Battlefield 2142

[aggies11]

BF3142, where combat in that day and age is fought totally in virtual reality. When you spawn, you are a soldier who then walks up to a computer terminal, and then "plugs in". The game view then changes into your soldier's own virtual world who fights, ironically enough, in a WW2 setting, pretty much identical to BF1942.

From time to time, you must log your soldier out of his virtual world, to get a coffee and/or use the wash-room, otherwise his performance will start to deteriorate.



(Actually on topic now: I am surprised to see that BF2, the older game, often has a little bit more players online than 2142, according to game-monitor.com. Personally I didn't find 2142 that enjoyable, as it seemed to stray too far from from the BF2 core experience. It added in lots of neat new toys, but lowered the quality of the core combat experience. Quake Wars seems to be taking this to an even larger level (a drastic change) but in the same vein as 2142. Seeing how many BF2 players don't seem to like that, I think the franchise might not feel as large as effect from QW as initially thought.

Aggies

[Whizzer]

Originally Posted by aggies11

BF3142, where combat in that day and age is fought totally in virtual reality. When you spawn, you are a soldier who then walks up to a computer terminal, and then "plugs in". The game view then changes into your soldier's own virtual world who fights, ironically enough, in a WW2 setting, pretty much identical to BF1942.

From time to time, you must log your soldier out of his virtual world, to get a coffee and/or use the wash-room, otherwise his performance will start to deteriorate.

I had a good laugh while reading that. Wouldn't make for a good game though, probably cause enough PR talk and hype, but the game wouldn't sell at all, especially if a demo were released, and EA is likely to do that if a successor to BF2142 is created. That too is likely to happen. Why else would they've taken over the rest of DICE last year? To keep the franchise going cha-ching.

[Koroush Ghazi]

It sounds like The Sims meets the Battlefield franchise

I'm actually curious as to what their next Battlefield game will really be. I doubt they can milk BF2142 for much longer, so something must be planned. And given ET:QW will come out and steal a lot of thunder, I honestly do think the next one will be space-based. But who knows... maybe we can speculate on this in a new thread in this forum?

As for the patch, I'm not overly impressed. There are still game bugs and other things which need fixing in BF2142, yet they've focused on a couple of weapon tweaks and introducing a new (Intel-sponsored) map instead. Not quite the promise they gave early on about how they would focus on fixing all bugs before introducing new features, but not exactly a surprise either...

[ChaosBahamut]

Personally, I hope EA doesn't follow through on a certain message on the back of the box.

Originally Posted by Back of BF2142 box

EA may retire online features within 30 days notice.

Granted they can't retire the actual online game features, but the persistent identity stuff is unfortunately fair game.

As for bugs, I personally found the game to be pretty stable. The bugs I did experience weren't game breaking, and only once did I have a CTD. Could just be me getting lucky though.

Next BF game: BF 1142. Battlefield in the dark ages. (would like to see a medival BF mod in the future though, personally)

edit: http://www.battlefield.ea.com/battle...&storyid=13685 Looks like EA DICE is really asking for it now, as they're holding another "Collect our Dog Tags" event come June 28th. (U.S. time)

[Zyxthior]

There was a Pirates Mod for BF1942 ... although that was a little more "Cartoonie"...and a BF1918 Mod covering WWI....both mods were a nice diversion and actually pretty fun.

I think another game along the lines of BF2 would work out well...except with destructible environments... I think the Modern Warfare FPS is far from played out... WWII and Futuristic have plenty of FPS's now...

Although Call of Duty 4 is coming...

I suspect we'll see another Booster pack before EA gives up on BF2142.

[Night~]

I'm not sure if anyone still checks this thread but it would seem there is finally widescreen support for BF2142 that works online! (It also works in BF2.)


Widescreen Fixer

It was made by a guy over at the WSGF, he's been in contact with Punkbuster and EA, and they said that for the time being the FOV fix is fine and legal.

