Battlefield 2 & 2142 Widescreen Hack

[Dopefish]

Thanks for the PR work dopefish.
If I were to move the slider lower than 20, would this reduce occasional jittery movements?

I scan the FOV changes in milliseconds. The game changes the FOV based on a timer. 0.15 seconds to zoom in, for example. It's going to do multiple steps over those 0.15 seconds. I scan for the changes in FOV and updated once the changes have stopped. If you set the slider too low, it's going to update too quickly for the FOV changing. Because of that, it's going to multiply by the wrong value and potentially throw off your FOV altogether.

Wait if the BF engine was designed for 4:3, then how come BF2 has 5:4? Do you see more in 1280x1024 or do you just lose some of your sides?

In 5:4, you actually lose horizontal width. It crops the sides to maintain vertical height.

[joe2]

will try this out, thanks a lot dopefish.

what other stuff have you coded, if anything? for 2142 or other games

[Vreki]

Well I will have to say that regardless where you stand on the WS/FOV issue, you will have to admit that this is an impressive hack.

And I am using the "clever" definition of hack, not the "aimbot" one :)

But could you tell us what exactly is being changed?
Is it just a piece of software running in the background, or are some executables being modified?

[Elementalist]

I'm afraid this doesn't really work too well for me. Dopefish, maybe you could advise or settings to improve?

The system works great, but it performs oddly - badly enough to make me go 1600x1200 (thanks to Dell 2707s having a 1:1 pixel mode! yay!)

I tried on various time settings, but the tearing when panning is quite rough. The game does do this normally, I know, but I think I'm seeing it worsening.

The zooming behaviour is the most off-putting though. I often switch between zoomed/un-zoomed with the Baur and the crosshairs go awry when doing this. It is worse at timings like <25ms, but still noticeable at 50. It really does make targetting much more difficult (I am very accurate over very long distances with the Baur usually). I'm pretty sure I noticed accuracy when unzoomed being weird too. People that would usually have been toasted getting away on half health.

I'm using a Dell 2707 in 1:1 pixel mode and graphics detail all set to the max.

I'd love it if you could suggest something and it would be better Widescreen BF looks great until you move! And the amount that gets chopped off the top and bottom is terrible!

The EA/Dice argument that WS support would be unbalancing sucks! Rather than give a few WS folks a slight advantage you give all 4:3 folks an advantage over WS folks. Yeah, great!

[Dopefish]

Well I will have to say that regardless where you stand on the WS/FOV issue, you will have to admit that this is an impressive hack.

And I am using the "clever" definition of hack, not the "aimbot" one :)

But could you tell us what exactly is being changed?
Is it just a piece of software running in the background, or are some executables being modified?

It just reads the FOV float from memory, multiplies it and writes it back. That's all.

[Elementalist]

It just reads the FOV float from memory, multiplies it and writes it back. That's all.

Oh! Gosh. I've been a bit thick - it's finally sunk in.

It's totally the engine not coping with the FOV change that is causing the issue. It's not coded to expect the change and probably has lots of coding that doesn't like being at an unexpected FOV value anyway.

Right?

Well - I can still hope, since it is a 'setting', that they might change the engine to cope better or offer that setting under BF engine control.

I imagine if it was set all the time and didn't change back and forth (using your tool) that there would be less undesirable effects in the graphics.

*shrug* Back to guessing and hoping for me. Glad it works for some folks!

[FPS[VT_NERD]]

By stating that, you are just following what you've read elsewhere. They didn't disallow it because of an unfair advantage. The BF2 engine was made when widescreen monitors weren't exactly popular. Since BF2142 is based on the same engine, it still lacks the widescreen support. When you consider that games generally take 2-3 years to develop, they weren't exactly preparing for widescreen.

The widespread adoption of widescreen monitors is immaterial. It gives an unfair advantage to those with WS monitors, plain and simple. DICE foresaw this problem and nipped it in the bud. Hopefully this will get nipped in the bud too.

[Elementalist]

The widespread adoption of widescreen monitors is immaterial. It gives an unfair advantage to those with WS monitors, plain and simple. DICE foresaw this problem and nipped it in the bud. Hopefully this will get nipped in the bud too.

Yeah! And we should all be made to use the same graphics cards, processors and harddrives too! It's just not fair! This allowance of people to use better hardware than me, I mean, strange hardware makes me jealous, I mean, is unfair!

And surely people who have their own servers shouldn't be allowed to play on them - it *must* give them an unfair advantage. And clans should be banned - having regular assistence from other players is just like stat padding!

Before you know it, companies will be writing special code to give advantage to people who can afford more than one graphics card or a processor with multiple cores or a higher resolution 4:3 monitor!

Where will it all end?!

/sarcasm off

It's plain and simple to me that some people's grasp of the issue got nipped in the bud before understanding and consideration flowered...

[Erhardt]

The widespread adoption of widescreen monitors is immaterial. It gives an unfair advantage to those with WS monitors, plain and simple. DICE foresaw this problem and nipped it in the bud. Hopefully this will get nipped in the bud too.

Have to agree with Elementalist's view, VT Nerd.... if widescreen is going to be considered an unfair advantage, then better video cards, faster CPUs, and faster RAM must be so as well, but oddly enough, aren't.

Sorry, the whole "widescreen gives an unfair advantage" schtick doesn't wash in light of all that.

[Dopefish]

The widespread adoption of widescreen monitors is immaterial. It gives an unfair advantage to those with WS monitors, plain and simple. DICE foresaw this problem and nipped it in the bud. Hopefully this will get nipped in the bud too.

That is entirely not the reason. Trust me. :)

[Wizrdwarts]

The Battlefield 2 engine zooms in by changing the FOV I think...

[Seppuku]

Honestly Nerd, you should really try it out before saying that. It's such a classic knee jerk response.

When you look at it in static screenshots, true widescreen seems to give a player a lot more information to their benefit. It doesn't completely translate that way in game (even without the unfortunate issues of FOV in the BF engine). It really is a fairly subtle increase in what you can see. You can toggle it on and off in-game, and honestly you have to pay a fair amount of attention to even notice that it's on.

As many others have mentioned, the many other hardware advantages you can get by spending cash are exponentially more profound (and no one in this thread has even mentioned the difference btw dogfighting with a $150 joystick and the keyboard and mouse, or using a gaming mouse with dpi settings and multiple finger/thumb buttons, etc, etc). Hardware "advantages" are endemic to PC gaming and likely always will be. If it really concerns you that much you should be playing on a console.

Anyway, I don't use it and am not attempting to justify it for my own benefit. I just always thought that tactical advantage argument was BS and after experiencing it first hand, now I know so.

[Asiriya]

I want this so badly. Drool. If only more games would support it.

They had a rig like that running at BT when i went on work experience. What game is it running there?
I dont see whats wrong with it, sure its annoying if like me you dont have a widescreen, but in real war its usually the better equipped that do better. This is kinda similar

[|D|-Max]

They had a rig like that running at BT when i went on work experience. What game is it running there?
I dont see whats wrong with it, sure its annoying if like me you dont have a widescreen, but in real war its usually the better equipped that do better. This is kinda similar

its CS:S

[imported_Talbot]

The 'fix' is more of an annoyance, doesn't really change my performance, if anything it hinders it. But good work managing something that DICE obviously were too incompetent to do themselves.