Newest Trailer:

First Aftermath Trailer


Soldier Names and Favourite Servers

Brick - Brick500
Griptor - Griptor
Xbob42 - Xbob42

Here are some servers provided by our brothers in arms over at Day One Patch
Day One Patch 64 Player Conquest Server
Day One Patch Rush Server

System Requirements:

Minimum System Requirements
OS: WINDOWS VISTA (SERVICE PACK 2) 32-BIT
PROCESSOR: 2 GHZ DUAL CORE (CORE 2 DUO 2.4 GHZ OR ALTHON X2 2.7 GHZ)
MEMORY: 2 GB
HARD DRIVE: 20 GB
GRAPHICS CARD (AMD): DIRECTX 10.1 COMPATIBLE WITH 512 MB RAM (ATI RADEON 3000, 4000, 5000 OR 6000 SERIES, WITH ATI RADEON 3870 OR HIGHER PERFORMANCE)
GRAPHICS CARD (NVIDIA): DIRECTX 10.0 COMPATIBLE WITH 512 MB RAM (NVIDIA GEFORCE 8, 9, 200, 300, 400 OR 500 SERIES WITH NVIDIA GEFORCE 8800 GT OR HIGHER PERFORMANCE)
SOUND CARD: DIRECTX COMPATIBLE
KEYBOARD AND MOUSE
DVD ROM DRIVE

Recommended System Requirements
OS: WINDOWS 7 64-BIT
PROCESSOR: QUAD-CORE CPU
MEMORY: 4 GB
HARD DRIVE: 20 GB
GRAPHICS CARD: DIRECTX 11 COMPATIBLE WITH 1024 MB RAM (NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 560 OR ATI RADEON 6950)
SOUND CARD: DIRECTX COMPATIBLE
KEYBOARD AND MOUSE
DVD ROM DRIVE

Pre-release Info

Well, after many years, DICE is finally coming out with a proper sequel to Battlefield 2, and they're coming out guns blazing with Call of Duty in their sites! Bad Company 2 was my first Battlefield game, and it was pretty impressive, but it was missing some of the key features of a true Battlefield game, like more players, jets, etc. Battlefield 3 is coming with everything fans of the series want and more. The PC is the lead platform, so it won't have to be watered down for the consoles like the Bad Company spin-off series, but DICE is actually going to make it all work on both the 360 and PS3 regardless.

With the future of Call of Duty up in the air at the moment with Treyarch having shipped Black Ops and out of the picture until 2012 at least, and Infinity Ward in shambles after the mass exodus, we just don't know what we're going to get from the 2011 Call of Duty game, so it seems to be the perfect time for Battlefield to come in and take the FPS crown. I'll admit that I may like the more arcade style of Call of Duty a bit more, but with the formula staying relatively the same all these years, I am starting to get a bit fatigued by it, so I may prefer a change of pace with Battlefield this year, esp. if the next Call of Duty is sub-par.

There hasn't been to much info on Battlefield 3 so far, but what little there is has me very excited. I can't wait to see what true, large scale, Battlefield style warfare is really like.

So far we have this teaser:



And here are some stills from that teaser so that you can get a better look at the all new engine DICE is using for this game, Frostbite 2:



















Mmm mmm mmm! Just think, the game is still in development too, so the graphics can only improve from here, now just imagine how much better everything will look upon release! The game is currently slated for a fall release of this year, so that it can go toe-to-toe with Call of Duty, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised, or upset if it got pushed back a bit since DICE has quite a bit on their table at the moment, and it's going to take a lot of work to get this all to run on the consoles.

