Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
PC Games (Games)

Battlefield 2 Demo Available 98

bbzzdd writes "Looks like FPS geeks aren't leaving the house this weekend. EA games has released a demo for the long awaited Battlefield 2 . The 547 MB demo is available at: Filerush (Torrent), GameSpot, Filefront, Gamer's Hell, Worthplaying, Download.com, Computer Games Romania .
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Battlefield 2 Demo Available

Comments Filter:
  • Looks like FPS geeks aren't leaving the house this weekend.

    Yeah, because that's how long it's gonna take to download it.

  • Hope its like BF1942 (Score:2, Interesting)

    by MrJones ( 4691 )
    When BF1942 came out, it was really cool! Using all those vehicules.
    The tech look very promising in BF2, I don't like the war theme(Iraq is still too fresh, too controversial).
    But, its a must try demo.

    Cya you all in azureus and later in the demo ;)

    P.D.: www.3dgamer.com has a torrent too.
    • I don't like the war theme(Iraq is still too fresh, too controversial).

      Seconded!! Sorry but I don't want to fight for any of the sides provided.

      And the other thing about WWII aside from the less dubious morality is that the weapons and vehicles are not such overkill and give a much better balanced game for the scale of the maps. Desert Combat was a very well done mod but nothing like as much fun to play.

    • Oh, get over yourself. Gamers have been engaged in modern combat in the middle east since long before the current conflict. Your logic is the kind used by the anti-gaming putzes every time they use words like "murder simulator."
      • Gamers have been engaged in modern combat in the middle east since long before the current conflict.

        They may well have. But not me. It's not that its a "murder simulator" (as I loved BF1942) but more like it's propaganda (like Tom Clancy novels) and that leaves a really bad taste in my mouth...

    • If you play as USA and your team won, the US national antom is played :)
      This is weird ...
    • Yeah, I agree, Iraq is too fresh, and Korea would be too much like BF:V... and there is already a WWI mod for BF1942, soooo...

      I think they should do a "Battlefield 1863"...

      It'd be totally awesome to fire once, then reload for 45 seconds... ohhh hell yeah... and medics, instead of med packs, have hacksaws, and they saw off limbs... and instead of tanks, there are horses ... on second thought, maybe they should stick with Iraq.
  • Fast torrent link (Score:3, Informative)

    by shuz ( 706678 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @05:43PM (#12785207) Homepage Journal
    Here is a torrent that is pretty good.
    http://shuz.homelinux.com/Battlefield_2_Demo.exe.t orrent [homelinux.com]
  • Does this work with linux? I tend to buy every FPS which supports linux and it looks like a great game.
  • by Merk ( 25521 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @05:44PM (#12785218) Homepage

    I've heard about the "commander" mode, or "role", but don't know all that much about it. Is it at all similar to how the Commander role works in Savage [s2games.com]? What else are people really looking forward to? Is this one supposed to be more friendly with on-screen text? BF 1942 was awful with that, it was sometimes unreadable. Vietnam I think was a bit better but far from great.

    Are there vehicles that play really differently than what's available in BF 1942 or Vietnam? One thing that was both good and bad in that one was the realism of the vehicles. It was good in that there were lots of vehicles, all of which were driveable, but it was bad because the realism mix just wasn't right. On one hand, one person could "crew" a tank completely, driving it, shooting, etc. There was a place for a second person, but their role was pretty useless -- just a machine gunner or something. On the other hand, the look and abilities of the tanks was vaguely realistic. I think it would have been much more interesting if you *needed* a crew of 3 to make a tank work, and in a ship you could either fire the main guns, or move the ship, not both.

    Anyhow, I'll have to check out the demo, see what's new...

    • Yes. Tanks should be much harder to kill, and fewer.

      Helicopers should be much faster (they go 240 mph in real life)

      jetfighters too

      The bodies should stay for the entire round, and should be able to be used as protection.

      As far as artillery, it should work much better, and one should go based on coordinates: like: lay 16 rounds of 155 at 78-44. Then the arty guy should be able to calibrate his guns, and fire away.

      It should be possible to hide a mine by diggin it in.

      Barbed wire should actually stop the s
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Don't forget the tanks are FAST now. Imo the atillery is a bit too powerful. Entire spawns get wiped out, vehicles and all sometimes. The dash feature is nice.
      • -Medics can revive the dead

        Not to nit pick, but there's actually two states in the game, critically wounded and dead. If you're dead-dead you can't be revived. If you're critically wounded, you're incapacitated for a short amount of time (during which time you may be revived by a medic) before you die. The system seems to take into account how much damage you take to determine whether you're wounded or dead... e.g. small arms fire and splash damage seems to leave you critically wounded, whereas big stuf

      • Just tried it out for a few minutes...seems to be pretty fun.

        My biggest complaint with DICE games is that they manage to make the absolute worst installers ever, and their menu's are the laggiest nightmares i've ever seen in a game...

