Just in case anyone didn't pay attention the front page, the Battlefield 2 demo has been released. It is a very big download and it requires a pretty good system.

Has anyone tested it out yet? Thoughts?

Well, I started downloading it a couple of hours ago, but it's running at about 14KB/sec so I won't know how good it is for about 10 hours! I guess everyone else is downloading it so the download speed is capped.

Downloading as we speak...

And commented in the front page thread...

i downleaded it yesterday and it runs perty good on my system






a p4 1.6 ghz

256mb of ram

Ati 9600 256 mb

it laggs a little but for the most part its good


noticxe trhe system requirments are highrer then wat i have

Wow you can run BF2 on 256 RAM??? You must have very minimal backround apps going..lol Anyways this download speed is freaking sloow..im at 91 kb/Sec and this is going to take awhile. When they say gamershell, they aint kidding.

Sean

i was ammazed to my paghe fileing is like 300-400 mb though and i lagg a little one and a wile i have like 20 or 21 background aps goin all or most of them are from windows or stuff that not good to shut down




i got Battlefield 2 demo from downloa.com and the speed was like 200 kbs or somthing like that it took me like an hour on my cable connection



and ps my ram is pc 133 so it laggs but atlesti can play the lagg usually doen get to bad so its plaable it looks ok so im happ, i lover thae demo the game must be sweet when it come out

GH is one of the better independent game sites on the web. They usually have fairly decent download speeds.

For different places to download the BF2 demo, click here.

Yeah, got 449 KB/s from GH which has become my regular download place

As for the game.. It has potential. Only played it for a bit on SP, and the bots aren't exactly bright...

And it wasn't as fast as i'd hoped without FSAA on... Hopefully I'll be able to run it with 2x on, as the aliasing was horrible...
But I'm looking forward to testing more today.

Ok, here are my first impressions..

First off, it's buggy. When trying to remap the keys, it tells me the key is in use, when it's not. And when I do get to remap a key (jump from space to right mouse) it only remembers it for one game...
FSAA settings require me to restart the game, but when I do, I've lost all my settings.


In the game there are some very welcome changes from BF1942. You can now, at last, shoot out of vehicles! The commander feature gives/can give a more tactical and team focused approach, even on public servers. And running is now possible by either double tapping foward or holding down left shift. But there is a slight problem with this, more later...

The map itself is big and diverse enough to give several approaches to the gameplay/tactics, but some of the classes aren't as good as you'd hope.. The sniper seems underpowered, whilst the support seems overpowered.. (Or at least to accurate whilst moving which makes it overpowered)
The grenade control is not as accurate as it should be, meaning it's hard to control the distance it's thrown, as the game doesn't seem to react to how long you keep the key pressed.

Radio commands have been changed from the function keys (which now acts to select seat in vehicle) to giving an onscreen menu which is shown by pressing 'Q'. You then use your mouse to navigate it. This is basicly a good idea, except for a few problems.
When the menu is up, your mouse will no longer control your movement. This means you'll have to step right/left instead. But you can't do that if you're running...
So if you need to run away from an enemy, and want to call for a medic, you'll give a clean target running in a straight line.


In the SP part, it's a wonder they get anything done. Whilst driving they tend to see if they can find a longer and more dificult route than needed, and if they can't, they back up into eachother instead...

But the game doesn't exactly run fast. I hope that they've done more optimisations in the retail version, as my A64 3000+, 1GB PC3200, X800pro is not running as fast as I thought...


All in all, not a shabby demo, and there are plenty of servers, but the bugs does retract from the experience. And I can't say I get the same kick of playing this demo, as I did from playing the BF1942 demo years ago...

You are not kidding. My system will take any game on at high quality, this one however is slowing me down. I think its time i get a new gfx card.

Sean

Keep in mind, EA is not famous in it's Battlefield productions when it comes to optimizing code to run well on even the best systems. So, we can't say we did not expect it. Although I will say this: BF2 runs better than even Battlefield 1942 on my system, with a 9700 Pro/512MB (2700)/2600+. This is with all settings set low except for textures and a few others at Medium, 2XAA and resolution at 1024x768.


