Battlefield 2 1.5 patch - Coming Soon!

thatbloke

thatbloke

Junior Administrator
Was bored at work and found out that "towards the end of April" there will be a beta period for a 1.5 patch for BF2...

http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/battlefield-2/470046-battlefield-2-1-50-status.html#post7713107

The post above is made by an EA employee regarding the patch, if you sift through the posts then you will find the information about it.

Here are some of the more notable items, in no particular order:

- Eliminating the need for the BF2 disk to be in the drive when playing
- Additional support for Windows Vista.
- Added Highway Tampa as a required map.
- Added a new map called Operation Blue Pearl.
- Changes made to both the J10 and F35B to make them more balanced. Please note that the J10 is a superior dogfighter to the F35B and as such these two aircraft will never be equally matched.
- AA targeting tweaked to make it more effective.
- Added checks to prevent "runway grieving".
- Various changes made to prevent cheating.
- Tweaked the hit detection, hits will be more accurate to the model.
- If someone stands in front of the plane because they didnt get it then the plane takes off and kills the guy on the runway the player will not be able to punish the pilot and the pilot will not lose any points. (HELL YES)
- PROPER WIDESCREEN SUPPORT

The main aim of this patch appears to be to stop the large number of hacks that are around, also there is a new map and a few balance issues.

Looks good, will probably get me playing again :)
 
E

elDiablo

Guest
At first, I was like, "WHAT?! NO! RUBBISH!", but then I read it.

The points:
- Eliminating the need for the BF2 disk to be in the drive when playing
- If someone stands in front of the plane because they didnt get it then the plane takes off and kills the guy on the runway the player will not be able to punish the pilot and the pilot will not lose any points. (HELL YES)
- Changes made to both the J10 and F35B to make them more balanced. Please note that the J10 is a superior dogfighter to the F35B and as such these two aircraft will never be equally matched.

make me happy.
 
SgtFury

SgtFury

Junior Administrator
Staff member
AA targeting tweaked to make it more effective.

WOOT Time to shoot Eld down :D
 
thatbloke

thatbloke

Junior Administrator
Well that is a massive waste of my time.

1.3GB of download later and I can't join any servers.

I get to the server browser, select a server, press join server and after about 5 seconds it returns me to the server browser with no reasons given.
 
Silk

Silk

Well-Known Member
I got bf2 and installed it the other day.. now i remember why I stopped gaming in the first place; punkbuster.

I'd like to bust those punks, that's for sure.

It took me two hours to fix error after error, I think I can finally play. But effectively, those guys have killed online gaming. Imagine a fairly causal player trying to fix all those errors.. just not going to happen is it.

And the reason they put me off gaming in the first place.. can't remember exactly but it was something abusrd like being auto-kicked off most servers just because my gfx card at the time had a built in feature allowing walls to be transparent (which I didn't use and you had to hack to enable anyway).

Anyway like the game so far, though I seem to die in two shots! Was playing as medic to get used to stuff and at least be half-useful.
 
thatbloke

thatbloke

Junior Administrator
silkth said:
I got bf2 and installed it the other day.. now i remember why I stopped gaming in the first place; punkbuster.

I'd like to bust those punks, that's for sure.

It took me two hours to fix error after error, I think I can finally play. But effectively, those guys have killed online gaming. Imagine a fairly causal player trying to fix all those errors.. just not going to happen is it.

And the reason they put me off gaming in the first place.. can't remember exactly but it was something abusrd like being auto-kicked off most servers just because my gfx card at the time had a built in feature allowing walls to be transparent (which I didn't use and you had to hack to enable anyway).

Anyway like the game so far, though I seem to die in two shots! Was playing as medic to get used to stuff and at least be half-useful.
Click to expand...

get pbsetup from the punkbuster website, tell it you have bf2 then tell it to update.

sorted in 2 minutes..........
 
Silk

Silk

Well-Known Member
thatbloke said:
get pbsetup from the punkbuster website, tell it you have bf2 then tell it to update.

sorted in 2 minutes..........
Click to expand...

Yes that was error #1 which I sorted doing exactly that, though do you really think everyone would know how to fix this? They've killed online gaming on PC cos not everyone is a geek like us. It SHOULD self update if they are going to FORCE it on the community.

Anyway error #2 took me over an hour. It was some random message that I'd have to dig out, can't remember. Turns out I needed to forward a port (not because of any lag issues, but because a message couldn't get to the PB server or some other such bullcrap). Again, they should have things like that clearly laid out from the start.. and TBH they've made online gaming on the windows platform so hard to sort out that it threatens to kill the platform off as a viable gaming medium.

Cheaters never bothered me, in fact half the fun was ganging up on them or banning them. You learnt which servers to avoid, and which servers had a good community. If I could go back to the days of no PB I would.
 
thatbloke

thatbloke

Junior Administrator
So the 1.5 patch has been officially released!

To install it, you need to have the game installed and patched to 1.41 first. So here's a link for that: http://www.fileplay.net/file/249/battlefield-2-patch-v1-41-full-client-patch (536MB)

Next, you need to install the 1.5 patch on top of that, so here's a handy link for that too: http://www.fileplay.net/file/6020/battlefield-2-patch-v1-50 (1.9GB)

The reason that patch is so big is that the following has been added:

  • Additional support for Windows Vista.
  • Added Highway Tampa as a required map.
  • Added a new map called Operation Blue Pearl.
  • Added Euro Force and Armored Fury as free to play content for all Battlefield 2 players.
  • Added Widescreen support
  • Allowed BF2.exe to use more than 2Gb RAM
  • Added support for the Novint Falcon controller (http://www.novint.com).
:D
 
H

HotStuff

Member
This game is now 4 years old...why are they bothering ?...at the end of the day it's only really one extra map.

