The AT Battlefield Bad Company 2 F.A.Q.

[JE78]

I just finally had a good game, 25 kills 22 deaths but I racked up a ton of points. I had a blast playing as an engineer and blowing up tanks with the RPG. I can't wait for the full version.

 

[VashHT]

I agree, this is something that bothers me as well. I've seen guys on my team next to an opponent and either they didn't know it was a bad guy or they didn't see them and its hard to tell them apart.

I just shoot them if I can't tell, FF is off anyway lol.

I played an awesome game last night, we were getting swept pretty badly (I was defending) but we held the very last point to win. I disarmed the bomb at the last point 4 times, it was a pretty hectic game and I ended up with around 12k points at the end.

 

[zerocool84]

Is the patch up on Steam???

 

[CottonRabbit]

man... my barnes and noble order, the $20 deal, was canceled 🙁

how about the rest of you?

Yep, pre-ordered from EA store immediately after I got the cancellation email, however. After two weeks in a limited beta on 1 map, I'm having fun, so I'm pretty excited about the full game.

 

[Demo24]

Is the patch up on Steam???

It should be, it's rather small.


The resupply excellence pin is pretty awesome, 5K points. 😀

 

[aclim]

Is the patch up on Steam???

yea it is. Mine auto patched when I logged into steam

 

[DarkForceRising]

So is there any way to try this aside from preordering? All the other systems get a demo, and PC gets a beta. :/

Is there going to be an actual PC demo?

 

[GullyFoyle]

So is there any way to try this aside from preordering? All the other systems get a demo, and PC gets a beta. :/

Is there going to be an actual PC demo?

This still looks like it's working:

http://www.fileplay.net/keys

Click to 'Join Fileplay' on the top right corner and create a 'Member' account for free and you will receive an e-mail to activate your membership then login into the website and go to the bad company beta key page to request a 'public' beta key. All of this should not take more than 2 minutes.

There should be a PC Demo, but it may not occur until after the game launches at retail.

 

[TheJTrain]

So can the attackers (or defenders for that matter) destroy the objectives using C4 without doing the "Hold E to set the bomb!"/wait for the countdown thing? I could swear I've seen the "Objective A has been destroyed!" message out of nowhere without hearing a "They set us up the bomb!" warning nor siren beforehand.

 

[VashHT]

So can the attackers (or defenders for that matter) destroy the objectives using C4 without doing the "Hold E to set the bomb!"/wait for the countdown thing? I could swear I've seen the "Objective A has been destroyed!" message out of nowhere without hearing a "They set us up the bomb!" warning nor siren beforehand.

Yeah you can C4 it to death. They say they're going to raise the amount of C4 it takes but I don't think the patch today changed it.

 

[Demo24]

So can the attackers (or defenders for that matter) destroy the objectives using C4 without doing the "Hold E to set the bomb!"/wait for the countdown thing? I could swear I've seen the "Objective A has been destroyed!" message out of nowhere without hearing a "They set us up the bomb!" warning nor siren beforehand.

Yes, or destroy the building. Either one works.

 

[JAG87]

Has anybody found a way to cap the fps in this game?
Need to limit to 59, the mouse lag is horri-bad-trocious.

 

[DarkForceRising]

This still looks like it's working:

http://www.fileplay.net/keys

Click to 'Join Fileplay' on the top right corner and create a 'Member' account for free and you will receive an e-mail to activate your membership then login into the website and go to the bad company beta key page to request a 'public' beta key. All of this should not take more than 2 minutes.

There should be a PC Demo, but it may not occur until after the game launches at retail.

Sweet! I now have a key! Thanks! Now to find time to download it....

 

[aclim]

Has anybody found a way to cap the fps in this game?
Need to limit to 59, the mouse lag is horri-bad-trocious.

im sure in the retail there will be some sort

 

[abaez]

Why don't you just turn on vsync?

 

[AznAnarchy99]

Wow the patch fixed a lot. My bullets actually really register now and I get a constant fps over 70. Game feels much better than console now.

 

[zerocool84]

Finally hit lvl 11.

 

[lsquare]

I'm new to this thread so please be kind with my questions. I haven't played BF in a long time. The last time I played a BF game was BF2. How is the gameplay like compared to BF2? I get a feeling there will be some differences, not quite sure what they are at the moment. All I know is that this is no BF3 at this point in time. I'm thinking of buying this game when it comes out as a show piece for the new computer that I just finished building.

