f13.net

http://www.gamespot.com/promos/bf2demo.html

Someone get it and post it here, please! All the servers are full right now.

It's gonna be awhile.

For now, get it here: http://largedownloads.ea.com/pub/demos/

EA broke the internet. Assholes.

Torrent is here.

http://www.filerush.com/download.php?target=Battlefield_2_Demo.exe

Provided the link doesn't die, the demo should be up here in an hour or so. Heavy on the or so.

I would set up a server for the demo, but it seems Linux wasn't graced with a server binary for the demo.

It's pretty. But...

But?

I don't think it's pretty at all really. The graphics aren't particularly mind blowing, even cranked up to max settings.

The game however is pretty good IMO. It's basically...well, battlefield, only with iron sights and a real physics engine. Much love for iron sights though.

I had a Gamespot link there when I posted this, not sure where it went. 

It's a crappy demo, all things considered. It's pretty, but not as pretty as all the "screenshots" would lead you to believe. The most interesting part of the game is left out of the demo, that of battlefield commanders.

It's more of the same when put up against 1942 and Vietnam except modern weapons and vehicles. The demo has underwhelmed me to say the least.

The commander role is in the demo.  When you're on the screen choosing your class, click the squad tab and then click the apply button.  You have to do this at the beginning of the round.  If done in the middle of the round, the only option is for a vote of mutiny which rarely works.  Once you're the commander, the default key to get to commander view is caps lock.  The keybinding is under common, squad view.

To get rid of those annoying splash movies when you load the demo, go into your \EA GAMES\Battlefield 2 Demo\mods\bf2\Movies folder and delete all files except menu.bik, menu_loggedin.bik and noise.bik.

Ok, after playing more of the demo than my wife would like, I'm starting to get into it.

Being in a non-douchebag squad makes all the difference. So is having a non-douchebag commander.

People with joysticks piloting helicopters is nice as well.

I've noticed a number of servers up without the time limit.

I'm beginning to think I'm going to have to drop down some cash to be able to fly planes, but I'm not sure. I really got into the AT and Medic classes. Engineer was such a bitch role and people often shoot you when you run up to vehicles. For some odd reason they think the engi is hijacking it and not fixing it. Some of the TK code needs to be fixed too. There are instances where you get hit by an enemy then TK'd and the server doesn't register it as being a TK.

Oh yeah, APC's float. Fun to drive it out to the destroyer and blast the USMC.

I'm enjoying it.

Nothing like getting a ride in a blackhawk, crouching in the door, shooting bad guys with your rifle as you near your LZ.

I got really good at leading with the Anti-Tank rockets, and there's nothing funnier than shooting down jets and helicopters with them.

Even funner is climbing up the construction crane as a sniper and being able to fire at nearly any position on the map. It's hilarious watching the players on the other team try to figure out where the hell the bullets are coming from.

Fantstic game.
All that is great in BF and BF:V as well as several improvements.
The focus on teamplay vs. deathmatch unfortunately just underlines how much public servers suck. Most players are morons.
It's great fun to be the commander on a map where the players form squads and listen to orders... or at least act as units and fight together. Helping them with the UAV and ammo drops is great. It sucks against an organized team, that will take out your artillery within minutes, while your own team is running in circles pretending itsa deathmatch.

Planes are fun, but I long for bigger maps. Choppers are great, if you can get a copilot and not just some asswad, who thinks he just stepped into and aircab (even more shitty, if he's the driver and bails out, just when you were lining up a great cameraguided shot...)

There's a lot of brilliant features, but I'll have to join a clan for the first time ever...

I suggest everyone try out the Spec Ops class. To me, C4 is the funnest part of the demo.

(http://img259.echo.cx/img259/3931/screen0019yl.th.jpg) (http://img259.echo.cx/my.php?image=screen0019yl.jpg)

Is that an actual screenshot of the game? Cuz fuck, that's ugly. I'm waiting for retail release. The demo doesn't support my graphics card and I'm too lazy to install it on my laptop.

It is, but it's in a really low-detail mode, and to put it nicely I can't imagine a less-interesting shot.

Looks much better on my machine, though I still have to tweaks the buttons to get it as good looking as possible without becoming a slideshow.

The one map so far looks good. It looks much more ..realistic than DC does, so colours are both more muted and brighter, in that harsh mid-afternoon-in-a-really-hot-day/in the desert way. Don't bother waiting for retail - just leech the demp and check it out for yourself. As anything that's video-card intensive, YMMV a great deal on how the thing looks to you.

Az

They've always had a lame ass font for chat/messages.. I wish they'd fix that crap.

But it the game itself looks fine to me, I'm not sure how "pretty" it has to be anyways since you are running around like crazy most of the time and don't sit and watch the sunset. I'll try to get a screenshot or two to see if we can get a better shot.