Here's some information from an issue of Game Informer on the game:

-Aiming for CY Q4 2011 release
-Concept for BF3 has been in the works for years, waiting on proper tech to seamlessly come together
-Frostbite 2.0 is the culmination of this tech, entirely re-written
-Lighting sounds neat, one "probe" contains more lighting information than an entire BFBC2 level.
-Level destruction is going to be "believable" but basically everything is destructible.
-Character animations powered by ANT, what EA Sports uses.
-AI characters and multiplayer characters have different animation sets
-No more "gliding" animations that look off, animation realism is a focus
-Captured their own war audios (bullets, tanks, helicopters, etc) at different distances to ensure realism
-Better audio cues for certain actions, more easily able to listen for threats
-Plan on better, more immediate post release content
-More unlocks than BFBC2
-Dice trying to find a good balance between customization of your character and not having "pink rabbit hat(s)"
-4 classes
-Will talk about squads "later"
-Looking into a theater mode but can't talk about it
-Will have co-op
-There will be a kill-cam but it can be turned off
-BF3's team is almost twice as big as the team for BFBC2
-They want the pacing of the single player mode to be balanced, with highs and lows. Makes the comparison to a song vs a guitar solo.
-Part of the single player mode takes place in Sulaymaniyah - Iraqi Kurdistan.
-"Fuck" will be used often, so M rated for sure
-There will be an earthquake in a level. The destruction sounds very impressive. 7 story building collapses, looks very well done
-Significant narrative that goes with the SP mode
-More than one setting, you're not in the middle east for the whole game
-PC version is lead version
-Why 64 players for PC only? No complaints from the console crowd.
-No mod tools at release. Maybe none down the line either. Frostbite 2.0 is complex and mods tools would have to be dumbed down, so does Dice really want to put their time to that or would it be better spent elsewhere?
-Original story, not based on Bad Company at all.

Here's a link to the Game Informer scans if you want to read the whole story

It's all very interesting stuff, and DICE's claim of it being a next generation game, on current generation hardware seems quite accurate.

The game is getting a full reveal this week at GDC, so expect another trailer, and more news soon.

So, this is the official Battlefield 3 coverage thread, so if you find any news post it here. If a new trailer is released post it here. If you find a cool interview post it here. Let's keep this thread updated with all the news of the game as we prepare for deploymen to the third Battlefield!

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@Brick
What do you think I used to take the pics in the first place...?

@carlosrox

But why wouldn't you just link to the screenshots that are uploaded to the Steam servers? The ones added to your profile don't get re-sized.

@Brick
Didn't know how. Also, how would I resize them on here so I don't stretch the page? Fuckin' wack that Steam doesn't let you link them from your Steam, rather you have to go to the Steam website proper to do so (if I'm not mistaken).

Edit: Testing




I know whenever I see this I think it looks like shit.

Yeah I dunno, I think it looks pretty amazing. There are some blurry textures in the cliffs, but no game is perfect. BF3 has plenty of textures that don't look so great.

I just find BF3 mire interesting an visually compelling when you consider what is going on in the game. Trees don't feel stiff, but malleable and destructible. They wave at the touch. The whole world just feels very alive to me. Maybe I need to see more of Rage but the world just seems kind of dead. On a technical levelthough, yeah it's still pretty incredible b

The great thing about cherry-picking is that you only get to see what looks good.

You completely ignore how horrendous so many indoor environments look, and even the cliffs in the main outdoor areas look like shit half the time.

The problem isn't "This one texture looks bad if you walk up close" it's "Wow this looks REALLY GOOD and HOLY SHIT WHY DOES THAT LOOK SO BAD?" it's extraordinarily jarring because there's absolutely no consistency. Some HUGE set pieces just look like ASS for no reason whatsoever. What's the point of a megatexture if there's no basic standard? I could understand if it was just small shit or side rooms, but it's ALL OVER the place and it's ridiculously distracting.

Here's some examples! I've mixed mine with other peoples', because I'm, SURPRISE! not the only one who's noticed this.





(You're SUPPOSED to fucking look at this! It's the main set piece of the room for Chrissakes!)

Left: 2011 Right: 2003

Fallout 3 making a comeback!

And now for mine. All at max settings (Forced via Carmack's own command line.) half the time I was playing I couldn't stop myself from thinking "Are my settings fucked up? Something HAS to be wrong here." but nope. Keep in mind, there IS plenty of beauty to the game, but it's consistently ruined by this shit (Also, no cherry picking here, I just opened up a save and took screenshot after screenshot):

Actually, I took so many I had to make a couple albums: See here. Also, here. Keep in mind, these are full-size .PNG images, virtually no compression or size loss, so it'll take a minute to load. (2MB is the smallest picture.)

