SlimCityGaming

Live Scoreboard

Posted by Slim — 2012-04-06T07:00:22-07:00

In the coming weeks, we will be gradually rolling out a new feature in the Server Browser on Battlelog: the Live Scoreboard.

The live scoreboard shows you what is happening on a PC server and is useful in many ways. When you view a server's details, it shows the progression of the current game and real-time updates on each player's performance.

If you have ever joined a server just to watch the round end in a loss for your team 5 seconds later, you'll love the live scoreboard on the updated server browser. With a quick glance, you can immediately see how many tickets or kills are left before the end of the round.

If you don't see the live scoreboard in your Battlelog yet, don't worry. We are rolling it out to more users every day to gather performance data and community feedback before releasing it for everyone.

Close Quarters Maps

Posted by Slim — 2012-04-06T06:59:09-07:00

With Battlefield 3™: Close Quarters, we want to claim new territory and broaden the Battlefield 3 experience. In this episode of “Inside DICE”, Lead Designer Niklas Fegraeus talks about the inspiration for going indoors, and what possibilities and challenges this presented.
Hi everyone. This is Niklas Fegraeus, Lead Designer on Battlefield 3: Close Quarters. Above is an early test video we recorded during a play test to judge the effect of our new destruction. But first things first:
In 2001, while making games for the Sega Dreamcast, I began a career as a clan player in Counter-Strike. This eventually became a semiprofessional part time job, as I got a sponsor, won several LAN tournaments and competed in the Cyber athlete Professional League.
Now, in 2012, my competitive mouse is put on the shelf, but I consider the experiences from those days invaluable to my role as game designer making Battlefield games.
Counter-Strike is a very tactical and precise art of close quarters shooting, so I can comfortably say I know a little about how those tight shooter experiences play, and how they should play.
Battlefield on the other hand, is a huge game in more ways than one. Even we developers sometimes have a hard time realizing its breadth. You can go from clearing a house of enemy soldiers through careful squad tactics to soaring through the sky in a jet fighter, frantically evading enemy anti-air weaponry, all in the same round.
I can still recall the thrill of that scale and freedom I had when I first tried the game. It was the BF1942 demo on Wake Island (before I joined the crew here at DICE) and I was raging over those damn fighter planes that kept dropping bombs on my head! However, rage and confusion turned to evil grin as I found the AA-guns and used them to good effect!
Three years later, I landed my dream job working at DICE on Battlefield 2! Having worked as Animator and Designer on Battlefield 2, it was especially satisfying to be Lead Designer on Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand and bring some of the most classic maps from Battlefield 2 into Battlefield 3.
When I finished up Back to Karkand, I already knew I needed to start on our next themed expansion pack for release in June. This time, I really wanted to expand Battlefield 3 and give players even more experiences to choose from. But I didn’t know how to approach it.
Then I remembered those nights at my sponsor’s Internet café, where I and my clan for hours on end practiced the best way to attack a well-defended room, using only a few grenades and the business end of our rifles.

There is something very unique about an indoor fire fight. You have to cover angles in new ways, use sound to track your enemies, navigate with much more careful precision and most importantly, you’re never safe. Danger is always no more than a few meters away. It’s a scenario that always makes me feel 100% in the fight. There is no dull moment, you’re always on your toes, on the edge.
The closest you come to this type of tight combat scenario in Battlefield 3 is on Operation Métro. We know this is one of our most popular maps, which tells us that our gameplay has what it takes to perform in such unique and frantic conditions.
I had an approach for our new expansion pack. Now, I just needed to refine it. I needed to find those elements that make the adrenaline levels go through the roof and keep you constantly on that edge. I want the player to feel like Hudson in Aliens, as he is watching the motion scanner bleep faster and faster, realizing that the safety he thought he had isn’t there anymore, and that death is already in the room.
I sat down and spoke with Jhony Ljungstedt, my art director, and had a discussion about how we could achieve this. After bouncing random ideas for a while, he told me that even though that explosive scene from “The Matrix” was rather old, seeing Neo and Trinity turn a lobby into rubble in slow motion did leave a huge impression, and hadn’t ever been properly done in a game. We both agreed and Jhony said he really wanted to be able to create that sensation.
“Imagine tearing a place down using only bullets, watching chunks being torn off the walls, littering the floors like a dropped bag of grey marbles” he said.