Yeah, I have everything in low detail. Yeah, it's uninteresting, but it's not often that you kill an entire clan in a single shot.

I don't have many 'interesting' shots, too busy dodging bullets and so-forth.

edit: dir full of real, gameplay sshots here - http://xrain.org/bf2/f/

Wasn't raining on your C4-carnage screenie mate, just pointing out to Schild that that particular show wasn't exactly an ad for the graphical sexyness (or lack therof) of BF2.

Az

Installer appears to require 2000/XP.

I installed the demo, upgraded do directx 9.0c (at least the installer told me he did), updated graphic drivers, game ctd's on startup.

Meh...

It knows you aren't worthy.

That's the German culturization detection.  Consider yourself fortunate - French detection bombards your 127.0.0.1 address with script kiddie attacks.

I'm playing this too much.

I need an intervention.

Same here. I think this will be the game to finally break my WoW habit.

Is there anything released in today's market that doesn't?  I can forgive 80 year grandmas for not upgrading from ME, but beyond that...

According to various Battlefield 2 message boards where DICE people post from time to time, it seems that the Linux server for BF2 will not be ready when it the game comes out but "a little after".

Color me pissed off.

In the latest piece of stupidity from EA they now say that editing the Python files, which they so conveniently provided unpacked and unencrypted, is considered "hacking" and they are delisting all servers that are doing that (http://www.eagames.com/official/battlefield/battlefield2/us/editorial.jsp?src=communityupdate_061405&ncc=1).

If you don't want people "hacking" in features that aren't supposed to be in the demo, TAKE THAT CODE OUT OF THE FRICKING DEMO! And even if you accept that the server licensing agreement forbids this sort of thing, the only way to enable certain features like rcon is by "modifying" the "materials" and they give explicit instructions on how to do that. Isn't that like entrapment? Hell you could argue that even changing the default server name is a violation of the LA since that clearly is also a "modification" of the "materials".

Oh and in other related news, a beta of the Linux demo server is out (linked in the above page).

I will see about getting the BF2 server running on our box later today.

Demo server is running.

209.59.137.153:16567

It's set for 64 players and VOIP is enabled.

Also is listed on the Gamespy master server list.

Runs slower than Half Life 2.
Looks worse than ut2k4.
Too many vehicles in a small area.

What's the big deal again?

Oh it's EA. I guess you just have to GET IN THE GAME.

Challenge Everything.

Yes, because this forum is just SO MUCH an EA fanboi haven  :roll:

Nothing to do with people liking that thing called DC.




..I'm reminded of the Goth kids on Southpark sometimes reading here  :-)

What? I really have no clue what you're saying.

The vehicular combat is one differentiator.  I like the improved scorekeeping as well as streamlined cooperation. The rag doll physics model is slick.

It's just fun to play a game that let's you jump in and pretend to be a real soldier using realistic weaponry.

Graphics looked fine to me.

1. It means it looks like you're disliking it in an attempt to be the "cool kid" in your own special underground clique who don't like what everyone else likes, so you can be fashionably different.

2. DC = Desert Combat. Mod for BF1942. Fun mod. Drive tanks and blow shit up.

3. BF2 = "Retail" version of DC. Improved/updated graphics. New Tanks and Maps, but essentially the same as DC. People love DC, but it hasn't had anything new for quite some time, so BF2 = new shit for DC. Drive tanks and blow shit up. As Toast points out, it's what makes the difference for many of us between CS/CS:S/etc and BF/DC/BF2.

4. So people's enjoyment of and wanting more of the DC mod for BF1942 has very little to do with people wanting to be "in the game" or "challenge everything". Which takes us back to point 1.

Toast's response was much more adequate. My main gripe lies in performance.

Far Cry, even with it's draw distance on maximum and graphics cranked up ran better than BF2.
Half-Life 2, which looks spectacularly better at Medium (and high) on my machine ran better than BF2. In any given area.

As I've said, I'm probably still buying it, but it seems like these guys took the best machines on the market, ran the game and saw that it performed decently. Then decided it meant the game was optimized enough.

This doesn't apply to someone who openly admits to playing Harvest Moon.

I guess if your only concern is displaying a pretty picture on your monitor that runs at 120FPS, then I can see why BF2 lets you down. Personally I don't see how the game doesn't "run good enough" for you - what kind of problems are you having? I have an older machine that I put a couple hundred bucks into in preparation for the game, a 1.6 P4 now with 1 gig of RAM and a 6600GT - not a top of the line system by any stretch of the imagination - and the game runs perfectly smooth for me. Of course I'm playing in 1024x768 with no AA, shadows, etc. - a setup that would probably make your eyes bleed  - but it's fine with me, I play all my games in that rez, the gameplay is the star of this show so I'm just glad the game runs well for me, I could care less about maxing out graphics potential.

