Stinger
21/01/2005, 23:11
Bom Battlefieldmaniacos, é uma semana de calmaria para o BF2, sem muitas notícias.
Mas o Bfcentral da suiça consuziu uma entrevista com o tio Lars.
ACHEI NO TOTALBF2----> Se vocês preferirem que eu coloque traduzido, só falar... :wink:
The Swedish website BFCentral.se have conducted an interview with DICE Lead Designer, Lars Gustavsson. Here is the English translation:
Is it decided that 64 players will be the maximum?
The question is if we will lock it to precisely 64. The official word is yes, we will lock it to 64 players. But if we give the possibility to mod it, is something I cant tell right now.
We spoke with Johan Persson at Optihack about a demo and he said it would come at the same time as the BF2 launch?
We haven't given any official information about the demo yet. We are looking into what options we have, we are going step by step. right now we are working with the whole team here and all the testers at EA. We are then going to look into about betas and stuff but we haven't decided on any dates yet.
Is it because you don't want to give any dates, or is it because you don't have one?
Right now we have no dates, and that's all I can say.
EA lengthened the developing time, it was planned to be released in the autumn in the first place. How much has this affected the game?
It has affected the game quite a lot. I feel that we have, when you're writing the design and then have the chance to play it, a game like this needs all the time it can get to be played back and forth. In BF:Vietnam we had a problem with e.g. the kits such as the M60.. It was tight with time and it succeeded to sneak in somewhere. Because we are going to have a ranking system in the game it is important that we get plenty of time so that no one takes the whole cookie on the first day.
What have you planned to do about the rankings when patches are released? Are you going to set it to zero? It might appear bugs in patches which changes the conditions.
We will have people monitoring that all the time. If we do something catastrophic wrong there must be options to fix it. E.g. remove the thing that makes the bug or set it to zero. But our expectations with this longer time is that we will have a tight system from the beginning.
Will there be any option to set a player limit on each class, so that we won't see 90% snipers on Omaha Beach for example?
We have this feature on our evaluation list, we are tweaking it right now. In all honesty, we were already into this on BF1942 from the beginning.
This was already tested in Day of Defeat and in the BF42 mod Silent Heroes and it makes public games so much more fun when you don't have all the snipers laying in a corner.
Yes like the kits are created now there is much more for the team. With a good balance on the kits you will get more fun game play.
When it comes to balance, have you made so that every team has similar weapons, like in BF1942?
We have strived for that, in the end you will be able to compete in the game. Even in BF1942 the weapons were similar but different, E.g. The BAR and the Stg44. I hated the BAR but loved the Stg44. Some people think the opposite.
Weapons you can unlock in the game, are these better than the standard weapons or just a new version that are similar?
It's a new version that is just as good, but you will have to do a tradeoff. E.g. With greater damage you will get a slower reload.
But they are similar? Just gives you more options?
Exactly, we don't want the best guy on the server to run with the best weapon.
If a player with a unlocked weapon dies, will you be able to pick up his kit?
Yes, it will be like a little teaser from what you will receive when you have worked your way up.
How long does it takes to work your way up?
We haven't set a time yet, we are still testing it. I can't say it, but we are talking about a half year or a year. The goal isn't that everyone will have everything after a week, its supposed to hold longer. Partly we have the ranks, and partly we have the medallion system, In the medallion system the Badge is the lowest, then comes Ribbon and Medallion.
What are those for? Do they serve any kind of function or just to brag with?
It is to see what you are good at. Partly there is the rank ladder with weapons on some of the steps and then you get medallions that appear all the way. So even if a player doesn't have a big rank, he still can have many medallions that has to do with airplanes for example. So a clan can tell "this guy is specially good at this".
Will you be able to see this in game? For example at a helicopter spawn you can easily spot who the best pilot is?
Not directly in the game, but in the menu's and so on.
Will you be able to mod a map and set a rules so you will need a specific rank to e.g. fly a chopper?
That's something we've looked into and played around with some ideas, if we are going to play with e.g. class-unique servers. We haven't made a decision yet, but it is something we're looking at.
In some interviews you we have been told that you can have your own decals on vehicles and uniforms, and in some of them you say that it's not going to be possible, what's the situation?
Right now there isn't any, but if it will show up later it's a bonus.
