Battlefield 3 Alpha

[.Griff.]

I've just checked my emails and discovered I've been selected to take part in the Battlefield 3 Alpha 

There's only one map and one gametype, not to mention it's early days graphically, but so far it looks nice and plays well!

[Niall]

They'll have to come up with something amazing to make me buy any more EA products.

[Niall]

I have an invite too. As soon as my connection retrains back to 14mb I shall have a nose. Yes indeed. Anger beckons

[.Griff.]

Played it for a few hours this afternoon while I had some spare time and it's really good so far.

[Niall]

What sort of spec is your PC?

Mine is top end AMD hex core with 8gb ram, but the parts letter me down are the hard drive being an old sataII drive and my soundcard is okay being an X-fi but I'd really like to find something better. The Xonar range seem bizarrely random in their production and supply. People raved about them, but they seem hard to get hold of.

Oh, and I've got an old x260 gfx card. I've been holding off on upgrading it as I haven't seen anything worthy of dx11 yet. The things out there now, using dx11 look worse than dx10. Tempted by the 570ti though.

[.Griff.]

    Windows 7 Ultimate x64, i5 750 @ 3.8ghz, MSI P55-GD80,
   Geil Ultra Series PC3-17000, Nvidia GTX 480, Crucial C300
   Samsung 24" T240, Antec 902, Logitech G15, Razer Salmosa

That's my spec (Copied from my forum sig on another forum hence the layout).

I swapped my X-Fi Xtreme Music for a Xonar DS and I hated it so much I got another X-Fi to replace it.

[esh]

Off topic, but what's up with the Xonar? The drivers on the X-Fi have been nothing but a nightmare for me.

[.Griff.]

Off topic, but what's up with the Xonar? The drivers on the X-Fi have been nothing but a nightmare for me.

My PC is built with FPS gaming in mind and my X-Fi combined with my Roccat Kaves give me really deep, clear and accurate sound in game but when I swapped to the Xonar the sound quality was really "tinny". Everything sounded like it was taking place in some giant concrete structure with weird echo.

Speaking to lots of people it seems the Xonar (with built in headphone amp) is ideal for people with quality stereo headphones and music buffs but all those people with multiple driver headsets (proper 5.1 not this "virtual" surround) agreed the Xonars aren't all that good.

[esh]

Since I use entirely headphones then I guess it matters little. Interesting problem though.

[zimmerframe]

I was also selected for the alpha test.  I downloaded, (3.3Gb) and installed, setting up the Orogin interface that looks to be required.

The game failed to run and gave a "error" sugesting re-install.  I tried twice more then gave up.

I havent been able to find the game spec requirements and strongly suspect that where I am failing.  I am able to run BF BC2 successfully but my PC is still P4/Win XP based and I think it's long due an upgrade if I want to play this game.

Anyone know the min game spec?

[.Griff.]

The alpha ended late Sunday night/Monday morning so that will be why you can't install it Zimmer.

As for the minimum specs they haven't been officially announced yet but what has been confirmed is Windows XP is NOT supported.

[.Griff.]

New video released this afternoon.

http://youtu.be/NDDfPxF3EFE?hd=1

Watch intense 64-player vehicle warfare - including jets - from our beautiful Battlefield 3 multiplayer map Caspian Border! This marks the premier of jet gameplay as played at GamesCom 2011. Caspian Border is a multi-faceted, vehicle heavy map that exemplifies classic Battlefield gameplay.

[zappaDPJ]

It's graphically outstanding but how's the game play?

[.Griff.]

The gameplay is the alpha was excellent Zappa.

I'm a huge BF fan having played BF1942, BFV, BF2, BF2142 etc.. and after a few years of COD I immediately felt at home playing BF3 if that makes any sense to you.

[zappaDPJ]

It does. I played in CoD squad for years, UT before that so I'm always interested to hear about a new FPS with good game play

[.Griff.]