Wouldn't the man hours been better spent on the new BF game?

Besides BF and COD, come on, we all know which one is better...

Anyhow they have done it now, the game is already installed on my PC so may as well have the patch.
 
thatbloke

thatbloke

Junior Administrator
It's more than 1 map.

There are numberous changes to prevent griefing by the fucktards who insist on standing on the runway to cause you to lose points when you run them over taking off in a plane.

The booster packs that were released when it could be said that BF2 was in its prime are now included as free addons.

There is now PROPER widescreen support for the people like myself with a widescreen monitor...

And last and not least, support for my new toy. (which hasn't arrived yet :()
 
H

HotStuff

Member
Nanor said:
Quite obviously Battlefield.
Click to expand...

Had a go at this yesterday.

After playing COD4 and COD5 and trying BF2 (not played in over a year) with new patch yesterday, this is wot i thought.

- dated graphics, almost unrealistic/comic looking in parts
- chunky animation of players, though vehichle animations were fine
- No rag doll effect when players killed.
- new map "operation something..." not really anything special in terms of creative new ideas.

Also, I had trouble installing 1.5 patch due to the massive number of things (all official) I already have installed for BF2, ie Special forces, Highway tampa map and of course previous add on packs(now given for free). The 1.5 patch isn't intelligent enough to cater for the different combinations of installation order of previously installed patches/add ons. I have also read that a patch 1.51 is already available.

This is a similar thing that happened with BF2142 patch a year ago, it wasn't possible to install "northern strike" add on pack with the latest patch, not sure if they sorted it now, but it put me off the game big time.

On the other hand with the COD games, installing patches/add ons in correct order is something I have never had a concern or thought about - it is all done automatically and works just fine without queuing on dodgy advertising websites. I really do think that waiting in queues on websites, downloading patches from websites u aren't sure of, hoping ur installation order is correct and finally hoping that the patch has catered for ur particular installation combintation should really be a thing of the past.

EA, come on we are almost in the 2nd decade of the 21st century, let's leave patching procedures/styles that started in the 20th century well behind.
 
Nanor

Nanor

Well-Known Member
3 of your 4 points are having a go at the graphics of a game which is 4 years old. Graphics do not make the game great. They help immerse you in a good game but if the gameplay sucks then the game sucks no matter how damn big the explosions are. When BF2 came out the graphics were state of the art especially as 64 players were on the battlefield at once and the maps were absolutely huge.

As regards your last point I haven't seen the CoD maps do anything creative. A large proportion are just deathmatch styled square arenas; Killhouse, Wetworks, Showdown and Shipment. BF2 maps vary incredibly from map to map. Take a look at the original maps and try to find some that are similar. Some are similar but no two maps are played quite the same. CoD degenerates into "they're probably at here so let's go here" whereas BF2 is "we need to take out this so it becomes easier to take out this".

Of course the two are very different games. Battlefield 2 is a large scale, multiplayer, co-operative conquest game. CoD4 is a small scale, multiplayer, team death match game with CSS styled defend/attack the bombsite. If I had to pick a large scale MP coop conquest game I'd pick BF2. If I had to pick a MP TDM game with some defending or attacking of a bombsite I'd pick CoD4. If I had to pick between the two I'd pick BF2.

Why? Well because it's nice to have team mates that are properly needed. It's nice to be playing as a squad and run into a tank only to find you have no AT so you squirm around on the ground and wait for an AT to spawn. It's nice to all die as a squad to a helicopter and think "We'll go take out the helipad so they don't have a helicopter". It's nice to die and be able to think of a plan to not die again rather than die because your reflexes weren't quick enough and there's nothing you can do.

With that said, what you said about the patching is absolutely true. BF2 is great once you can actually get it playing. If something doesn't get patched you're in for quite a ride. I'd like to think they've changed their ways now, though. Let's wait for BF3. :)
 
thatbloke

thatbloke

Junior Administrator
I can't find anytihng about a 1.51 patch for bf2 being available already... but I have seen news about a 1.51 patch for bf2142 :)
 
H

HotStuff

Member
I wasn't criticising BF2 maps in general only the new map, which I still think sadly disappoints. You'd think they could have done better with the time between 1.41 and 1.5

Personally I never play Deathmatch or CS style bomb defusing on COD, I only play conquest mode as it gives a more "front line" feel to the battle.

There aren't anywhere near as many servers playing BF2, I counted about 40 of them had acceptable low levels of ping that I would play on - you will find it difficult to play regularly on a good 64 player server.

As for patch 1.51, I did make a mistake, it was this i read:

http://www.fileplanet.com/204918/200000/fileinfo/Battlefield-2---Patch-v1.50-Hotfix-Alt+Tab-

But I do believe that BF3 will simply make BF2 a lot better, with improved graphics, auto-patching, improved levelling system etc etc. We will be spoiled for choice when choosing a server to play on. Will it be better than the gamplay/graphics/levelling/patching of MW2? I will certainly enjoy finding out.
 
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