“I wanted everything to get shot to pieces.
Really, really small pieces”

And that’s when it occurred to me. We have a golden opportunity here. When removing large and process heavy elements like tanks, and scaling down Battlefield to a tighter scale, we are given some extra Frostbite 2 oomph at our disposal. The engine has fantastic destructive capabilities, and with more CPU overhead, we could put it to the ultimate test.
I wanted to see if we could destroy things in greater detail. I wanted everything to get shot to pieces. Really, really small pieces. In short, I wanted destruction to go High Definition.
After a series of prototypes and testing, we had a working model and immediately put it into practice. A grey and boring test level became the scene for a big floating stairway, with supporting pillars surrounded by temporary walls, just so we wouldn’t fall into oblivion.
We had incorporated some early HD Destruction in this test level just for proof of concept. Then, we simply asked the testers: “Shoot at everything”. And they did. The place immediately got torn to pieces, as bullets ripped through the grey prototype materials, spreading chunks of it everywhere, literally creating a carpet of debris on the floor. Walls had big holes where there was once solid wood or plaster. You could create new angles and ways of attack, just by firing your normal gun. This was new to Battlefield, as you would normally need heavier hardware like RPG’s or tanks to blow up walls in the base game.
We immediately knew this was something really cool and would have a significant impact on both how you play and how you experience that play. HD Destruction immediately became a key factor in bringing the intensity of the Battlefield experience into close quarters combat, and looking at it now, in its complete implementation, it feels great to finally be able to show it to everyone.
While HD Destruction has a significant impact on how you experience the second-to-second gameplay, we also had to tackle the challenges of bringing our tried and tested game modes to the smaller scale. We understood quickly that Rush, being a large and progressive mode that takes you on a journey from M-COM to M-COM, simply wouldn’t fit physically. So instead, we turned our attention to Conquest. How could we tailor this essential Battlefield game mode to fit our new type of environment?

Welcome to Ziba Tower. We built it. We can destroy it.

I spoke to my Game Designer Gustav Halling who, like me, has a history of competitive FPS gaming. We remembered Unreal Tournament from way back in 1999. It was the first time the world saw the game mode “Domination”, which is very similar to Conquest. There are some differences though, and the Domination type gameplay usually takes place on smaller maps, much like the ones we were creating.
Inspired by these memories, we used the spawning systems from Battlefield 3 Team Deathmatch and came up with a Conquest mode adapted for smaller spaces. We called it Conquest Domination, and it worked beautifully. In particular, flag defense is suddenly more important, and you get different tactical layers due to the subtle differences the new mode provides. It’s reminiscent of those tactics I practiced to perfection in my e-sports days. Listen for the footsteps, spray the wall, throw your grenade, cover one angle each and constantly communicate. The experience grows with our tried and tested squad play mechanics, and the intensity and pure challenge of trying to dominate these close quarters is something I’m convinced will put even the best squads to the test.
Designing a new experience isn’t easy. Many things were created and tested, many things didn’t fit, and there are millions of fans whose wishes you want to fulfill. Ultimately, it’s about finding a meaningful core idea, and realizing it with relentless attention to detail.
We wanted the thrill of fighting in close quarters. We wanted the adrenaline rush that comes from always being one second from potential death. We wanted the world around you to be both your best friend and mortal enemy, by protecting you in one moment and in the next, completely failing you by opening up new ways for the enemy to attack.
Often when I remove my headphones from a playtests on Close Quarters, I’m shaking like a leaf from all of the adrenaline. So personally, I am very happy and proud of where we are with our next expansion pack. Most of all, I’m happy with how versatile our game is, and how my team has helped broaden it further.

Karkand

Posted by Slim — 2011-11-17T08:28:39-07:00

As you may or may not know, there will be even more Battlefield 3 goodness coming your way this December. Right now, a separate team here at DICE is hard at work wrapping up the first expansion pack Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand. Utilizing the power of the Frostbite 2 engine, the Back to Karkand expansion pack remasters four of the greatest Battlefield maps in the franchise: Strike at Karkand, Wake Island, Gulf of Oman and Sharqi Peninsula. Last week, we released the first gameplay trailer from Back to Karkand, and you can watch it again above.

