wouldn't believe so. It would be silly to hang along a outdated engine when BF3 with Frostbyte DX comes out. Q is when it will come, my feeling is bad as there are so little info given out and no TBA. I think people will run away from BF2 and it's mods now when games like Mass Effect with stunning graphics are released, it just feels like playing a game that is ancient.
.

I think its even more silly to make a decision to change to a new engine if we have basically zero information of its modding capabilities. BF2 mod support was bad. What makes people think its going to be any better in BF3? It may be a very good engine for the developers but that doesn’t mean much to the modders. If they lock everything with hardcoding or don’t provide any of their game editors its useless for us.

Modders always work with old game engines. That’s because we get the engine when the game is released. By the time when a mod is getting closer to being ‘finished’ the engine is already old. There are always new games with better graphics coming out. Its stupid to change engine just because the engine looks cool at the time being.

nicoliani wrote: Question is how long will it take for PR to be converted to the Frostbyte DX engine. Will it take some months or a year before we see PR on Frostbyte DX. If it takes long to convert will we have to wait before everything is done or will there be a one map release, at least so we can get a fast wrap of it?

No.
The question is if its even possible to get PR’s gameplay and game mechanics into the game at all… or is there going to be any mod support or tools. If it does come with mod support it will be long before PR would be anywhere near its current gameplay.

-

For the OPs question, I’d much rather stay in BF2 and improve it to fit our needs. The engine seems to be very capable. Some new shader effects, new postproduction effects and optimizing and it would be up to or at least close to current graphics demands.
But it will never be open source. Its a lose-lose situation for EA or Dice to do that.

^^ agree

EA wants to make money and DICE is an EA puppet now. The 1942 engine, etc was made before EA took them over.
I hate to be a pessimist but you can expect a COD4 rival, that game sold 10 million copies. That is a ton of bucks and EA will want in

We will be very lucky if the new engine is as squad orientated and moddable as BF2 was.


On the other hand maybe DICE is purging with its arcade **** bf heroes and the next game it makes will be totally hard core milsim, we live in hope

We have to consider that at least the modding capabilities will be at least in line with BF2 or better, why would DICE/EA want to reduce that. The whole battlefield series has been very popular to mod and is probably one of the most modded series. It has created big communities and committed players that have stayed with DICE for a long time. This kind of games also require modding or it just is a natural thing to be able to mod battle games.

Sure BF2 engine does look cool and have been doing it for almost 4 years now, 4 years is allot and it sure is still playable. Then add the things Frostbite DX will deliver upon what BF2 to already has it will sure last 4-6 years before we find it boring to stay on it. Graphics are slowly coming to perfection and less and less is required by the players, sure nice graphics with destroyable environment, rain and wind... We will get all those things with Frostbite DX probably as for modding then it only is for PR dev's to make what they have made with BF2: PR so far, that is a very nice playful game that draws other attention from us and doesn't make us care so much for graphics and other stuff, when we get so much more to focus upon.