Beta goes live tomorrow - http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/gate/

Yesterday's beta announcement finally revealed the first details about the upcoming and highly anticipated Battlefield 3 beta. In the aftermath of the big news, a lot of new information and details have emerged. We've summed up everything we know about the beta here.

    Battlefield 3 beta will run from September 29 to October 10.
    There is no player level limit on the beta and no limit on how much you can unlock.
    One game mode, Rush, and one map, Operation Metro will be available.
    The Operation Metro map has undergone changes since the alpha.
    The beta is limited to 32 players on PC, 24 on console.
    Beta size will be around 2-3 GB.
    The netcode has been re-written from the alpha trial.
    Owners of Medal of Honor do not need the disc to play the beta
    EA Origin pre-orders and Medal of Honor owners get access to the beta 48h earlier, on Sep 27.
    If you want early access, you have to pre-order on Origin before Sep 25.
    Asia has now been added to the open beta.
    Origin is required to play the beta on PC.
    Stats and ranks will not carry over into the final game.
    PC beta system requirements can be found here.
    The beta won't include all the graphics features which will make it in the final version.

Minimum system requirements

    OS: windows vista (service pack 2) 32-bit
    Processor: 2 GHz dual core (Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz or Althon x2 2.7 GHz)
    Memory: 2 GB
    Hard drive: 20 GB
    Graphics card (AMD): DirectX 10.1 compatible with 512 MB ram (ATI Radeon 3000, 4000, 5000 or 6000 series, with ATI Radeon 3870 or higher performance)
    Graphics card (Nvidia): DirectX 10.0 compatible with 512 MB ram (Nvidia GeForce 8, 9, 200, 300, 400 or 500 series with Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT or higher performance)
    Sound card: DirectX compatible
    Keyboard and mouse

Recommended system requirements

    OS: Windows 7 64-bit
    Processor: Quad-core CPU
    Memory: 4 GB
    Hard drive: 20 GB
    Graphics card: DirectX 11 compatible with 1024 MB ram (Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 or ATI Radeon 6950)
    Sound card: DirectX compatible
    Keyboard and mouse
    DVD rom drive

[esh]

20GB!?

[Rik]

Very bijou.

[Technical Ben]

Probably 5GB of game, and 15GB of HD pre-rendered movies. (Sony was doing this, plus duplicate files for faster access on Blue ray, so files size can be artificially extended these days)

[Inkblot]

Interesting glitch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE3zESmcqwA&feature=player_embedded

I guess that's why they have alpha & beta pahses!

[Technical Ben]

Wow. Rather freaky. Uncanny valley type stuff.

Another thing to look out for, is EA might have gone OTT with the online gaming rules. Most gamers like to have customer maps or servers or something. This does not effect other players, as well, it's your map. If you want a giant map made like springfield, you can have one. However, these things might be classed as "hacks" and get your accounts banned or deleted.

[Technical Ben]

I think I know why the game is so big. They are probably using "megatextures". A way of using super high res textures, that scale depending on hardware or player location in the map.
A single demo with about 6 objects is over 1GB!!!

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Q1xTrXtx4KQJ:linedef.com/personal/+Virtual+Texturing&cd=7&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

So if you have 5 maps, 10 vehicles and lots of other stuff, I can see how they top 20GB!

[Niall]

I really can't make my mind up about this. Loads of stuff makes this game look really nice, which would in theory make a good immersive single player game, but as we all know, these companies are heavily investing in multiplayer rather than making a decent single player campaign. The Medal of honour single player was quite short, but it was so well done I felt like I'd just watched a really good film. It's been ages since a game actually made me glad I'd bought it, in that genre anyway.

Anyway, when you look at some gameplay videos for the multiplayer for BF3, it looks absolutely shocking. I don't know if the videos were in alpha and using very low settings, but they're just horrid and NOTHING like what you see from the single player clips (which look very scripted).

[Technical Ben]

I blame consoles.