I don't have performance issues with BF2 and I have a crap system. On the other hand the game by default had all of the graphic settings turned down so the game doesn't look so good, but really for this sort of thing I'm just interested in the gameplay.

I have a fast machine, but my graphics card apparently isn't up to snuff. And that's its big gripe. I've got a 5200 Ultra. Despite my 1.5 gigs of ram and 2.8ghz processor, it runs slower than a gimpy catholic schoolgirl. And I've got everything on medium with no AA and the res is 800x600.

Yarrrr, there be no excuse. I'm not about pretty pictures most of the time (Most Of The Time), but I'm more interested in knowing what's so goddamn special about this game that it can't run decently at godawful settings.

Also, I'm still fighting against a reboot as I already had the latest drivers and directX installed. I want to know why it wanted me to reboot.

See? Having an argument with, you know, points works much better than showing how cool you are by infering that people who enjoy the demo are EA fanbois and sputing off some catchphrases to make yourself look teh cool.

Your points about optimisation are much more useful then "challenge everything"

 :-D

Hmm, maybe it is your card then. Processer seems much less an issue as mine barely makes the minimum and has caused no problems.

Did you not install the drivers that came with the game then? I've heard that has made a considerable difference in performance for some people.

Yes, I was calling Shockeye an EA fanboi.

Donnie, you're out of your element. I wouldn't call anyone on this board an EA fanboi.

 :roll:

That was my point.


Your buddy-buddy injoke was pointed at the whole thread in a "what the fuck is the big deal? you're all a bunch of fanbois" kinda way.

Last time I looked, you said you planned to purchase it yet hadn't yet leeched/run the demo to check it out for yourself.

I'll be intimidated later, k?

Ok, you took a silly pill this morning. I'm gonna break this down easy.

1. I had already played it when I made that post.
2. It ran slower than tar on a cold day and there's no visible reason as to why that would happen.
3. Surely, EA is challenging nothing let alone everything with performance like that on a more than adequate system for the most taxing of modern games.
4. You're taking all of this a bit to personally. I can't quite figure out why. Unless BF2 ate your baby. In which case, I apologize, but it's just the sort of thing that happens to fall under EA's MO.

Did you also play 1942 and Vietnam? For whatever reason, DICE's game engines are system hogs. I guess you can either get hung up on that point and rant and rant about how the engine should be better optimized - heck you're right, it should - or you can just accept that we don't live in a perfect world. The gameplay either is or is not worth the hassle of maybe upgrading your PC. For me, it definitely is.

I do not plan on upgrading my system for Battlefield or anything else until Christmas. Short of adding more...hard drive space. But that has nothing to do with money. If next-gen consoles have mouse and keyboard peripherals of any sort from any company, I just don't see a reason to upgrade. Period. Anything that can be done on a computer with a mouse and keyboard can be done more comfortably on a couch with a lapboard.

BF1942 runs fine on my system. As does Vietnam. Of course, I'm using the same system now. Maybe I'll reboot before tonight. Maybe.

Agreed. The money I just spent on my PC will be the last upgrade I do, I can now play BF2 and I'll be able to get some additional mileage out of this old workhorse for future games. I had been thinking about getting a whole new PC, but after considering everything I put that money into an HDTV instead. Some kind of mouse setup for the new consoles will be the icing on the cake.

1. I know.
2. I agree it has issues. The original BF1942 somehow managed to be a great game despite being a pile of unoptimised crap. I agree there's no reason why after such a long dev cycle and the amount of cash the opriginal pulled in that the sequel should suffer the same problems. Despite all this, it's still quite fun.
3. EA (corporate, at least) are fucknuts who are full of shit. But I enjoy the demo despite EA, not because of them.
4. Nope, I'm just having some late-night fun.  :-D  I enjoy this board when I get the time. The atmosphere of "fuck it, I'll say what I think, and say what I mean is enjoyable and liberating compared to some of the other boards I read where everyone has to play nicely so as to not inadvertantly offend anyone else. Also, it's with nerd who in general share my own broad nerd interests.


Addendum
- I personally find gaming at a desk more comfy than on the couch/floor/bed with the console. /shrug strokes for folks. I'm still too lazy/stupid to move the consoles to the computer room and hook them up to the monitors though
- yes, more HDD space is always your friend.
- I can't be arsed being an early adoptor anymore. I don't even know where my Saturn is, and the 3DO was a grand experiment that was too early. I'll probably end up getting all three, cos I'm stupid like that, but it'll be at least a year in and a few price drops before I start..

schild, go buy a 6600GT and be done with it.