        Another complaint is that when you are first configuring the game, every time you change video settings, it has to spend a LONG time 'optimizing the shaders' for your new settings...

        For myself, I have no idea how much I can tweak the video options to get the best visuals/per
        • Oh, and another major annoyance (for me anyways) is that it creates NOT ONE, but TWO seperate folders in the 'my docs' folder for 'profiles'.

          First is just 'Battlefield 2' and then it makes a second folder called 'Battlefield 2 Demo'...

          I absolutely hate programs that insist on dumping shit into the my docs folder like this...no matter how much microsoft wants developers to do this, the my docs folder is for shit i actually use - profiles and other garbage that I'll never actually need to look at should be
  • by antdude ( 79039 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @06:16PM (#12785478) Homepage Journal
    Blue's News [bluesnews.com] report:

    "ATI Cards and Battlefield 2 Demo -- In testing the demo, EA has encountered some visual issues on certain ATI cards with the previous Catalyst drivers (5.5) and are working with yesterday's 5.6 release to discover if the issue is resolved. If in playing the Battlefield 2 demo you encounter texture corruption of any kind, we recommend rolling back to the Catalyst 5.1 drivers. ATI is aware of this issue and is working to resolve it."
  • by gregor-e ( 136142 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @06:17PM (#12785483) Homepage
    From the official Battlefield 2 README:

    WINDOWS

    - Minimum Specification, based on playing a 16 player game:
    CPU: 1 Ghz
    RAM: 384 Mb

    - Recommended Specification, based on playing a 64 player game:
    CPU: 3 Ghz. For AMD Athlon 64 CPU: 3500+ (2.2 Ghz)
    RAM: 1 Gb

    BANDWIDTH

    - Minimum
    2.5 Mbit

    - Recommended
    5Mbit
    • You forgot some other important points:

      Must use a Direct X 9.0c compatible card

      These cards must have at least 128MB of RAM

      Minimum cards are the GeForce FX5700 and Radeon 8500 or greater

      This will probably change a few people's minds as to whether they download or not. I'm not even going to attempt it until I hear otherwise on my Ti4200 w/128MB.

    • I've a Radeon 9800 Pro, Althon XP 2700+, and 1GB of RAM. I have to play at medium graphic settings (and no AA/AF), it doesn't look particularily nice and still doesn't run altogether smoothly. The load times are especially horrendous (minutes), and it has to do "shader optimizing" each time you load after changing your video settings, which takes even longer.

      It does have a fairly nice draw distance though.

      The full version will only have 12 maps, however, and this demo doesn't look incredibly bright. Maybe
      • Really? I have a 9800XT, gig of RAM and a P4 3.06, and I can play OK at high settings, with res. set to 1024x768, 6xAA, just turn down dynamic lighting, shadows to medium and it runs like buttah 99% of the time... but yeah the load times are pretty long (but well worth the wait!)

        As for the "only" 12 maps, remember that map size scales to the number of people playing. Heck, the demo only ships with one "map", but for all practical purposes it shipped with three... the same map in a 16-person game is pret

        • I do see your point about the variable map sizes, the variations are quite interesting to see (and the demo doesn't include the 64 player map). At that I was just basing my little report on the technical things I saw, mostly. I really do like the gameplay, especially how they improved the support classes like the medic.

          As for the settings, I did muck around a bit and run it okay at high settings, 1024x768, with shadows and something else at medium (like yours). It's still not quite good enough on 32 player
    • Those are the server specs.

      Full readme is available on Gamespot [gamespot.com]
  • by Popsikle ( 661384 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @06:17PM (#12785485) Homepage
    Due to bad internal testing, the wrong version of the server went out to us linux admins.

    more info:
    http://bf1942.lightcubed.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p =13143#13143 [lightcubed.com]

    Email from EA:

    From: Murphy, Mike
    Date: Jun 11, 2005 12:07 AM
    Subject: Incorrect BF2 Linux Version
    To: "Murphy, Mike"

    Hey Guys,

    A quick note to all of our community leaders and file partners. We
    inadvertently released an out-dated Linux version for today's
    Battlefield 2 Demo Server. It is imperative that you not make this
    available on your web sites and that you let people from your media
    outlets know not to host it for download or run demo servers with it.
    We will follow up early next week with a version that works.

    If you have any questions at all, feel free to call or email me.

    Thanks

    Mike
  • Does the demo include bots?
    I prefer to learn how to play offline - especially since this game will probably choke my computer to the point where I can't hit anything moving anyway.
  • Looks like FPS geeks aren't leaving the house this weekend.

    Uh, looks like I am going to have to work the whole weekend just for the cash to afford the upgrades to my system that are needed just to be able to PLAY the bf2 demo!
    • The demo runs quite nicely at 1024x768 on my P4-2.4c (overclocked to 2.8), 9800 Pro and 1 gig ram.

