Re: Rumor: Battlefield 3 Limited Edition Contents Leaked
Specifically to Frostbite;
What has been said of how the frostbite editor works would seem to suggest it’s firmly welded to other systems in DICEland, it’s a proper big boys toy. I don’t see why FB2 would change that design, so even if they released the editor it would require a mod team to have a fairly excessive amount of IT infrastructure and expensive software licenses. It would be nice to think that BF3 might allow mods but from what’s been said I think it’s a big no (but I firmly believe the marketing guy will tell you the sky is pink if you’ll pre-order). In any case it would unlikely be as straight forward as BF2 was and no one ever said that was straight forward.
But more generally;
Mod tools are not something you would (normally) expect to be created specially. Tools that allow you to make a mod are not written after they would have been useful to the developer to make the game. Certainly some things may be different when tools are released, perhaps watered down or adapted, but not invented, the bigger effort usually being the paper work to explain how to use the tools.
What has changed with time and consoles encourage is the flogging of a dead horse as standard practice. The tools remain useful to the developers for longer, they make more games on the same engine and they would risk having to compete with mod teams if they released the tools (perhaps more for ideas than anything). The sheer level of Battlefield spam DICE has at least attempted to produce being rather typical of that.
There is also the issue of security, as the same game(s) span multiple platforms it is possible that a minor problem that is of no issue on a pc might allow you to take down all of Xbox live – to over dramatise the point. Keeping server files private is also in keeping with that as they will be the same files across all platforms but server files are of no (particular) use without mod tools ever since ranking.
This is all on top of the more fundamental point that stand alone software is less and less useful in a situation where many people work on a single project at the same time - number crunching can be outsourced to servers, version tracking, files, builds can be managed by a server etc. – none of which leads towards a program(s) that is useful on (just) your home computer which is all a modder really has.
As for BF3 I think it will be port. There is the chicken and egg debate but even if the first compiled build is for PC it will have been designed to run on a PS3 and Xbox, to me the order of compilation makes little difference as to whether the game is designed with console limitations in mind.
64 player is a question of typing ‘64’ in a server configuration file where it says ‘playercount =’ (or similar), what will be interesting is if the PC game gets custom 64 player maps. 64 players on a 32 player map or 32 players on a 64 player map is not going to please anyone. In theory BC2 could be 64 player, dread to think what that would play like! I do hope they actually put the effort in to make the player count work rather than simply listing it as a statistic.
I would hope the expansion pack nonsense is just that. I accept that pre-order incentives are now fairly normal but I prefer the way TDU2 went about it, it certainly doesn’t make sense to segregate the players from day 1. It would seem to serve to bribe Battlefield fans into pre-ordering and to penalise anyone the game attracts to the franchise after release. It hardly suggests DICE is particularly confident about the game if the best sales technique they could come up with was bribery. It also seems a little concerning that, for a Battlefield game, the best feature boasting thus far is nothing new to the series. It would be nice to have a scorecard of features for BF2 and see how many make it to BF3 – prone, jets and 64 player is simply not going to fill the back of the box.
Specifically to Frostbite;
What has been said of how the frostbite editor works would seem to suggest it’s firmly welded to other systems in DICEland, it’s a proper big boys toy. I don’t see why FB2 would change that design, so even if they released the editor it would require a mod team to have a fairly excessive amount of IT infrastructure and expensive software licenses. It would be nice to think that BF3 might allow mods but from what’s been said I think it’s a big no (but I firmly believe the marketing guy will tell you the sky is pink if you’ll pre-order). In any case it would unlikely be as straight forward as BF2 was and no one ever said that was straight forward.
But more generally;
Mod tools are not something you would (normally) expect to be created specially. Tools that allow you to make a mod are not written after they would have been useful to the developer to make the game. Certainly some things may be different when tools are released, perhaps watered down or adapted, but not invented, the bigger effort usually being the paper work to explain how to use the tools.
What has changed with time and consoles encourage is the flogging of a dead horse as standard practice. The tools remain useful to the developers for longer, they make more games on the same engine and they would risk having to compete with mod teams if they released the tools (perhaps more for ideas than anything). The sheer level of Battlefield spam DICE has at least attempted to produce being rather typical of that.
There is also the issue of security, as the same game(s) span multiple platforms it is possible that a minor problem that is of no issue on a pc might allow you to take down all of Xbox live – to over dramatise the point. Keeping server files private is also in keeping with that as they will be the same files across all platforms but server files are of no (particular) use without mod tools ever since ranking.
This is all on top of the more fundamental point that stand alone software is less and less useful in a situation where many people work on a single project at the same time - number crunching can be outsourced to servers, version tracking, files, builds can be managed by a server etc. – none of which leads towards a program(s) that is useful on (just) your home computer which is all a modder really has.
As for BF3 I think it will be port. There is the chicken and egg debate but even if the first compiled build is for PC it will have been designed to run on a PS3 and Xbox, to me the order of compilation makes little difference as to whether the game is designed with console limitations in mind.
64 player is a question of typing ‘64’ in a server configuration file where it says ‘playercount =’ (or similar), what will be interesting is if the PC game gets custom 64 player maps. 64 players on a 32 player map or 32 players on a 64 player map is not going to please anyone. In theory BC2 could be 64 player, dread to think what that would play like! I do hope they actually put the effort in to make the player count work rather than simply listing it as a statistic.
I would hope the expansion pack nonsense is just that. I accept that pre-order incentives are now fairly normal but I prefer the way TDU2 went about it, it certainly doesn’t make sense to segregate the players from day 1. It would seem to serve to bribe Battlefield fans into pre-ordering and to penalise anyone the game attracts to the franchise after release. It hardly suggests DICE is particularly confident about the game if the best sales technique they could come up with was bribery. It also seems a little concerning that, for a Battlefield game, the best feature boasting thus far is nothing new to the series. It would be nice to have a scorecard of features for BF2 and see how many make it to BF3 – prone, jets and 64 player is simply not going to fill the back of the box.
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