Newbie FAQ, Help VETERANS!

[sharpescalade]

real simple i just have some questions alot of new people would have about this game...

1.what video quality is recommended and why? should people use the high settings or can we settle for med/low settings and be fine?

2.whats the # thing you can do to improve game performance or reduce lag[not online]

3.I want more single player maps..can i download more and add them to the game? how EXACTLY? I want to practice on SP maps before i go online and get killed every 3 seconds...

4. whats the best mini-mod I can do? and why?

5.whats the best trick you would suggest while playing BF2?

6. how do you record your battles to videos?

7. and anything else you can say that you found out about this game that you would like to add, please do so!

[Anaraith]

Re: Newbie FAQ, Help VETERANS!

Sorry I can't answer all your questions but I know a few.

1. It doesn't really matter what video quality you use as long as the game runs smoothly. I set mine to as high as it can go without the game lagging.

3. I think there are some other maps you can download. Sorry but i don't know of any of them but wait for someone else to repie and you should get some good websites. Or you can always just look for yourself in google. Most sites will tell you how to use the map once it's downloaded.

5. Best trick? Theres probably alot of tricks you can do. It all depends on what you want to do eg: what kit you wanna play, what armour you want to use.

6. You can go to http://www.totalbf2.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6835 for a massive guide to use the battle recorder. I found that pretty confusing so this is what I do to record my games.
1. When you start a round press the button to the left of the 1. This should bring up a page taking about half the screen that you can type into.
2. Type "demo.recorddemo (after space type name of video)" without the "s.
3. Play the game. (There is a way to stop it hlaf way but I'm not sure how. You can check the page I said before or just exit the game like normal because this will end the movie).
4. Exit out of BF2 and go to Program Files/EA Games/Battlefield 2/mods/bf2/Demos or where ever you installed BF2 to. This should bring up a page with files. These are the files for your movies. For every movie it will make to files. EG: If you made one called "strikeatkarkland", there will to files called "strikeatkarkland.bf2demo" and "strikeatkarkland-def.bf2cam. You need to copy these 2 files.
5. You need to make the files in My Documents if not already made. They are Battlefield 2/Profiles/Default/Demos. Then paste the copied files into the demos file.
6. Start up BF2 and go to the community part. There to the right of the screen you should see your movie. Click on this and at the bottom of the page press "Play file".
7. This will play your movie. During the movie if you hold done Q you can do some various options with your movie like slowing down or speeding up.
As for making your movie AVI you will need to go to the guide I posted earlyer.

7. If there is anything I think of later I will add here.

Well I hope that helped you.

[imported_Wreck]

Re: Newbie FAQ, Help VETERANS!

real simple i just have some questions alot of new people would have about this game...

1.what video quality is recommended and why? should people use the high settings or can we settle for med/low settings and be fine?

2.whats the # thing you can do to improve game performance or reduce lag[not online]

3.I want more single player maps..can i download more and add them to the game? how EXACTLY? I want to practice on SP maps before i go online and get killed every 3 seconds...

4. whats the best mini-mod I can do? and why?

5.whats the best trick you would suggest while playing BF2?

6. how do you record your battles to videos?

7. and anything else you can say that you found out about this game that you would like to add, please do so!

1. Depends on your hardware setup.

2. Get 2Gb of ram.

3. There are maps on TBF2 download you can play in single player. They come with instructions usually. Some you put in your map folder and some are .exe.

4. Project reality mod is the best out right now. It makes the game play as it should.

5. Turn your lighting setting to low to reveal your enemies in the dark.

6. They are recorded on the server. You can download the files with bookmarks through BF2 in the community tab.

7. This game is a buggy POS. If I started now I honestly wouldn't even play until the 1.2 patch is released.

[bustacaptx]

Re: Newbie FAQ, Help VETERANS!

1.what video quality is recommended and why? should people use the high settings or can we settle for med/low settings and be fine?

2.whats the # thing you can do to improve game performance or reduce lag[not online]

Answer to 1. Some sacrifice video quality for performance by turning all textures to low, no AA, and shadows off. I prefer a bit of eyecandy, so I run at 1280x1024 (set in command line), 2xAA and medium textures. BF2 looks good and runs at a very smooth rate on my machine.

Answer to 2. Upgrade your ram; that's the single best hardware-related speed increase you can get. Just going from 1gb to 1.5 gb, the difference was very noticeable for me.

If you can't upgrade ram, after you get your resolution set how you want it, do the following:

1. Delete the cache (\My Documents\Battlefield 2\mods\bf2\cache)
2. Defrag the drive containing your My Documents folder
3. Start BF2 and go into a single player game. Let it Optimize Shaders (it'll take several minutes; this step re-creates the cache you just deleted).
4. Quit BF2 after it's done, and then start it up again.
5. Revel in the instant performance boost.

This places the shader files in contiguous sectors on your hard drive when they are re-created; the drive's heads have to perform far fewer motions when loading. The fewer drive operations required to load them, the faster the game. Except for adding ram, this procedure (which you should repeat every time you change your video settings) gave me the biggest immediate performace increase of any tweaks I tried.

[imported_Foxen]

Re: Newbie FAQ, Help VETERANS!

1: The visual experience between medium and high is very small, but the performance difference is high.

5: Crouch while shooting and shoot in small bursts (but fast).