      Reminds me a lot of HL2 in the way it performs actually.
  • by antdude ( 79039 ) on Saturday June 11, 2005 @04:08AM (#12787981) Homepage Journal
    Woah, BF2 demo is awesome! At first I was disappointed because the game was so choppy even though I had decent pings. I lowered graphic settings like lighting. Now, it is playable at 1152x864 resolution, v5.2 Catalyst driver, and everything else at maximum.

    I love the special effects. I love when my visual goes BLURRY when I get hit by artillery or whatever. I love being the medic guy like in Return to Castle Wolfenstein multiplayer. Giving people med kits to use and reviving injured players get me points! Capturing flags/areas WITH buddies rock (see the attached screen shot -- see that chopper too?). Listening to poeple with voice communication (rad) -- I wished I could talk clearly!! Being on the huge aircraft. Wow. Seeing the realistic ocean. Driving through the city reminded me of videos from news and movies (e.g., Black Hawk Down).

    Attached two screen shots of me playing! I am SO buying this game on the week of 22nd. I think I will sell BF:V, but might keep BF1942 for its Forgotten Hope mod (still need WWII theme!). :D

    The game borrows cool elements from Natural Selection mod (commander, communication, etc.), Return to Castle Wolfenstein/Enemy Territory, Day of Defeat, etc. Running/Sprint is limited (you get tired after a while).

    The bad parts: Long loading times. Configuring keys SUCK!! Too many introductions that can't be skipped.

    Goodbye Desert Combat and Point of Existence mods! I can't wait to play more demo this weekend before my long summer of crunch times at work starts. Of course, I need to crank up my speakers and subwoofer. Muhaha!
    • To skip loading the movies, go to: [install directory]\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2 Demo\mods\bf2\Movies and ZIP/move/delete all the files there. You'll go directly to the game when you next start it.
    • Configuring keys SUCK!!

      DICE have acknowledged the problem with binding to different input devices (i.e forward with mouse button, backwards with keyboard), and a fix should be in the first BF2 patch. As a workaround, use the secondary column for the mouse, and the primary for the keyboard.

      Too many introductions that can't be skipped.

      Rename the movies folder (found inside mods/bf2).
  • Talk about sticker shock... 128MB VRAM to run. That knocks out quite a few cards, though most folks can upgrade for dirt cheap. The really painful hit was to sound cards (all those SB Live cards, ouch). The system RAM requirement is pretty steep for a game that's going to get so much hardware acceleration, but seeing EA's already eliminated about one-third of the gamers out there I don't think they really will care.

    Methinks the bar is set high so the engine can be quickly tweaked for an Xbox360 launch. Wei
    • Actually, triple the number of maps that ship with the game, as each map is resized depending on how many people are playing. The same map in 16 and 32-player configurations play *very* differently.
      • That makes sense... it was always a major complaint of the BF series that more players didn't make the maps larger or more versatile, just more laggy. Large games would get bogged down in spawn-camping since the number of spawns never changed. I hope this was one of the things changed...?
  • Looks like you have to register with IGN and GameSpy to play online. Forget it. Yall have fun. I'll be playing DC with $50 still in my pocket.
    • Looks like you have to register with IGN and GameSpy to play online. Forget it.

      Can anyone verify this? Does this affect the official version or just the demo?
    • Take this how you will. This is a log of a chat I had with a buddy of mine. "Jimmy" is our buddy who worked on BF2. carbonite says, "i also got confirmation from a non-Jimmy ea employee" carbonite says, "that the only reason you ahve to enter all that data to get a gamespy id is because of the ranking system" carbonite says, "because in the full version, you gain rank in offical EA servers. Non-EA sanctioned servers (say, ours), the ranking would be meaningless."
  • Geforce4 owners are SOL, the game will not work at all. Strange considering the Geforce4 is still a decent card and can run Doom 3, Half-Life 2 and Far Cry better than the low end Radeons supported by BF2. Ah well, time for an upgrade I suppose...
  • You turkeys could have told me that it only runs on xp. It took about 7 hours to download just to find out that I can't play it.
  • Not just because of their politics, but in the games they publish and create too. I tend to play Command and Conquer Generals with my friends over the internet service they provide. Its the worst net-coded RTS I've played in a while. What other game has "mismatches" where "synchronizaton data has been lost" and it won't even bother trying to resynchronize? What other game has disconnections completely randomly, not to do with a connection at all, when it should simply be connecting the clients to the server
    • See my post above.

      It's about maintaining a portable codebase for console releases. Battlefield: Modern Combat is being produced alongside Battlefield 2 (I've even seen it called Battlefield 2: Modern Combat). The console release will make EA ten times more cash than the PC release... which one do you think EA and DICE are going to focus their energies on?

Where there's a will, there's an Inheritance Tax.

Working...