Why do any maps in USA not exist, they are all in the middle-east or in China?
We actually had a suggestion about a map in USA.
But it was too sensitive, or?
Nah, apart of China I actually believe that the Yankees are much more willing to fight on their own land. We had a concept where we talked about it, but it didn't make it through the end.
It might appear in a future expansion?
I can't comment that *laugh*.
MEC VS China on the same map? Is it supposed to be only USA against the world or are they all a detaching faction?
All three are detaching and they are all interested in oil.
But MEC and China will never fight?
No.
Is there an story in the game?
There is a story but we feel partly that it's a multiplayer game and partly we have this thing about modern war. We have always felt that battlefield is all about having fun and in BF1942 we had a lot of contacts with people from Israeli to Russia about how we could show people world war 2 in a good way. When I was a little kid I played with plastic models, I loved those vehicles from 1942. it's the same when you start playing computer games. it is actually the love for it and all war movies it's about, instead of showing the miserable side. It's even more sensitive now, especially when we sat down with the middle-east maps and chose a place to fight on, and then something happened there the next day and you saw it on the news, then you really felt that we do not want to dig into this too much. Sit down and watch modern vehicles or aircrafts on Discovery, what you find there you will be driving here.
That's why you are using fictive names on all places?
Yes, we got so many fictive names. Some of the maps has three or four names they've received during the developing. We had a little debate yesterday about "which map is this really?".
When we come to game modes, Conquest is there for sure, but what happened to the CTF?
We are looking into it, but we have noticed that with the squads and commander you get an enormous number of different settings to play. To this day it's only Conquest that is 100% sure to be shipped with the game, and Co-op of course. If you play with squads and commander or not it becomes a totally different game.
In BF1942 there was Head-on and Assault, but in BF2 there now is something called Double assault?
In assault the attackers has a un-captureable base, and the defender has a captureable base. In head-on both bases are uncapturable. In double assault everything can be taken.
Like Aberdeen?
Yep.
Aberdeen was a little test for BF2 perhaps?
Ideas being tested *laugh*.
About the EA-purchase, is it anything which will affect BF2?
Generally I cant say too much about this since it's beyond my little sphere.
We have worked with BF2 and we will proceed, it hasn't changed my world.
Future patches and content, is there any plans about this after the release?
We haven't started yet, we are focusing on shipping the game.
I won't sit here and promise too much, but the thought is without doubt that we will provide, maintain, and proceed.
Is it coming out anything more to BF1942?
Nothing right now.
Something that the community has been asking for since the start of BF1942 is BF TV, any news about it?
We have the demo recorder today and it will ship with the game, and BF TV is almost placed number one on our list from the community, so we are not unaware of it. That's something we get to hear from almost everyone who contacts us, it's not like we choose to ignore it. It's about shipping games at the same time as we make everyone happy and satisfied. It's not forgotten, but I cannot tell here and now if and maybe when it will show up.
Is there any inbuilt function to convert demos into movies, or must you use Fraps on it?
We are looking into that: "how much service can we give to the user?". The demo files are very small so its easy to send them to your mates for them to watch. After a match you can upload the file so everyone can see how the match looked like. That's not a big deal, maybe then we can look at how far we can take the whole chain.
Half Life has it's "make movie" which spits out a lot of screenshots per seconds which you later can put together to make a movie, but it works as well with Fraps.
Yeah, at the same time, we want people to use it as much as possible, the easier it is to use it, the better. You want it to be as good as possible already when it's "out of the box". Its always possible to release stuff as free content afterwards, but the more you receive in the beginning the better.
In Half Life there's a log port, which sends out the server log in real-time so you can get access to it without physical access to the server. This means you can create irc bots and other goodies.
We have that on our list over things we thinking about.
Script language for the clients came after a while to BF1942, but it was limited for only being able to do alias for a command. E.g. it did not work to create an alias which performed many commandos at the same time which would be smoother for server admins.
This is also on our thinking list, we are seeing if we can squeeze it in.
Will the game be shipped with Punkbuster?
We will ship with anticheat, then it will be Punkbuster or something else, but its not too unlikely that it will be Punkbuster.
We, aswell as the others are working on a cheat-free product.
It was very easy to cheat in BF1942. E.g One simple memory change and you would see both teams on the mini-map. Have you kept this in mind when coding BF2?
