Questions and answers about Battlefield 2

The loads of questions

The poor postman has finally found his way home to the spring in Denmark and with him he had the answers from the Swedish developers of Battlefield 2. Questions we have all been eagerly expecting. We had picked out the questions asked by our users and it was all of Boomtown’s users who were able to do this, not just the Danish part. We had a pool of 200 questions so the choice was difficult when we had to boil them down to below twenty.

Some of you guys might get disappointed when discovering that your question(s) didn't make it, but there have been a lot interviews with DICE before and we wanted to ask those questions that hadn't been asked before. At least we wanted to try to do this.

Q&A with DICE

[Boomtown] How will mod-support be, if someone wants to port their mod from the old Battlefield to Battlefield 2?

[DICE] The Battlefield 2 Editor will be released to the public. It is the same tool used by the DICE production team to create the actual game.

[Boomtown] Will there be single player, and will it have a story as opposed to the other two games?

[DICE] We have a single-player experience we’re calling Boot Camp. It allows players to play against the AI which has been revamped for BF2.

[Boomtown] What are your thoughts about creating a Steam-like program for distribution of your game(s)?

[DICE] Interesting idea.

[Boomtown] Will there be other games using this engine?

[DICE] No comment!

[Boomtown] Will your maps have a day/night time cycle, so you can choose at which time you wish to play the map?

[DICE] Another good idea, but we don’t have that in BF2.

[Boomtown] Will you release the SDK together with BF2?

[DICE] There are no plans to release the SDK. However the Battlefield 2 Editor will be released. It is the same tool used by our team to develop assets and levels for BF2.

[Boomtown] Have you improved the net code in the game? You said the same with BF: Vietnam, but that had room for improvement.

[DICE] Improving the gameplay and performance for BF2 is one of our major focuses. Any technology which touches those areas is reviewed and changed as needed.

[Boomtown] Any plans for a music theme like the one you did in BF: Vietnam, or was that just in conjunction the spirit of the game?

[DICE] No, we’ve got all original music for BF2.

[Boomtown] The maps come in three different sizes (16, 32 and 64 players) Can this change while playing, or will you have to restart the game, to increase the cap? Originally the information about the game stated 100 players and dynamically changing map sizes, why was this canned?

[DICE] Server admins can set the map size which they want to host. So, you can host a Strike at Karkand 16, 32 or 64-player map. You can have all sizes in the server rotation, so it will change as the maps rotate through their cycle.

[Boomtown] What is the biggest change you had to make to improve team play?

[DICE] Scoring and kit balance. One of the things we’ve noticed in our playtests is that there is no über-kit. The kits reflect the BF philosophy of paper-rock-scissors with strengths and weaknesses in each kit.

[Boomtown] The Middle Eastern faction in the game – would you call that a liberation army or a terror-organization, and what have your thoughts been on this sensitive subject?

[DICE] The Middle Easter Coalition is a regular army organization. It is just like the Chinese or US armies in Battlefield 2. We are sensitive to the current climate. BF is not about making a political statement, it’s about providing an enjoyable experience.

[Boomtown] You have been very quiet about the Chinese forces in the game, releasing only a few screenshots of a soldier render. will we soon see some footage of china in action or will the Chinese forces not make it into the game?

[DICE] Check the major online game sites. We’ve recently released footage of a major battle between Chinese and USMC forces.

[Boomtown] Will there be per pixel hit detection? It was mentioned very early in development, and I have not heard anything since. It would suck if we had the old hit boxes, where you can't even shoot through someone’s legs...

[DICE] You can shoot through people’s legs. We have spent considerable cycles on improving the ‘thru the gun’ experience, e.g. shooting a rifle in-game.

[Boomtown] Can you name some of the things that will be tracked in the stats tracking?

[DICE] That would take too many pages! Suffice to say that we track skill and teamwork based stats.

BF2 models

[Boomtown] Will the player be able to choose one of the roles in a tank - gunner commander and driver? (like in Operation Flashpoint), or will the crew consist of 2 men?

[DICE] We aren’t about to change the formula which has made Battlefield one of the most popular games online.

[Boomtown] I’d like to know about the air vehicles in the game. Will there be a big gunship with cannons and gattling guns ect. like in Desert Combat? Also if there will be a plane like that, will it be possible to drive a vehicle like a jeep or APC into it? Also will there be a Chinook transport chopper in the game?

[DICE] We follow the same philosophy in Battlefield 2 as our previous BF games, almost all vehicles (exception of some airplanes) are all multi-position vehicles. If you’re referring to the AC-130 gunship, we won’t have that in BF2 when it ships.

[Boomtown] Will it be possible to unlock certain attachments/upgrades to the weapons such as silencers, thermo scopes, larger clips, faster rate of fire, larger calibre, flashlights ect...?

[DICE] Current unlocks are brand new weapons, not add-ons to existing weapons. However, who knows what you might see in free content!

[Boomtown] We saw your pizza-cupboard in another article. Do real nerds sustain themselves on pizza and caffeine?

[DICE] After 3 years of development, we tend to eat whatever food is placed in front of us!

Here at Boomtown we are extremely pleased that DICE took some time out of their busy schedule to answers your questions. I hope most of you guys got an answer on some of the things we didn’t already knew by now. To those who didn’t got their answers I can only regret, but it was a hard task to choose the 20 best questions.

Without revealing too much I can assure you that we will be focusing a lot more on BF2 in the near future. Personally I can’t wait for the release of the game.

There are, however, a few areas that I hope will be clarified with time. Will DICE release the SDK later on or will it never be released for the MOD fanatical fans of the Battlefield series. Are they of the opinion that one should be able to develop MODs in “The Battlefield Editor” or what’s the deal?

The answer to the question, whether there will be released other games on the BF2 engine, speaks for itself. There probably will, but it is apparently too early in development that there isn’t a storyline yet, but just an idea. This is of course my very own opinion and pure speculation as how I see it from my point of view.

All that’s left now is to wait for the game itself to hit the store shelves. Like most of you guys out there I’m all excited and eagerly awaiting the release :-)