Battlefield 1942 - Secret Weapons Interview

John Callaham writes "HomeLAN chats with Digital Illusions producer Mikael Rudberg as he talks about Battlefield 1942: Secret Weapons, the upcoming second expansion pack to their hit multiplayer shooter for publisher Electronic Arts." Seems like Battlefield 1942 has been one of the out-of-left-field smash hits of recent, and from the guys who honed their skills on Pinball Dreams for the Amiga, too.

eh

[u-238]

and maybe included in this update will be some solidity in the man-on-man combat? in the current version firefights between foot soldiers is nothing more than a joke. sniping provides the exampe from which all understanding of the foot soldier fighting mechanics can be derived.... if any of you reading this have actually TRIED sniping in BF42, you know exactly what i'm talking about. accuracy is nonexistant, and thats an understatement. at first, i thought it was an attempt at realism, shoot in front of the

Re:eh

[actor_au]

i just played DOD 1.0 a few hours ago. i point the sniper crosshair at the chest of the enemy, i shoot, he dies.

That was you?? Bastard!!

Re:eh

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously it's been a while sinice you played. Since the 1.31 update, about three months back, hit detection is much improved.

Oh, and you idiot, BF1942 has its own Refractor engine it's not based on Quake 3 at all.

Just stick to playing Half-Life, will ya?

Re:eh

[Ratso Baggins]

It might be just you. I get pegged by snipers running. I can pick the lead by which you snipe a moving target (with any of the rifles), it's just that it takes 3 hits (or more) to kill. You're a sniper & you're aiming at the chest? that's why you "miss" all the time, go for the head! One shot no prob! Sniping in DoD is too easy...

2tuff2care

Re:eh

[nekoes]

Yah, I second that... maybe your facts aren't straight, but you got one thing right, BF1942 netcode is ass. I'm still waiting for a game that can pull off many player battles and not suffer from a huge lag fest.

fun but no competition...

[Hadlock]

just my two cents, your milage may vary:

i own quake 1,2,3 and halflife, the latter i can't play on my mac and the former i haven't picked up except at the bi-monly lan-ing i do; i'm not a great FPS person by any means, probably somewhere in the 65th percentile. I'm in the 20th percentile when it comes to RTS games. I don't even own BF1942 and play(ed) it about once a week for 2 hours at a time on my friend's PC rig, and within 2 weeks was ranking #1 or #2 on any server I played on. There's no fun when you

This site is crap

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with this Slash/Games site is that it is clear that the people editing it and the people responding have no fucking clue about games really, except that they play Counter Strike.

Cya, I'm off to read GameSpy, it may be lame and corporate but it isn't full of shit and half-baked claims like this.

EA has taken it, and will turn it to crap

[pommaq]

This is the second so-called "Expansion pack" to hit BF1942, and the game hasn't even been out for a year. Really, the new stuff in Road to Rome was *NOT* worth paying for - they could just as well have released it as a patch. I smell EA behind this (The Sims and its thousand expansions, anyone?) and I think it'll only get worse from here on, unless people see this for what it is... highway robbery.
I mean, they can't seriously expect me to cough up $30 every four months for a couple new maps+weapons, can they? BF1942 is an incredibly cool game as it is, so just keep supporting it with patches and fixes. Leave the new maps, weapons and features for the modders, or BF1943.

Re:EA has taken it, and will turn it to crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it's an expansion pack, but it offers new game modes (destroy the objective). Judging from the screenshots, the objectives could be something like "steal the secret US jet plane" or "blow up the V-2 rocket." That's a fun, immersive new game mode. Works well in games like Blackhawk Down.

I'd like to see an updated game engine, but frankly Desert Combat gives me all the fix I need for something new.

Finally, the stuff about sniping is ridiculous. Practice and you'll be able to hit running targets in th

Re:EA has taken it, and will turn it to crap

[zoobaby]

"I mean, they can't seriously expect me to cough up $30 every four months for a couple new maps+weapons, can they?"

You paid $30? It was set for $20 retail.
They do need more patches and before they should release new expansion packs for cost.

"Leave the new maps, weapons and features for the modders, or BF1943."

This is being done already, good luck finding a server that has custom maps on it though.

Of course they expect you to cough up more money

[LordZardoz]

One of the primary reasons for a game to have an expansion pack is to get a better return on the initial investment into the game its self. The secondary, and ultimately less important reason is to release features that were cut from the game during development due to cost constraints.

An expansion does not require quite as much staff to develop, since your not starting from zero. If a game takes about 2 years to develop at a cost of say $3,000,000 dollars, you need to do better then that in sales to make

Re:buggiest ... game ...ever

[fiezk]

I think the key word here is "W98", try upgrading to Win2k. I'm not a windows fan, but there is a huge difference in stability when upgrading from W98 to W2k..