I don't know how they solved it, but we have been trying to collect as much knowledge and feedback as possible about cheats.
Do you all work 24 hours a day now before the release?
Yes, it's a lot. I think it's allowed now to say that DICE has grown as a company and we have made it so people wont sleep under their tables at least.
"Hotel DICE" as we renamed the conference room during the 1942-time, we had beds in the whole room and then you went in and slept for a couple of hours and then proceed again.
But yes, we are fighters, on holidays and late evenings. at the same time this is the funny period. All the pieces fall to their places and you must sometimes keep people away from the game tests. In the beginning its all just one big torture: it crashes all the time, its unbalanced, you get to play without textures and performance is awful.
Have you had any thought about letting clans beta test the game?
We have an enormous amount of requests, and for now we put them all on a pile and see how the final testing is going to look. We received early this morning a request from a clan. It definitely does not hurt to write to us about trying the game.
Do you have any release dates? We've heard about the 24 of March? What is the earliest you can imagine? End of the spring?
Here in Sweden it doesn't seems like it ever comes so we got a lot of time *laugh*
Unfortunately I cant give you any dates.
You feel like Goran Persson: "No, I cannot answer that", "No, I cannot answer that" *laugh* (Goran Persson is Swedens Prime Minister)
It causes a lot of speculation and we don't want to promise more than we can hold. If we promise too much we will be slaughtered because of that.
We are happy that people want to have this game but in the same time no one will be happy if we stress out a game who no one wants.
Any minimum specification of computer?
We don't have any yet, but in spring anyway.
Any minimum specification for computers yet?
It will come, I can't say when, but it's nothing we have gone out with yet.
Someone from EA told in a video interview about 1.5 ghz and 512 in ram?
There is no value that we say yes or no to this. We are still tweaking, all graphic men and coders are optimizing, reducing collision meshes etc. It will affect much of where we will stop at the system requirements in the end.
Do you work against any graphic card? E.g. Doom3 runs much better with nVidia and HL2 better with ATI?
We are trying to put ourselves in the middle, give people value for their money whatever card they are using. We have good cooperation with both of the producers, they offer themselves a lot with error search and everything between heaven and earth.
Mas o Bfcentral da suiça consuziu uma entrevista com o tio Lars.
ACHEI NO TOTALBF2----> Se vocês preferirem que eu coloque traduzido, só falar... :wink:
The Swedish website BFCentral.se have conducted an interview with DICE Lead Designer, Lars Gustavsson. Here is the English translation:
Is it decided that 64 players will be the maximum?
The question is if we will lock it to precisely 64. The official word is yes, we will lock it to 64 players. But if we give the possibility to mod it, is something I cant tell right now.
We spoke with Johan Persson at Optihack about a demo and he said it would come at the same time as the BF2 launch?
We haven't given any official information about the demo yet. We are looking into what options we have, we are going step by step. right now we are working with the whole team here and all the testers at EA. We are then going to look into about betas and stuff but we haven't decided on any dates yet.
Is it because you don't want to give any dates, or is it because you don't have one?
Right now we have no dates, and that's all I can say.
EA lengthened the developing time, it was planned to be released in the autumn in the first place. How much has this affected the game?
It has affected the game quite a lot. I feel that we have, when you're writing the design and then have the chance to play it, a game like this needs all the time it can get to be played back and forth. In BF:Vietnam we had a problem with e.g. the kits such as the M60.. It was tight with time and it succeeded to sneak in somewhere. Because we are going to have a ranking system in the game it is important that we get plenty of time so that no one takes the whole cookie on the first day.
What have you planned to do about the rankings when patches are released? Are you going to set it to zero? It might appear bugs in patches which changes the conditions.
We will have people monitoring that all the time. If we do something catastrophic wrong there must be options to fix it. E.g. remove the thing that makes the bug or set it to zero. But our expectations with this longer time is that we will have a tight system from the beginning.
Will there be any option to set a player limit on each class, so that we won't see 90% snipers on Omaha Beach for example?
We have this feature on our evaluation list, we are tweaking it right now. In all honesty, we were already into this on BF1942 from the beginning.
This was already tested in Day of Defeat and in the BF42 mod Silent Heroes and it makes public games so much more fun when you don't have all the snipers laying in a corner.
