Battlefield 3 lead platform 'switched to consoles' mid-development

[jimykx]

Re: Battlefield 3 lead platform 'switched to consoles' mid-development

Man who scratches ass should not bite fingernails.

[Anarchy1]

Re: Battlefield 3 lead platform 'switched to consoles' mid-development

Luke, I am your father.

[jimykx]

Re: Battlefield 3 lead platform 'switched to consoles' mid-development

You Underestimate my Power

[Sepp_Dietrich]

Re: Battlefield 3 lead platform 'switched to consoles' mid-development

"We said originally that the PC was the lead SKU of the game, but in mid-production we switched to console as lead platform"

[MrChris_CJ]

Re: Battlefield 3 lead platform 'switched to consoles' mid-development

I'll go against the general flow of rage, as I did on the EAUK forums and say

derp

Making a game like BF3, the engine would very much be PC focussed, which it obviously is, this means that a lot of time, years probably was spent crafting an engine that I think we can all admit turned out pretty good

later on you get to aspects of the game however that need a different approach (Joe Grant has actually explained this on the EA UK forums etc)

uniform features like general gameplay do not need an overall focus, they are going to be the same on all platforms, you design and test them for everything; there are slip ups in this area on the PC version in a sense that the UI is often very bad and some of the options don't work

but thats how you develop a game, you aren't going to have 3 seperate teams working on the PC, PS3 and 360 versions when all they are all doing is working on gameplay, crap like weapon balance etc

and as Joe Grant pointed out, in order to meet release deadlines etc you have to send certain pre release issues to MS and Sony for testing, you have to give those versions a bit of love or risk a suicidal business approach

but yes, make a super mega awesome PC game for several years, then just decide to not make it work on the consoles, thats not how the market works these days

you very much got a PC focussed development but it doesn't mean that Dice has to work on the PC and hold it above all the other titles at every stage of development

that said however, I do not doubt that if it were up to Dice they probably would have liked to have spent more time on the game, but even then, you have to admit its release state (despite having problems) is pretty dam good

[LunaTiK TunaLiK]

Re: Battlefield 3 lead platform 'switched to consoles' mid-development

I bet the PC version gets more attention and love now that we are post-release.

[CptainCrunch]

Re: Battlefield 3 lead platform 'switched to consoles' mid-development

Im sorry but Karl needs a serious ass chewing by EA for saying this the way he said. Looking at the PC version vs. the console versions its very obvious the game was rushed, not edited or somehow made to fit for all platforms including console. DICE ran out of time for the EA deadline and so they dropped parts of it for later installation in patches. He chose poor wording for "rushed so we had to cut things" and made it seem like the game is a console port.

NO, you are not going to get six man squad (though I was in one yesterday because of the bug) or commander or an entire BF2 remake. Its not happening. So keep hating on that.

[Minmaster]

Re: Battlefield 3 lead platform 'switched to consoles' mid-development

uhm do you recall any battlefield on PC that came out ready for primetime? it's been how the franchise has always worked... polish it up during the game's lifespan.

[Anarchy1]

Re: Battlefield 3 lead platform 'switched to consoles' mid-development

Here are Joe Grant's responses Chris was talking about if you were curious:

Ok, I'll take this one.

I've been reading the threads on this for a few days and I think people are showing a bit of lack of understanding when it comes to developing games.

As you know, we have to "submit" to Sony and Microsoft when a game is in development. Therefore at certain times during development these get additional focus to make sure that things work according to standards.

UI, memory footprint, loading times, disc layouts - these are all different on each platform. Quite often they are made by different engineers/designers etc. Therefore when making a game work on this platform you have to focus on it. That makes it "lead platform" for a set period of time. However for tech development in general PC was the lead platform.

I think this and the "why they hate PC gamers" thread are moving towards the same track.

Let me start with a story.

One of the biggest manufacturers of off the shelf PCs sent me 12 PCs to use for an event. These are premium, high end specifications that most "tech geeks" would love to get their hands on. Each one was exactly the same hardware and software configuration. The OS was installed from a OS image to suit the hardware. The game worked first time on 8 of the 12 PCs. But they were all the same, right? Now the problem here is out in the "wild" people then say "OMG THIS GAME IS SO BROKEN!!" but if all the PCs are the same, then this should not happen, right?

This is an assumed luxury on console, despite what people think not all consoles are exactly the same. However in general they are closer. This makes it easier to develop for.

So, when we make the game and run it on 1000 PCs and get different results, what do we do? Early on there was panic of "we will need super computers to run this game!" so things have to change to cater for that. Rather than blame consoles, perhaps you should ask why we cant do the same on 2GB of RAM? To have the game looking good on all configurations you need to pick a middle line. It is what is known as deciding your lowest common denominator.

tl;dr- He basically says that the PC version was the lead platform in terms of engine design, but not game design.

[stilla-killa]

Re: Battlefield 3 lead platform 'switched to consoles' mid-development

I played on a server that had BF2 rules meaning only spawn on squad leader and no 3d spotting and no kill cam and the game was more fun to me. Just type in BF2 when searching for a server.

[Anarchy1]

Re: Battlefield 3 lead platform 'switched to consoles' mid-development

I find them to be fun, but they make me realize how much I've relied on 3d spotting.

[Eagle101]

Re: Battlefield 3 lead platform 'switched to consoles' mid-development

No kill cam! i will search for that now! honestly kill cam blows, and the fact you cant pass it pisses me off moar :S

[stilla-killa]

Re: Battlefield 3 lead platform 'switched to consoles' mid-development

No kill cam! i will search for that now! honestly kill cam blows, and the fact you cant pass it pisses me off moar :S

If you click on the server name it will tell you all the server settings.

[Eagle101]

Re: Battlefield 3 lead platform 'switched to consoles' mid-development

^ yeah i know that, its just that almost every server i click on has kill cam on. i just...i just hate it.

[RedInk]

Re: Battlefield 3 lead platform 'switched to consoles' mid-development

This explains a lot.

really? Did you really need to read that to tell that the game was built crapply for console.