Battlefield 2 Demo out

[Mesozoic]

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

[Viin]

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

[Shockeye]

It's gonna be awhile.

[Shockeye]

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

[Shockeye]

EA broke the internet. Assholes.

[Shockeye]

Torrent is here.

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

[Shockeye]

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.

[Shockeye]

It's pretty. But...

[Trippy]

It's pretty. But...

But?

[Fabricated]

It's pretty. 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.

[Mesozoic]

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

[Shockeye]

It's pretty. But...

But?

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.

[Liquidator]

It's pretty. But...

But?

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.

[Shockeye]

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.

[Shockeye]

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.

[NiX]

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.

[Viin]

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.

[Fabricated]

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.

[Hanzii]

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...

[Nija]

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

[schild]

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.

[Azazel]

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

[Viin]

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.

[Nija]

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/

[Azazel]

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

[Krakrok]

Installer appears to require 2000/XP.

[Der Helm]

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...

[Viin]

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.

[Pococurante]

... game ctd's on startup.

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

[Shockeye]

I'm playing this too much.

I need an intervention.

[AcidCat]

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.

[Bunk]

Installer appears to require 2000/XP.

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...

[Shockeye]

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.

[Trippy]

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.

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).

[Shockeye]

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