It works fine if you keep the update rate around 20ms, if you put it lower you won't actually get the proper amount of zoom when you bring your scope up. The maker also said he is thinking about putting in support for other games, including Bioshock, whether this happens or not we'll see, but it would be great to have a single program that can fix widescreen issues in all games that have problems with it.


I'm a bit concerned about this new patch, the beta was released quite some time ago and I haven't seen or heard any news about the real release. I bet after I've posted this it's released 20 minutes later or something.

[Chickenfeed]

Nice. To bad it took 3 years...

I'm going to test it out with BF2 1.41 right now and will post my own comparison shots.

Additional Comment:
Did some testing with the FOV program and it seems to work quite well. Only tested in single player as I'm still wary of possible punk buster implications.

Tool requires admin privileges under vista. Ran program in BF2 1.41 with 16:10 ratio and 20ms update. Like Night said anything under 20 seems to not properly apply the zoom ( basically you would bring up your iron sights but it didn't even seem to zoom )

without:

with:

without:

with:

without:

with:


When you zoom there is a slight FOV cycle as the program calculates the new zoom FOV and some people may find this somewhat annoying but it clearly does add alot of view to the sides. Considering I've played BF2 and 2142 solely forcing a 16:10 resolution, this extra bit will make things even better playing against my 4:3 opponents as until now people running widescreens actually were at a disadvantage (they saw less vertically
than 4:3 by forcing a 16:9/10 resolution )

I don't currently have 2142 installed but I'm sure it works the same way being its the same engine.

Anyways its about time I'm kinda miffed at EA/Evenbalance though as if the author did ask about this and they said it was okay they are complete hypocrites. They previously stated their reason for lack of wide screen support was an " unfair advantage " Mabey this will be the final straw and will coax them into adding widescreen FOVs natively ( but I won't hold my breath )_

[Night~]

I played with it a bit more in BF2142 and I got fed up with it, the FOV change is a bit annoying if you're trying to shoot someone quickly.

The main downside with it is when you move your crosshair while in scope mode. It's hard to describe, but if you move your crosshair then stop, the the crosshair will move back a few pixels, it's quite off putting and can make it a bit difficult to track people.

Maybe this happens just for me, not sure, did you notice it all Chickenfeed? I had problems with mouse lag and a bunch of other games when using Vsync, even with this system where my FPS almost never drops below 60 in any game, I dropped the 'Max Frames to Render Ahead' down from 3 to 1 using NVTweak to force the Classic Control Panel and this reduced it a lot and I didn't notice any changes in FPS in any games, but it still happens sometimes, I guess I could drop it down to 0 and try it to see if it affects FPS anyway - although this may also be because of my poor connection in BF2142 multiplayer. Either that or it might just take some time to get used to.

I've never used FRAPs but I'll see if I can grab it and test it out again later so you guys can see what I'm talking about.


Maybe it was allowed by EA/Evenbalance because EA have stopped caring/supporting BF2142. I mean the BF2 series has been like their "main title" for quite some time now, and with Medal of Honor Airborne just released and Crysis just a couple of months away, it will replace BF2 as their 'headliner' so to speak. Maybe Dice is even working on a new PC game.

[Chickenfeed]

The thing was the second BF2 was done (and 2142), DICE moved on and they haven't been the ones directly supporting it which may explain the less than ideal status of the games engine.

As for the problem you described I do notice something similar. It seems that your guns model doesn't follow the crosshair and kind of "lags" behind. I know some games do this for cinematic flare but this is obviously initentional. It doesn't seem to affect the aiming ( and it shouldn't ) but could prove distracting. If one gave it time, I'm sure you could adapt to it.

I would like to look into how this tool changes the FOV in real time. If they are considering it "legit" by Punkbuster standards then I see no real reason why someone shouldn't be allow to alter the FOV through other more elegant means.

I don't like the fact that you loose some vertical view when you don't play in 4:3 but its either that or this.

[Night~]

I got a couple of screens of BF2142 to show the difference;


With, 1680x1050.
Without, 1680x1050.

The thing with the scope I described in my previous post doesn't happen in single player, but it does in multiplayer.