 

[zerocool84]

I'm new to this thread so please be kind with my questions. I haven't played BF in a long time. The last time I played a BF game was BF2. How is the gameplay like compared to BF2? I get a feeling there will be some differences, not quite sure what they are at the moment. All I know is that this is no BF3 at this point in time. I'm thinking of buying this game when it comes out as a show piece for the new computer that I just finished building.

Not even the same as BF2. Smaller maps, different gameplay, different feel, doesn't even feel like a Battlefield. It's fun though which is why I pre-ordered it. I played BF2 for hundreds of hours and still have tons of fun so far in this game but they are very different.

 

[lsquare]

Not even the same as BF2. Smaller maps, different gameplay, different feel, doesn't even feel like a Battlefield. It's fun though which is why I pre-ordered it. I played BF2 for hundreds of hours and still have tons of fun so far in this game but they are very different.

I see. I'm trying to get an idea of how the gameplay is like. Would you say it's more similar to CS then? It's still relatively easy to get the mechanics of the game right? The rest will be mainly skill? I don't want to get another game where I'll have to spend hundreds of dollars trying to figure things out.

 

[GullyFoyle]

I see. I'm trying to get an idea of how the gameplay is like. Would you say it's more similar to CS then? It's still relatively easy to get the mechanics of the game right? The rest will be mainly skill? I don't want to get another game where I'll have to spend hundreds of dollars trying to figure things out.

Your best option is to watch the video's in the OP (edit: It wouldn't hurt to read the OP from top-to-bottom, either!). If you are familiar with BF2, you will have no problems picking up the mechanics of this game. The most different thing at this point, is that we have only played the Rush game mode, which opens up small sections of the map at a time. When the full game comes out, you will be able to play the regular old Conquest mode from BF2. The major things missing from BFBC2 vs. BF2 are Prone, Jets, 32 max vs 64, and commander. It adds several new game modes, a single player campaign, destructible environments, and customizable weapons. Other differences you will pick up easily enough over time.

 

[aclim]

I was an avid BF2 player and id say this is sufficient. Will be a better comparison when we get conquest in the retail.

You will feel at home with mechanics as it seems like BF2.

 

[GullyFoyle]

New Battlefield Blog post on Battlefield Bad Compay 2 Graphics Here.

Introduction
My name is Johan Andersson (Twitter: repi) and I'm one of the architects working on our proprietary Frostbite engine here at DICE.

We've had numerous requests to go through in more detail about what kind of graphical features & options that exists in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 for the PC. So this is an attempt at just that.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is based on Frostbite 1.5, but with multiple enhancements and a lot of specific effort spent on building it up and for the PC as this is the first time Frostbite is used on PC.

DX9/DX10/DX11
Frostbite 1.5 on PC is designed for DirectX 10 as a base, this enables us to easily support all the advanced graphics features that we use on the consoles, and much more! DX10 is a very modern graphics API and gives us a lot of flexibility as a developer.

DX10 has one unfortunate draw back though; it is only supported on Windows Vista and Windows 7, not the now 9 year old Windows XP. And as we have a big PC fan base, where not everyone may have transitioned over to Vista or Windows 7 yet, we have also added a rendering path that uses the old DirectX 9.
The DX9 path is quite efficient but lacks some of the features that we have on DX10 like anti-aliasing and HBAO.

For everyone with the new generation of graphics card, like the AMD Radeon 5xxx series or the upcoming Nvidia Geforce 4xx, we've also added support for DirectX 11. The primary uses of DX11 in Bad Company 2 is to soften all the dynamic shadows as well as to improve performance in general with a few smaller DX11 optimizations that we are using.

The detection and usage of DX9/DX10/DX11 is done automatically, the game selects the highest possible version available with your graphics card and OS. If you want to force a given path you can do that in the Settings.ini file by setting 'DxVersion' to any of these options: 9, 10, 11 or auto (default).
The Settings.ini file can be found in My Documents\BFBC2 directory.

AMD Eyefinity
Bad Company 2 supports AMD's Eyefinity rendering mode where you can have 3 (or 6!) monitors connected to a single graphics card. The game will then detect that mode and the very wide aspect ratio and render using a wide horizontal field of view and keep the menus & HUDs on the middle display. This can create a very immersive experience if you have the hardware required.

Elmnator1 posted this Youtube video showing Eyefinity in the Bad Company 2 PC Beta on his nice setup: Link

Nvidia 3D Vision
We've been working together with engineers from Nvidia for adding proper support for 3D Vision stereo rendering in Bad Company 2 PC. This support is not enabled in the beta but it will be included in a patch shortly after the release of the retail game.
3D Vision works by rendering a picture for each eye every frame together with a slight offset. Then the 3D glasses together with the compatible displays and drivers correctly select which frame each eye sees to create actual depth perception in the game.
We are also looking forward to trying out the upcoming multi-monitor stereo rendering: 3D Vision Surround.
Expect to see & hear more about both 3D Vision and 3D Vision Surround in Bad Company 2 after the beta!