I included just random screenshots I took, ranging from absolutely beautiful, to utter shit. To strange combinations of the two (Like some of the later scenes outdoors where the textures in the background look AMAZING and the ones nearer to the foreground look like a Dreamcast game.) and so on and so forth. I actually restarted my save just to get some more outdoor stuff because I didn't feel like finishing the part I was at at the moment. (Eating a burrito + Playing on highest difficulty = death.)

I'm having trouble loading the BF3 Beta...I thought that today was the last day? Or was yesterday?

@PogueSquadron

It ended earlier this morning. Was fun, and having the server browser outside of the game actually works out OK. Jets aren't that hard to control, but will take some time to master.

@Xbob42
Hilarious. I knew you had nothing.

So you're looking at small corners of a room and I'M the one cherry picking? Kk. Wanna take a pic of all corners of that room for me? That Doom 3 comparison pic is fucking. hilarious. And I'm cherry picking...

And you're SERIOUSLY using the pile of dead bodies as a BAD example? I was gonna use that as a GOOD example at how amazing this game looks. That's incredibly low poly but it looks incredibly detailed cuz they're WIZARDS of art and tech design. That's IMPRESSIVE to me. It's like making a 10 poly object look like a million poly object through some texture work. How in the fuck is that a bad thing? You seriously seem to be expecting 4k textures EVERYWHERE. That is your argument. You now seem to acknowledge most of it looks amazing, and only some small bits don't. So? As a whole package it's incredible, it's 60fps on a console, and is the best looking game ever. And this is all marred cuz EVERY single PIXEL isn't PERFECT? Come on. This is 2011, not 2045.

Also taking pics of dark corners is hilarious. And again, I'm supposed to be the one cherry picking. I wasn't cherry picking shit, I took pics of stuff I thought was bad looking (in comparison to the rest of the amazing game) like the car, the large wasteland vista, and some ground textures.

I've cherry picked nothing, you have. And your examples are horrible. That dark greeny artifacty stuff is more than likely some problem that arises only in certain games for some reason (I say some reason cuz I don't know why obviously) cuz I've seen it in many other games.

Why not take pics of BF3 and say it looks like shit cuz the whole game isn't absolute perfection? I could take pics of that game's tiny shit and come here and shit all over it too. I fail to see the point you're trying to make. No game has perfect graphics (yet), but I'd say RAGE has easily come the closest.

Edit: Nice 1024 pics you posted as well.

Edit 2: Ah I missed the second half of your post after those horribly low-res pics. Why can't you link to them directly like I did?

Edit 3: So you expect a game of such beauty (as you admit) to look like this at all times, when they were going for 60fps on a console, which they achieved? Again, every texture can't be 4k. You know this right?

Edit 4: I just looked through both your albums, and maybe 3 of the pics you look looked bad, and one of them seemed to be glitchy cuz of the PC version. The rest all looked just fine/amazing. Pretty good odds. About 3 out of 26. And you were obviously trying to find some bad stuff.

@carlosrox

Carlos, it's not the texture resolution in this game, in and of itself, that's the problem. It's the fact that the game is using MegaTexture, which has its drawbacks. If RAGE kept its current texture resolution the same, but used normal texture maps instead of MegeTexture, then the textures would actually look extremely detailed. Most of them are nearly '4k' anyway. Of course, if the game used normal textures, it wouldn't have all of the unique looking surfaces that it has, due to memory restrictions, so most of the texture would look repetitive. I understand why Carmack designed MegaTexture, because it allows them to make the environments appear to be more organic. But making such huge textures without sacrificing clarity requires a huge capacity in memory, and one that is not feasible on consoles. So you end up with the result that we have now; unique and artistic surfaces, marred by relatively shitty resolutions.

