Project Reality Forums

With a small investment of $100US I upgraded my system and consequently my BF2 from Vanilla to PR a few months ago. PR is what I had always wanted BF2 to be. I remember being ready to quit BF2 altogether a while back and was then pulled back in by clan mates and the new option for maps without vehicles. The level of playability and realism for squad based tactics went up considerably on infantry only maps but eventually this too left me wondering if there were more out there. I discovered PR (and a great deal on an 8600GT from Newegg.com) and have been playing ever since.

My question is what the useful lifetime of the BF2 engine might be with advances in software and hardware technology? The BF2 engine is already outdated by next generation engines. Will there come a point in which the Project Reality development team might consider moving to a newer gaming engine? If so, when?

Many,many people have asked this question.
The answer is the Devs want to get to 1.0 before they even think about moving engine.

Hi mate, welcome to the forums, glad to see you've got into PR!!

As for your qeustion, take my answer with a pinch of salt as it is pure speculation but here goes.

I would say PR will ABSOLUTELY not move to another engine until 1.0 is out, as there has been too much time invested in getting the mod working well to have to start all over again, before they've even reached their goal.

After that I would say it is a matter of time until a game comes along that fits the mod teams needs, or is so open to modding that the team could code in what they wanted. At present there is nothing that fulfils either of these requirements.

Things that BF2 does VERY well that the new games don't have: A Squad system with VOIP. A commander with deployable assets. Large maps that dont need amazing hardware to run, and large view distances. In short a ready made framework for basing a realistic teamwork mod.

So until a game comes along that does this, or we get a game that allows modders to do all this relatively easily, you'll have to put up with bf2

I can see this thread being locked
Im pretty sure BF 3 will be announced later this year, and hopefully at some point they will realease the FrostED software as well.
http://developer.amd.com/assets/Andersson-Tatarchuk-FrostbiteRenderingArchitecture(GDC07_AMD_Session).pdf

I cant see PR moving engine until along time after the FrostED is realeased, as the DEVs would have to learn how to use the FrostED software. Then a massive amount of work would have to be put in to recreate the mod on another engine. IMO the present engine isnt that bad anyway - look at the Crysis fiasco, or consider how many people lag/play on low settings for PR at the moment.

LekyIRL wrote:Many,many people have asked this question.
The answer is the Devs want to get to 1.0 before they even think about moving engine.

Thanks for your response. I think it is important to note that I am happy with how the engine performs. My question is more rooted in a concern that within a relatively short amount of time the engine might be so out-dated as to render it very unattractive for the huge investments in time and energy required to continually improve the PR mod, which in time would kill the mod itself. It seems though from your response that for the foreseeable future we will be enjoying great game play and continuous improvements.

It's not just a engine. It have to be a good engine and a game that attracts many players, like BF2 did.

Won't the models,and etc. still be able to be used on other engines though?

Or will they have to completely restart?

Scandicci!!
remember the round on fools road? when we had 60 tickets and militia had a enoying tanker with 200 tickets? and you where in my squad. and won!! ?

Can i please have youre xfire amazing round that was

agentscar wrote:Won't the models,and etc. still be able to be used on other engines though?

Or will they have to completely restart?

It might be possible to adapt them - who knows - but the frostbite engine makes everything distructble, which means, everything needs extra models, and the code will be different - Im not an expert but texturing and alsorts of other things may be done differently as well.
In the same way that game developers are having to spend alot more money and time developing nextgen games, the mod devs will also have to spend alot more time. It will have to happen though - I suspect sales of bf2 of pretty low nowadays, and providing that DICE dont f**k up BF3 then Im pretty sure that that release will be the end of bf2.

The frostbite engine looks awesome. I just read the pdf above. Lots of good things that saves gpu and memory. One nice point was real horisont with 32km long view distance and 2X2 or 4X4km big playing area. 4X4 isnt so much, but I think our devs can handle that

That's the point of the Frostbite engine. It's to look aw some. But only aiming toward spectacular destructions is not enough for a Battlefield game. It can work for a toy game like BF Bad Company, but for BF3 it will not deliver. Put down the hopes, BF3 wont deliver.

Scandicci wrote: My question is what the useful lifetime of the BF2 engine might be with advances in software and hardware technology? The BF2 engine is already outdated by next generation engines. Will there come a point in which the Project Reality development team might consider moving to a newer gaming engine? If so, when?

I have to quote Mescaldrav.
I surely think that PR won't move from BF2, or at least not completely/not in short time. A lot of awesome work have been done here, and a lot is still needed to be done until our famous release 1.0, so have a gg here, maybe we will talk about this between a year or more

/ot
Dal tuo nick ingame, mi sembrava strano tu non fossi ita :asd:
Comunque benvenuto

nicoliani wrote:That's the point of the Frostbite engine. It's to look aw some. But only aiming toward spectacular destructions is not enough for a Battlefield game. It can work for a toy game like BF Bad Company, but for BF3 it will not deliver. Put down the hopes, BF3 wont deliver.

Youre being pretty negative imo. Despite what some say I think bf2/PR is still awesome and the engine is well over 3 years old.

What would I improve in it engine wise?

Graphics - mainly constrained by the user really, and frostbite handles things differently to allow higher quality graphics without lag increase. Also the enviroment is almost fully destructable which looks cool and increases gameplay, plus the networked items are handled differently so they cause less lag.

Gameplay - its pretty good already. Frostbite allows almost 100 players ( maybe more on bf3? ), and hopefully they will improve voip functions, but theyre good already!

"Modability" - the new engine seems to give you control over everything, which is what modders want!

What makes you think bf3 wont deliver and what would you want other than the items Ive listed?
Youtube "frostbite engine" - it looks pretty cool to me.

I think what most people want is an engine that is more open to modding. I mean look at BF2 mods and then look at HL2 mods. Most BF2 mods add new content,there isn't a whole load you can do with the engine,PR pushes it to the limit.
That said bf2 suits PR needs fairly well,compared to other games. If BF3 is similar to BF2 then PR will still be brillant,but hopefully it'll be more open to modding.

One thing is what they promise, another is what they deliver. I hope they deliver all of that, but in the history of games, that doesn't happen most of the times. Until I see the final game, I won't be excited at all.

spacemanc wrote:Youre being pretty negative imo. Despite what some say I think bf2/PR is still awesome and the engine is well over 3 years old.

What would I improve in it engine wise?

Graphics - mainly constrained by the user really, and frostbite handles things differently to allow higher quality graphics without lag increase. Also the enviroment is almost fully destructable which looks cool and increases gameplay, plus the networked items are handled differently so they cause less lag.

Gameplay - its pretty good already. Frostbite allows almost 100 players ( maybe more on bf3? ), and hopefully they will improve voip functions, but theyre good already!

"Modability" - the new engine seems to give you control over everything, which is what modders want!

What makes you think bf3 wont deliver and what would you want other than the items Ive listed?
Youtube "frostbite engine" - it looks pretty cool to me.

Hope your right.

nicoliani wrote:It's not just a engine. It have to be a good engine and a game that attracts many players, like BF2 did.

That I think is one of the most important points so often overlooked...having a large customer base to draw on as well as the games longevity.

So far BF2 seems to fit the bill perfectly despite the engines shortcomings.

[R-DEV]dbzao wrote:One thing is what they promise, another is what they deliver. I hope they deliver all of that, but in the history of games, that doesn't happen most of the times. Until I see the final game, I won't be excited at all.

Exactly, remember what was promised for BF2? 128 players, destructible environments and buildings, customizable characters, etc., none of which was delivered upon.