First Back to Karkand previews online
Also, the first Back to Karkand media previews have started to appear online, so keep your eyes peeled. Here's a great preview by IGN, aptly named "BF3's Back to Karkand Destroys the Classics." And we also have Gamespot's impressions of playing on Gulf of Oman and Strike at Karkand, with some explosive footage to go with it.

Strike at Karkand, we meet again.
Lead Designer Niklas Fegraeus on the design
The design idea for the expansion pack was to let players revisit these classic maps as if time had passed by since they last played them in Battlefield 2. This will be apparent on all maps, but one prime example is on Gulf of Oman. Close to the beach, this new version of the all-time classic map sees a group of luxury villas erected by someone who wants to turn this piece of land into a paradise for vacationers. Now that war is once again coming to the region, those plans are likely to be ground quickly to a halt. Another example is Wake Island. Next to the airport, a conference building has been constructed. But the only conferences held there this Winter will likely be of the highly destructive kind. We met with Back to Karkand Lead Designer Niklas Fegraeus for a chat on his vision for these reimagined maps:

"I want returning players to get the sense that these are cool new maps, and then suddenly realize they know them by heart. The feeling should be new, but the actual map layout the same as before. For newcomers, these are simply four brilliant maps", said Niklas.

Besides getting an artistic makeover, the Back to Karkand team is also making sure the new maps take full advantage of Frostbite 2, including the ability to turn most of the maps into rubble. Do you think you are safe hiding inside the buildings of these classic maps? Think again!

But Back to Karkand is much more than just remastered maps. This expansion pack also includes five new dog tags, five new achievements/trophies (if you’re on 360 or PS3), three new vehicles, 10 classic Battlefield weapons and a new persistence system where players complete assignments to earn their rewards. We will return once a week starting now to give you more details on these additions together with more images and videos.

The artistic direction in Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand has been to reimagine these all-time classic maps as if time has passed a few years since we last visited them. That, and to add crazy amounts of destruction.
As always, if you pre-ordered your copy of Battlefield 3: Limited Edition, you are entitled to Back to Karkand at no extra charge and will be notified once it is available for download and play in December. Anyone else can buy it on the very same launch day for $14.99/1200 Microsoft Points, or the equivalent in their local currency. PlayStation 3 players will have exclusive 1 week early access to Back to Karkand.

BF3 News

Posted by Slim — 2011-07-21T08:23:04-07:00

Last night footage leaked from an Alpha Trial that is currently going on for Battlefield 3 and since then EA has been busy taking it down.

However a lot of details have surfaced as a result of the Alpha Trial leaks, and a summary of Class and Unlock details can be found below.

- Killing an enemy displays "Enemy Down 100"

- MCOM is 200 points

- Dogtags are 300 points it seems

- "Handgun Ribbon" 200 points. (seems to be a handgun killstreak award).

- "Combat Efficiency Ribbon" 200 points.

- You have to hold [R] to pick up a kit- this notification hovers over the kit

- Crosshairs on knife and shock paddles are a small white dot.

- Tripods on the AK74

- Grenade blew tall trees down

- 3D spotting appears confirmed

- Exiting the combat area only displays a small red warning sign centrescreen.

- The engineer had :

- 5 mags of 30 for his M4

- 5 Rockets for his SMAW

- 4 mags of 16 for his M9 pistol.

- 18 rounds per mag on the MP 443

- The SVD had 6 magazines of 11 rounds.

- First rank is "Pvt 1st class1"

- There are at least 3 classes of Pvt 1st class (1,2,3)

- Highest score seen was 4070

UNLOCKS:

- Engineer gets a G36C as a primary unlock

(Other new weapons)

- SV- 98

- MK11

- Not sure about the M27 IAR

- AKS-74u

- AK-74M

- Medikit is an unlock.

- "Sprint boost" - Customization unlock. What do you make of this?

- Vehicle unlocks:

- MBT Smoke grenade luancher.

- IFV -AT missle launcher.

- Mobile AA- Smokegrenade launcher.

- Attack helicopter, jets, scout? - "Stealth".

- Interesting stats:

- "Highest streak".

- "Longest headshot".

- "Highest nemetag? nemesis streak".

And lastly:

- We have seen 5 different 1HK equipped knife attacks from behind:

- The grab from behind and knife to the heart (a la Crysis 2)

- The same but from the front.

- The grab from behind and backstab.

- The leg sweep and downward chopping blow to the chest.

- And a simple backhand sweep with the knife to the throat.