Yes like the kits are created now there is much more for the team. With a good balance on the kits you will get more fun game play.
When it comes to balance, have you made so that every team has similar weapons, like in BF1942?
We have strived for that, in the end you will be able to compete in the game. Even in BF1942 the weapons were similar but different, E.g. The BAR and the Stg44. I hated the BAR but loved the Stg44. Some people think the opposite.
Weapons you can unlock in the game, are these better than the standard weapons or just a new version that are similar?
It's a new version that is just as good, but you will have to do a tradeoff. E.g. With greater damage you will get a slower reload.
But they are similar? Just gives you more options?
Exactly, we don't want the best guy on the server to run with the best weapon.
If a player with a unlocked weapon dies, will you be able to pick up his kit?
Yes, it will be like a little teaser from what you will receive when you have worked your way up.
How long does it takes to work your way up?
We haven't set a time yet, we are still testing it. I can't say it, but we are talking about a half year or a year. The goal isn't that everyone will have everything after a week, its supposed to hold longer. Partly we have the ranks, and partly we have the medallion system, In the medallion system the Badge is the lowest, then comes Ribbon and Medallion.
What are those for? Do they serve any kind of function or just to brag with?
It is to see what you are good at. Partly there is the rank ladder with weapons on some of the steps and then you get medallions that appear all the way. So even if a player doesn't have a big rank, he still can have many medallions that has to do with airplanes for example. So a clan can tell "this guy is specially good at this".
Will you be able to see this in game? For example at a helicopter spawn you can easily spot who the best pilot is?
Not directly in the game, but in the menu's and so on.
Will you be able to mod a map and set a rules so you will need a specific rank to e.g. fly a chopper?
That's something we've looked into and played around with some ideas, if we are going to play with e.g. class-unique servers. We haven't made a decision yet, but it is something we're looking at.
In some interviews you we have been told that you can have your own decals on vehicles and uniforms, and in some of them you say that it's not going to be possible, what's the situation?
Right now there isn't any, but if it will show up later it's a bonus.
Why do any maps in USA not exist, they are all in the middle-east or in China?
We actually had a suggestion about a map in USA.
But it was too sensitive, or?
Nah, apart of China I actually believe that the Yankees are much more willing to fight on their own land. We had a concept where we talked about it, but it didn't make it through the end.
It might appear in a future expansion?
I can't comment that *laugh*.
MEC VS China on the same map? Is it supposed to be only USA against the world or are they all a detaching faction?
All three are detaching and they are all interested in oil.
But MEC and China will never fight?
No.
Is there an story in the game?
There is a story but we feel partly that it's a multiplayer game and partly we have this thing about modern war. We have always felt that battlefield is all about having fun and in BF1942 we had a lot of contacts with people from Israeli to Russia about how we could show people world war 2 in a good way. When I was a little kid I played with plastic models, I loved those vehicles from 1942. it's the same when you start playing computer games. it is actually the love for it and all war movies it's about, instead of showing the miserable side. It's even more sensitive now, especially when we sat down with the middle-east maps and chose a place to fight on, and then something happened there the next day and you saw it on the news, then you really felt that we do not want to dig into this too much. Sit down and watch modern vehicles or aircrafts on Discovery, what you find there you will be driving here.
That's why you are using fictive names on all places?
Yes, we got so many fictive names. Some of the maps has three or four names they've received during the developing. We had a little debate yesterday about "which map is this really?".
When we come to game modes, Conquest is there for sure, but what happened to the CTF?
We are looking into it, but we have noticed that with the squads and commander you get an enormous number of different settings to play. To this day it's only Conquest that is 100% sure to be shipped with the game, and Co-op of course. If you play with squads and commander or not it becomes a totally different game.
In BF1942 there was Head-on and Assault, but in BF2 there now is something called Double assault?
In assault the attackers has a un-captureable base, and the defender has a captureable base. In head-on both bases are uncapturable. In double assault everything can be taken.
Like Aberdeen?
Yep.
Aberdeen was a little test for BF2 perhaps?
Ideas being tested *laugh*.
About the EA-purchase, is it anything which will affect BF2?
Generally I cant say too much about this since it's beyond my little sphere.
We have worked with BF2 and we will proceed, it hasn't changed my world.