Pros:
-Runs better than BF1942/Vietnam on the same system I played the originals on. (I have another stick of 512MB on the way).
-Balanced decently

Cons:
-As with the originals the Internet server list does not respond correctly. It is like attempting to type on a 8086, except much worse, mainly when trying to scroll down on the list.
-Again, same as the originals it's really hard most of the time to jump into aircraft and stay alive for more than a few minutes. That's ok, but (read next point)
-Aircraft (not Heli's) are just too fast in too small of an area. You don't have enough room to fly around. I've played many many flight sims over the last 15 years and BF games just, don't allow you even the chance to become a decent pilot.
-Sniper rifle should be one shot kill when hitting the chest/head. Period.
-Support weapons for USMC are less accurate than support weapons for MEC.

Undecided:
-I'm not sure I like the fact that the commander can zoom in on the Battlefield, see enemies without radar and report them to the team, revealing them to all players, and dropping artillery on them. Artillery should require a scan of the area (maybe the radar used for this picks up heat signatures?) and artillery should be used based on that data/intelligence.

Good points acid!

I did come up with one redeeming quality for the demo... Squads. If you get in a good squad, it's an incredible feeling. You got a leader which sets targets, allows for spawning at that point and generally helps make sure everything is going your teams way.

Though when playing that leader, I lack a few commands easily available, like destroy artillery (it doesn't show up on map), overview over what classes my teams plays, and requests for classes...

As for the video, I found that my system works just as well on 800*600 as 1280*960... Which makes for a nice difference. What I do lack however is the default LCD resolution of 1280*1024... You already got two other 1280* settings, why not 1024...

Thanks all for the input. I'm on the verge of pre-ordering this right now as a kind soul has given me a $50 gift code for Newegg all because I did a little laptop work for him.

It sounds like (once the bugs are worked out) it should be a great game. I still play a fair amount of DC and thoroughly enjoy it. This sounds like the next step up and should run fairly well on my rig. My only disappointment is the fact that it currently doesn't support widescreen resolutions. I'm getting ready to purchase a Dell 20.1" UltraSharp widescreen.

Thx again.

I've been playing BF2 for the past couple days and I'm starting to enjoy it very much now. It just takes a bit of time to get better at it.

I'm running it on an A64 3000+, 1GB PC3200 and a 128mb vanilla 6800.

Setting are on high and at 1024 x 768. Running very smooth.

Graphics are not the greatest, but they are definitely not bad. For some reason I was expecting better.

I preordered it today. :-D

I have a few quirks with this demo... as a couple of you may have already heard in the irc room. For me, the game runs plenty fast on my laptop - ~97fps at 1600x1200 no AA, but this is not the resolution I want to play at. I want to play at 1920x1200 which I was I play most other games at except Far Cry and Doom 3. This game, even though it will be released in the year 2005, does not inherently support widescreen gaming. I repeat (for Masque)

IT DOES NOT INHERENTLY SUPPORT WIDESCREEN GAMING

I couldn't even change the fov to compensate for the stretched image on my widescreen display. I can't easily enforce the aspect ratio on my laptop.

I tried to old hacks to play BF Vietnam in widescreen on the demo - they did not work. Has anyone tried to make this work? You'd think with all the widescreen displays being sold these days all games would start supporting widescreen or custom resolutions. Oh well.

Like I said, the game runs plenty fast for me, but the user configuration windows are extremely unresponsive for me. If I press escape while in game it immediately jumps out to the menu (great!) but when I try to get back into the game (not making any changes except maybe a key binding) it takes a few seconds to go back to the game. I don't know what the deal is with that but it's driving me nuts.

I like the additions they've made to the game, like running and other things including the menu for commands like pickup or med help, but I really hope you can simply bind some of those commands because as Mr. G said you can't really control your guy while you're in that command menu.

I have a higher end pc and it took me about 6 min. to download. Frame rate is great, and great picture quality on my new samsung lcd. Im looking forward to buying the real game.

Yo realize this is a two year old thread right. Plus if it took you 6 minutes to download, then you must have T3.