@casper884
What drawback? Most impressive game of all time and at 60fps on a consoles. I fail to see the drawback. Imagine Retro Studios working with this tech or something similar. I'd rather Retro worked on Metroid Prime 4 with ID Tech 5 than Frostbite 2, let's put it that way. Wouldn't you?

They're only sacrificing resolution in tiny patches as me and Xbob's pics have demonstrated. I'll take it if it gives me the overall breathtaking package that RAGE offers.

@carlosrox

You fail to see how stretching one texture over an entire environment instead of a single object causes drawbacks? Really?

And obviously Retro doesn't need MegaTexture (and I hope to God that they never use it) since they do all of their textures from scratch and make every single one of them unique while STILL using normal texture maps.

EDIT:

And NO WAY IN HELL would I want Retro using Id tech 5 over Frostbite 2. It's one thing to talk about the visuals in a game, but now you're comparing engines, and if you think that Carmack's engine even remotely compares to FB2, then you need to do some fucking research.

@carlosrox Maybe 3 looked bad? Seriously? Are you even LOOKING at the screenshots? I'd have directly linked them, but they're fucking huge, so it'd slow down the board. Anyway, if you think every one of those looks amazing, you're insane. I don't care what it runs at on consoles, that's completely irrelevant to me. I care that it's totally inconsistent, which makes the art style worthless. A low-res thing here or there is fine, but entire areas just looking like utter shit is inexcusable.

Sooo....

Battlefield 3 is pretty fucking awesome on PC. Though, not sure I like the people who cheat insta-kill me and my entire team. Was doing really good throughout the match, we had taken everything and were down to 62 of the opposing team spawns left and then all of the sudden our 120+ started vanishing and I was getting killed by a knife/grenade combo no matter where on the map I spawn. EVEN IN A JET!

I also really, REALLY hate the freaking browser system they are forcing on this Beta. Maybe after the Beta, when it's fine tuned, it might be nice. But God damn...let me open up the game and pick a server or something. Hate getting an error message and then unable to connect to any new match because "I'm currently in a game".

missypissy said:

Sooo....

Battlefield 3 is pretty fucking awesome on PC. Though, not sure I like the people who cheat insta-kill me and my entire team. Was doing really good throughout the match, we had taken everything and were down to 62 of the opposing team spawns left and then all of the sudden our 120+ started vanishing and I was getting killed by a knife/grenade combo no matter where on the map I spawn. EVEN IN A JET!

I also really, REALLY hate the freaking browser system they are forcing on this Beta. Maybe after the Beta, when it's fine tuned, it might be nice. But God damn...let me open up the game and pick a server or something. Hate getting an error message and then unable to connect to any new match because "I'm currently in a game".

Well... You can still manually choose a server, but my God, I played the beta for an hour or two and it was HORRENDOUS. After an hour of fruitlessly clicking on servers in the browser window, I just HAPPENED to click on "Quick Match" to see if something would happen (It would literally say "Connecting..." forever prior to this.) and only THEN did it have the courtesy to tell me THAT I WAS NOT ALLOWED TO PLAY THE GAME WITHOUT FORCED BETA DRIVERS.

At that point, I got the biggest [face_plain] I could muster and walked away.

Then I downloaded the beta drivers and tried the game out, and it was soooo fucked up.

@casper884
I don't give a shit what the engine can do. I'm looking at the results. RAGE is the best looking game ever, the most detailed, it runs at 60fps, and it looks completely different and organic. Why do I care which engine is technically better? Seriously, tell me why I should care. I fail to see why stretching one texture over a whole landscape is a drawback because I'm not noticing those end results when I play. What I see is a beautiful game with varied everything.

@Xbob42
Yeah I looked at em all and I've poured hours into the game and many many minutes simply gawking at everything. Yeah, I've seen what it looks like. Cuz some corners and some textures are low res means shit to me. If that ruins the game for you, sucks to be you, but I think you should appreciate what we get instead of nitpicking over every tiny texture and stretched blah blah blah like some crazy cynic. And the same thing can be said about every game. Is every inch of Mario Galaxy beautiful? BF3? Ni No Kuni? NO. So why shit on this game for it?