HBAO
HBAO stands for Horizon-based Ambient Occlusion and is a rendering technique developed by Nvidia originally and that we have integrated into Frostbite for use on all DX10 and DX11 graphics cards.

It is a technique that creates soft & realistic contact shadows between objects and can really enhance the visuals but in a quite subtle way. It can be a demanding effect for the graphics card and as such is primarily meant for more higher-end cards. It only is a cost on the GPU, not the CPU.

Since the PC Beta we've done a bunch of optimizations on the effect together with both Nvidia and AMD, so if you had performance problems with it before: please give it a shot again in the retail game if you have a modern & fast GPU!

For the full technical details about how HBAO works, see this presentation by Nvidia from SIGGRAPH 2008: Image-Space Horizon-Based Ambient Occlusion.

Field of View
BC2 uses approximately the same vertical field-of-view on all platforms and modes. But as we support arbitrary monitor aspect ratios, you can get different horizontal FOV on different monitor setups - the wider monitor you have the wider horizontal FOV you get, i.e. you actually see more on the sides of the screen.
As widescreen monitors nowadays are even more common (and actually: the new standard) we felt it was very important to support them properly. Which we do in BC2 thanks to handling arbitrary aspect ratios. A positive side effect of this is that Eyefinity also works as it should, i.e. just like a single very wide monitor.
We've seen overwhelming positive feedback for the out-of-the-box support of Eyefinity, but a few select people have voiced some concern that the wide FOV when playing with Eyefinity would be considered cheating. But now when people have been playing the Beta we haven't heard any feedback that Eyefinity have actually been a big practical competitive advantage, it is meant to give you only extra peripheral vision.
The PC as a platform is inherently not a 100% fair playing field as people have always had varying performance, network connection, hardware setups, input devices and new technology - which is also one of the strengths of the platform and something we, and many PC players, would like us to embrace & utilize.
If the community later collectively agrees that Eyefinity is an actual big advantage in multi-player we can look into potentially having it as a server option, but don't think that will be needed.

Another much requested topic is to have a customizable FOV. This is not implemented in the PC Beta, but we are adding a customizable FOV for a future retail patch. The feedback from the Beta about servers, performance & stability have been of a higher priority and needed to be solved first.

Misc
The 'High' texture detail level is not included in the PC beta, but is in the retail game which increase texture resolution a bit.
Support for multiple GPUs (AMD Crossfire / Nvidia SLI) in the first PC Beta build was only partially working and could cause visual artifacts. This is improved on in the latest Beta client and since that version we have done additional performance scaling improvements that should be a good benefit.
We would like to thank both AMD and Nvidia for their technical support and assistance during the development of Bad Company 2. Both with the PC-only advanced features and with helping to make sure the game runs and performs well a wide range of graphics cards and configurations. Special thanks to Louis Bavoil (Nvidia) and Nicolas Thibieroz (AMD).

Future
If you are interested in more details about DirectX 11 as well as some sneak peaks and technical details about our upcoming Frostbite 2 engine, AMD recently did a big interview with me in their on the AMD Underground blog: "11 Days of DirectX 11: DICE". The longer full interview is also available as an pdf here
Keep in mind that the interview is about the future, beyond Bad Company 2.

-- repi

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What a day for you graphics whores! Another gabfest about BFBC2 rendering paths and such! On PCGamesHardware.com. Be sure to clean up after you're done reading...

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I'm sure this won't sway too many of you from ordering BFBC2 from your favorite vendor, but the EA Store is bundling BF2142 Deluxe Edition free with the purchase of Battlefield Bad Company 2.

Thread on SlickDeals.

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Here's one for all you disappointed Barnes & Noble hot deal people! GoGamer.com has kicked off their weekend 48 Hour Madness sale, and are offering Battlefield Bad Company 2 for $10 off! $40 for PC version, $50 for console!

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So I guess they only need about 2 weeks from Gold to store for a PC release...

locust9 "Gentlemen and women, start your engines, we are gold!!!!!"

jespersvennevid "We are now gold on all SKUs, time to celebrate with some good food and beer! #BFBC2"

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[Zargon]

awesome thanks for posting it gully as the link is blocked at work!

 

[aclim]

nice. Cant wait for the retail version! DX11 with high settings should be nice