Star Wars Battlefront – 2015
http://starwars.ea.com/news/battlefront-to-debut-at-celebration
We get a first real look at Star Wars Battlefront next month. This is an extremely anticipated game, especially for all of us fans of the original Star Wars Battlefront series. For those not familiar with it, it was a 64 player take over the map’s control points (flags) game very much like Battlefield, with different types of soldiers (kits/classes). But it also had the hero characters from the movie series, and a nice space battle game. For those who haven’t seen it, Star Wars Battlefront II is still available on Steam and through GOG. The single player mode works just fine, multiplayer requires Gameranger and more work to enable now.
Battlefield 4 Improvements
Battlefield 4 CTE got a very large new patch (#35, 20 Mar 2015). Lots of new stuff for night maps and many other improvements, plus this huge surprise:
NETCODE UPDATE
In todays update (brought to you in collaboration with the Hardline netcode team) we are enabling framerate based updates on bullets. This means that depending on your client framerate, you will update at that rate – to the server.
An example: Your game is running at 60fps, you will be updating the server on your bullets at 60hz (compared to 30hz now).These changes _should_ improve significantly on the out of region burst issue, and we will be monitoring this specifically.
Detail oriented players notice that we have not changed the server to client update frequency (the high frequency update) – this is the next step once we know we can trust this new system works as intended.
For those of us with 60Hz frame rates — most PC and NextGen console users — that means at least a 60Hz weapon fire tick rate, doubling the current 30Hz. The current rate is well within the range of human reaction times, and older consoles can’t show video any faster, but this is an unexpected development. I had thought that increasing this would require a substantial change to the engine, but if they are able to pull this off and it works as expected, we should see some serious and noticeable improvements in firefight hit registrations, especially in close quarters engagements. I definitely will need to spend some time in CTE trying the new improved game out.
For those who haven’t tried out CTE, it has always been ahead of the retail game in terms of features and playability. The new night maps are a lot of fun to play, and challenging. And by playing, you get a chance to provide input to the developers and help make the game better. You even can actually play live with the game developers!
For Hardline fans, this is also good news, because any successful improvements will be applied to it as well. Hardline has some excellent tactical infantry game play, especially close quarters combat, and this would help it as well.
It also offers a new hope for Star Wars Battlefront. I had no doubt that the game graphics and audio would be amazing, and that a perfectly playable upgrade of the older Battlefront II game play would be made. But if CTE and the Hardline team can produce actual improvements to the engine, then DICE can use that to make the new Battlefront a game which stands out not just as a good Star Wars game, but as an excellent FPS for anyone.
Hardline News
The Battlefield Hardline team is looking at feedback and game play now that the game is out, and is likely to make some balancing changes and improvements soon.
This is a short list of 10 things that Visceral Games is investigating thanks to the community feedback #BFHardline pic.twitter.com/QFCHsAodlY
— Battlefield Bulletin (@BFBulletin) March 20, 2015
EA, DICE, DICE LA, and Visceral are not standing still. Hardline plays very well for most people but can be made better, and it is clear that Visceral is working to accomplish that.