I fucking hate the cynical attitude of people like that asshole having the nerve to compare Doom 3 to RAGE cuz he found one wall in the game that looks worse. That's just fucking hilarious. You can say the game has flaws, that's fine. I know they're there. But denying it the most beautiful game with the most detail currently out right now is simply insulting, and false. Nothing else comes close. Find me another game with as much detail as this game. You can't, cuz it doesn't exist. The closest games are probably something like Metroid Prime and Dead Space? Even those games look wooden and repetitive compared to RAGE. The whole POINT of the megatexture technology is for it to look organic and varied, which they pulled off. Then comes the beautiful art direction, lighting (I give a shit if it's real lighting, painted, Sub Surface fuck your face, whatever, this isn't my point), models, animation, and size of the world.

Nope. RAGE is the most visually impressive game ever. BF3 is a pretty close second. Crysis 1 and 2 are probably pretty close too.

@carlosrox

If that's the case, then why compare engines at all? Retro would be able to make a better looking game without MegaTexture than with it. The main advantage of MegaTexture is that it allows the artists to create environments with unique, non-repetitive surfaces. But Retro does that with normal texturing anyway, and don't have to sacrifice resolution. Id tech would definitely be an inferior solution for a developer like Retro, while FB2 would give them better lighting, shading, full destructibility, top notch animation, and excellent sound tools to work with. Engines provide more than just the look of a game, but deliver the full experience to the player, so I think it's fairly important what engine a game is using, and if that allows the developers to fully realize their project to its utmost potential.

Can you guys take this Rage talk out of the Battlefield 3 thread, and put it in the Rage thread, please?


Don't make me rage.

Sorry about Rage talk...It looks awesome, but I'm not really seeing anything in it that's making me think that it's better looking than Crysis 2 except for the game's art direction. MegaTexture definitely makes the textures more seamless, but it does look like you get a lot of blurry textures as a trade off. Id is apparently releasing the original high res textures, but then you're dealing with a HUGE game that isn't going to scale very well (if I had to guess), so the argument about it scaling well would be out the window completely.

Crysis 2 feels and looks incredibly solid, and the world feels very much alive in a way. IMO it's still very much the king of PC graphics at the moment. With the high res pack and DX11 upgrade, it looks absolutely stunning. Then you throw in graphical tricks like per object motion blur (even on particles I think), amazing explosions, and tessellation (which, granted, takes an incredible strain on a PC) and it's pretty incredible looking. Organic textures aren't everything. Rage just doesn't seem to employ the kind of graphical effects that have come to really impress me over the past couple years.

Now, regarding Battlefield...I'm not sure how it's fair to compare an engine that is basically optimized for 64 player online multiplayer with incredibly destructible environments with a game that has 4 player (maybe 6?) multiplayer and no destructible environments at all.

What I love about BF3 is that the world really does feel alive in a way. Trees wave in the distance. Walls break off of buildings when you shoot a rocket at them. The ground deforms when you lay down mines. Areas with trees truly look lush and voluminous (and trees have always seemed like a really hard thing to pull off to me). Rage looks really slick, but it's just a different kind of game.

Rage...it looks awesome, but something about the world is rubbing me the wrong way. It just looks...I don't know, static? It looks great in screenshots, but in videos I've seen, the appeal starts to wear off a little bit. The game doesn't seem to knock me out with lighting in any way, but that may not be a great assessment on my part because I haven't played it. Something about the game just looks like you're running through a still photograph or something. The world seems kind of dead to me (and not in the way the developers intended with its art style).

@PogueSquadron

I think what you're trying to say is that it looks like it has pre-rendered backgrounds. That's completely due to the engine using MegaTexture. But I've already said enough about it, and it is getting a bit off topic, lol.

Seems I missed these videos showing off some new maps, and from an obvious build that is later than the one used for the beta as you can tell immediately by the markers showing where your team mates have been killed:

Grand Bazaar


Operation Firestorm