Future patches and content, is there any plans about this after the release?
We haven't started yet, we are focusing on shipping the game.
I won't sit here and promise too much, but the thought is without doubt that we will provide, maintain, and proceed.
Is it coming out anything more to BF1942?
Nothing right now.
Something that the community has been asking for since the start of BF1942 is BF TV, any news about it?
We have the demo recorder today and it will ship with the game, and BF TV is almost placed number one on our list from the community, so we are not unaware of it. That's something we get to hear from almost everyone who contacts us, it's not like we choose to ignore it. It's about shipping games at the same time as we make everyone happy and satisfied. It's not forgotten, but I cannot tell here and now if and maybe when it will show up.
Is there any inbuilt function to convert demos into movies, or must you use Fraps on it?
We are looking into that: "how much service can we give to the user?". The demo files are very small so its easy to send them to your mates for them to watch. After a match you can upload the file so everyone can see how the match looked like. That's not a big deal, maybe then we can look at how far we can take the whole chain.
Half Life has it's "make movie" which spits out a lot of screenshots per seconds which you later can put together to make a movie, but it works as well with Fraps.
Yeah, at the same time, we want people to use it as much as possible, the easier it is to use it, the better. You want it to be as good as possible already when it's "out of the box". Its always possible to release stuff as free content afterwards, but the more you receive in the beginning the better.
In Half Life there's a log port, which sends out the server log in real-time so you can get access to it without physical access to the server. This means you can create irc bots and other goodies.
We have that on our list over things we thinking about.
Script language for the clients came after a while to BF1942, but it was limited for only being able to do alias for a command. E.g. it did not work to create an alias which performed many commandos at the same time which would be smoother for server admins.
This is also on our thinking list, we are seeing if we can squeeze it in.
Will the game be shipped with Punkbuster?
We will ship with anticheat, then it will be Punkbuster or something else, but its not too unlikely that it will be Punkbuster.
We, aswell as the others are working on a cheat-free product.
It was very easy to cheat in BF1942. E.g One simple memory change and you would see both teams on the mini-map. Have you kept this in mind when coding BF2?
I don't know how they solved it, but we have been trying to collect as much knowledge and feedback as possible about cheats.
Do you all work 24 hours a day now before the release?
Yes, it's a lot. I think it's allowed now to say that DICE has grown as a company and we have made it so people wont sleep under their tables at least.
"Hotel DICE" as we renamed the conference room during the 1942-time, we had beds in the whole room and then you went in and slept for a couple of hours and then proceed again.
But yes, we are fighters, on holidays and late evenings. at the same time this is the funny period. All the pieces fall to their places and you must sometimes keep people away from the game tests. In the beginning its all just one big torture: it crashes all the time, its unbalanced, you get to play without textures and performance is awful.
Have you had any thought about letting clans beta test the game?
We have an enormous amount of requests, and for now we put them all on a pile and see how the final testing is going to look. We received early this morning a request from a clan. It definitely does not hurt to write to us about trying the game.
Do you have any release dates? We've heard about the 24 of March? What is the earliest you can imagine? End of the spring?
Here in Sweden it doesn't seems like it ever comes so we got a lot of time *laugh*
Unfortunately I cant give you any dates.
You feel like Goran Persson: "No, I cannot answer that", "No, I cannot answer that" *laugh* (Goran Persson is Swedens Prime Minister)
It causes a lot of speculation and we don't want to promise more than we can hold. If we promise too much we will be slaughtered because of that.
We are happy that people want to have this game but in the same time no one will be happy if we stress out a game who no one wants.
Any minimum specification of computer?
We don't have any yet, but in spring anyway.
Any minimum specification for computers yet?
It will come, I can't say when, but it's nothing we have gone out with yet.
Someone from EA told in a video interview about 1.5 ghz and 512 in ram?
There is no value that we say yes or no to this. We are still tweaking, all graphic men and coders are optimizing, reducing collision meshes etc. It will affect much of where we will stop at the system requirements in the end.
Do you work against any graphic card? E.g. Doom3 runs much better with nVidia and HL2 better with ATI?
We are trying to put ourselves in the middle, give people value for their money whatever card they are using. We have good cooperation with both of the producers, they offer themselves a lot with error search and everything between heaven and earth.