Today it’s Thursday – and that means another update!
This update adds yet another prototype of ours, and we also have some more information on the status of the current active prototypes!
CTE PROTOTYPES
To re-iterate for any new readers, a Prototype on the CTE means we think we have a possible solution in need of lots of testing and several updates/iteration before it could even be considered to be released.
Note: Anything we prototype risk getting cut & never released!
For instance – we might decide it’s not fitting for Battlefield, it’s too hard to understand, or plainly not worth it.
Prototype 1: Attack Helicopter Physics
GOAL: Improve maneuverability while still maintaining an approachable flight model.
COMING RELEASES: The Z-10 Chinese attack helicopter tests have given us confidence this model has potential after lots of testing. There are still some things we’d like to tweak before we start looking at the other choppers. We are considering looking at all air related items and vehicles in one fell swoop, including lock-on gadgets, rocket launchers and mobile AA.
Prototype 2: “Headglitch” fix
GOAL: Make the issue of headglitching go away without confusing the player as to why his bullets doesn’t shoot over certain objects in first person
COMING RELEASES: We are torn on how this change works out in gameplay, but we are not giving up on the model yet. We are planning to combine this kind of solution with a new third person ADS stance (that brings guns to the eye), and possibly a new stance that lowers the gun when too close to certain height items. A combination in the right amounts of all these three items could net us the results we want. We are working on the initial implementation of these now.
Prototype 3: Casual Competitive Matchmaking
GOAL: We are looking at how other games are growing their competitive scene – and how simple it is to find a game with like-minded people of similar skill-set to play with in a controlled and ranked environment.
Our long term goal includes:
- Finding/prototyping a game mode that feels inherently Battlefield, and that can but doesn’t have to include vehicles. The game mode should contain two rounds, one guaranteed winning team and with match length at a maximum 15-20 minutes.
As we believe the core of Battlefield involves Conquest so that is where we will start, but we will see where we end up.
- Playing a competitive match should be as easy as pressing a button and waiting for a game. Initially we will want to support solo play (matchmaked into random teams of 5 players on each side), but we are going to experiment with the numbers here for sure.
- The end goal of the matchmaker is to support one single game per player at a time (leaving a game in progress is a bad thing!), with rejoin functionality in case the client crashes or you get disconnected etc – pretty standard stuff. We are not focusing on these functions initially – the core reason for us to show this prototype this early is to get the game mode right, and to find the FUN!
- Stats and ranking: We are looking at implementing a special ranking for playing this kind of matchmaking (again like other games). Probably will include things like placement matches, seasons, ladders and tiers (bronze, silver, gold etc).
THIS RELEASE: In this release we have a very rough, limited matchmaker that will collect 10 players (5 on each side) to join special servers running what we internally call Conquest Ladder game mode.
We are using a variant of Conquest called Double Assault (you can cap the other team’s home flag and shut them out, as seen in the older Battlefield titles).
What we are initially looking for here is your feedback on the game mode itself, initially we have only implemented this new layout/setup on the Zavod 311 map.
We know this first iteration is pretty rough around the edges to say the least – but we are really eager to get started on this!
NOTE: The Matchmaking button will be enabled for the first time sometime very soon a couple of hours, we need sweden to wake up .
This is what the button currently looks like on the home screen once enabled.
PATCH CHANGES
This release has more than prototypes enabled, these are the changes in this patch:
- Lost Island
Fixed cave collision allowing scout helis to hide inside the mountain
- Dice LA camo now doesn’t show up on thermal vision
Final stand snow and all – we need all the help we can get
- Fixed graphical cut off issue on the helicopter hud
Now correctly displays the full HUD without cutting it off on the right side
- Operation Firestorm
Look and performance tweaks to oil fires
- Caspian Border
Caspian border radio tower collision update
Updated terrain UV’s (cleaning up graphical issues)
- Fixed “overheat” displays on scout choppers and IFVs.
- Commander Fixes
Commander assets (cruise missile) are now unavailable during the time when players are not allowed to spawn in the beginning of round
- Obliteration competitive
Paracel Storm: Hid tower stairs, Move MCOM C for both teams, added new combat and nosquadspawn areas.
Added prototype bomb drop functionality. Hold the jump button for 3 seconds to drop the bomb
Server Performance & Netcode Improvements
We are adding back the Final Stand BETA performance & netcode improvements which now also includes a potential fix for the wrecks and ragdolls staying around forever!
Note: These changes did sadly not make it into Final Stand release.
- Optimized High Frequency Update to only include players from enemy team
- Bumped total bandwidth cap slightly
- Fixed an issue with the bangermanager
Explosive networked things/destructibe trees filtering improved
- Increased High Frequency Update distance in front of vehicle compared to behind
- Added a High Frequency Cone
For Aiming down the sight (should help longer range engagements)
- Optimized used bandwidth for soldiers, bangers, vegetation and vehicles in general
- Added tickrate-falloff to the HFU Cone
Should result in a smoother transition between min/max tickrate at the edges
- Improved on how the engine extrapolates the soldier’s positions
When networking fails you get things like “Rubber banding” happening, this makes improvements here.
Improved ghost (networked items) packet handling and efficiency
Which should result in lower latency over all
- Various ghost (networked items) priority and filtering improvements
- Potential fix for the wrecks and ghosts staying around forever
- Please help us test this, and let us know if this still occurs!