Battlefield 2142

[Koroush Ghazi]

EA officially say that it's due to:

If the Titan is moving when the shields go down and the rounds per map is set greater than one, then the client will crash at the end of the round. Until a fix is in place, server admins can prevent the issue by setting the rounds per map to one.

However recent feedback I've read from people on the TotalBF2142 forums who have done this say it doesn't work - they still get crashes on non-moving Titans (as I did myself).

I personally have found the uninstall/reinstall and only using 1.05 to be the only solution which works for me. I played quite a bit of BF2142 last night on a couple of servers (on which I'd crashed once before the reinstall), and I didn't have any crashes, so it may be a working fix for this. However I think the only definitive fix will come from EA/DICE in the form of another patch.

Note also that further gameplay last night revealed continuous lag (packet loss) problems throughout several games on 3 different servers. At one point it was so bad that I just quit, the game had become unplayable - I couldn't register a hit on a stationary soldier one foot away from me (and I'm not exaggerating). He got up and we literally tried to shoot and knife each other at close range for over 2 minutes, reloading several times (and no medic packs were nearby), and only through some fluke did I kill him with a knife. Almost every bullet or knife swing was not registering as a hit.

The only positive I've seen so far is that I've had no server disconnections while playing after the patch, but if this is coming at the cost of large amounts of packet loss then it's not worth it. EA also say (see link above) that they're aware that disconnections are still occurring, so the Master Server issues have still not been resolved.

To be honest the situation is that EA/DICE have not mastered the various fundamental issues in the BF2/BF2142 engine. They've had 2 years to do it with BF2, so it's highly unlikely that they're suddenly going to resolve things in BF2142 given it's based on exactly the same engine (with some minor modifications). For the most part these patches are intended to give the impression that things are being done to fix issues, but as we're seeing, they're fixing nothing, and indeed breaking new things. If you haven't bought BF2142 already, I would strongly suggest staying away from it for the moment until these issues are resolved.

Additional Comment:
Just to add that apparently the solution I posted doesn't work for everyone, based on a couple of emails I've received. If you don't have the patience to try it (it only takes 10 minutes really), then the best bet is to avoid Titan mode and wait for EA to release a hotfix/patch, however long that may be.

I've updated the BF2142 Tweak Guide pages 3 and 4 with the latest info on these issues. It's incredibly frustrating to have to constantly update a guide every few hours because a company can't seem to release proper updates for their software. This is also one of the reasons why I'm finding it harder to get more time to do new guides, because existing guides are taking more and more of my time to get across patch-related issues/changes properly keep them updated. This BF2142 thing took up most of my spare time yesterday.

[mafia_boy]

Ok guys this is what ive done; Uninstalled 2142, deleted registry entries refering to 2142 (make a backup of the registry first before doing this if your unsure!), deleted My docs/bf2142 folder, Reinstalled 2142, Applied the 1.05 patch only! and am using the 93.71 nvidia driver (i have the Geforce 6200 256mb).

Up to now the game is running great, no CTD after titan mode and no server disconnection problems and have played quite a few rounds with no problems but im not saying that this will work the same for everyone but just giving you my feedback on my findings after trying this way!

[Executioner]

The 1.06 Hotfix is out.

Swedish site (the 22MB one incase you don't know swedish)
http://www.bf2142.se/forums.php?m=posts&q=2241

Other site
http://games.internode.on.net/fileli...ledetails=4563

[Jofaba]

What's interesting about this patch is that it uses the updated BF2 software to patch. I wonder if they did that becuase the EA Link version couldn't patch all EA Link customers without modification. Either way, it worked. I had no issues installing the patch, and it downloaded very quickly through the EA Link software. Simply having a hotfix out this fast is a great sign. I hope the Live team keeps it up =)

[Koroush Ghazi]

It's good news that they didn't decide to wait a month to fix all issues, as the CTD was the most worrying.

However unfortunately there still appear to be problems with lag, master server disconnections and so forth which need to be resolved. There's also no feedback I can see in various places on whether this patch actually works, but I assume that it does given the speed of release and no loud complaints yet.

Hopefully they can continue to operate like this and shore up the outstanding issues in BF2142 much faster than happened in BF2.

[atrophocy]

i played BF2142 for the first time last night. i have to say i wasnt impressed. it feels as someone has said before, like a polished mod for BF2. also the fact that it's been out a very short time, and is patched to v1.06 and still has major problem is very concerning.

[NS_Knight]

Originally Posted by Koroush Ghazi

It's good news that they didn't decide to wait a month to fix all issues, as the CTD was the most worrying.

However unfortunately there still appear to be problems with lag, master server disconnections and so forth which need to be resolved. There's also no feedback I can see in various places on whether this patch actually works, but I assume that it does given the speed of release and no loud complaints yet.

Hopefully they can continue to operate like this and shore up the outstanding issues in BF2142 much faster than happened in BF2.

I was thinking about this while playing today and honestly i think its something that has nothing to with the game, rather a users decision. I been playing quite a while now and i have not encountered any super bad lag at all. I think people just end up playing in servers with really high ping and are mistakenly saying that its the game's fault when in fact isn't. Thats my opinion. The onlt time is when i get really bad lag is when i play 64 player servers. It could be that my hardware is not fast enough to handle whats going on or something else

[ChaosBahamut]

That something else may be the fact that the server operator doesn't have the fastest internet speed available, and the players pay for it with lag. Well with that 1.05 patch I was a tad skeptical on getting BF2142, but with the 1.06 out I MAY add the game to my X-Mas Wishlist. Depends on user feedback.

[Koroush Ghazi]

No, it's not to do with ping. I experience this issue myself on several servers, and I ping less than 30 to each. In fact one of them is my ISP's own server, so it is on the same network.

The issue is that BF2/BF2142 netcode is notorious for packet loss. The lag involved is not from high pings, it's from packets being lost to/from the server which results in constant jerkyness. This is also part of the reason for Master Server disconnects - whenever a player loses connection with the master server even briefly, the master server considers them gone and drops them. So it's the game engine which has issues, not just individual players who may also have other issues on top of that.

My connection itself is rock solid and has never been problematic. I don't get lag or packet loss in any other game when I'm pinging below 100, but it occurs without fail almost every gaming session I have with BF2142, and it often lasts for half the round or longer, coming and going. I recall it used to happen quite a bit in BF2 - before I gave up playing BF2 a while back.

[mafia_boy]

I agree the battlefield series seems to have this problem of packet loss and i too have very low ping levels (15-30) but to be honest since the new hotfix 1.06 i have had no problems of lagg up to know and hope this will continue but going back to NS_knight problem could well be to lack of ram on his part.

You need 1gb of ram alone to play this game so gettting another 1gb of ram would help the lagg im sure dude.