BattleField 2 tweaks

[midnightservice]

Hope this helps all you avid low end gamers out there
courtesy of http://www.tweakguides.com


The Battlefield 2 Demo has arrived, and is available for download from a range of places. It weighs in at almost 560MB, and you can find out more about it at the Official BF2 Site. The demo has one playable map called 'Gulf of Oman', which can be played in single or multiplayer modes.



I've prepared this short guide as a quick way of putting together all the known tips and tweaks for getting the BF2 Demo up and running with a minimum of fuss. I will then update the guide in the next few days as I discover more tweaks, culminating in a complete Battlefield 2 Tweak Guide shortly after the full version of the game is released at the end of June.




Essential Optimization



It is absolutely vital that you have an optimal system before playing BF2. Read the Troubleshooting Tips section further below for game-specific tips, however you must make sure your system is stable and optimized to get the most out of BF2. Otherwise you will experience random crashes to desktop, lots of slowdowns, freezes and generally poor performance.



The best way to optimize your system is to go through my free downloadable Windows XP Tweaking Companion guide - a 170-page tweak guide which explains everything to do with Windows XP, such as the correct Virtual Memory settings, stripping down background resource usage, etc. All of this is vital to smooth trouble-free gameplay.



You should then read my ATI Catalyst Tweak Guide or my Nvidia Forceware Tweak Guide as relevant for futher details of how to set up your graphics drivers correctly.



Troubleshooting Tips



There are a lot of problems with BF2, and I personally experienced the most common of these as I tried to get the game up and running as well. The solutions to these are below:



Official Support: The first place to look for official support details is in the Readme.txt file in your \Program Files\EA Games\Battlefield 2 Demo\ directory. Importantly you should check out the minimum system requirements in that file, as well as the supported hardware list, since if any of your hardware is not supported then you will experience problems with the game, or quite simply won't be able to run it.



Using Old Hardware: Unfortunately there are no ways I know of to make BF2 run on older hardware if it does not meet the game's minimum requirements. The minimum requirements are very steep, and this reflects the fact that the game is designed for the current and next generation hardware. In particular graphics cards which don't have hardware support for Pixel & Vertex Shaders 1.4 as well as 128MB of Video RAM or more will not be able to play this game. While there are ways in which you can force the game to use lower level shaders, these methods will be detected as cheats by PunkBuster (See PunkBuster below) and you will be kicked or banned permanently. This is because using lower level shaders can result in graphical glitches such as seeing through walls which are effectively an unfair advantage. If I find a way of getting the game to run on low-end hardware I'll let you know, but at the moment it seems highly unlikely.



Update: Reader feedback informs me that you can run the game on older hardware - though it's a matter of luck and importantly of thoroughly tweaking your system first.



Loading Issues: The most common problem with BF2 is that the game crashes to desktop or goes to a black screen when you first launch it. The reason for this is either incompatible hardware (make sure you meet all the minimum specs), or more usually the fact that you're not running at the default Windows XP refresh rate (60Hz). By default the game tries to launch at 800x600@60Hz initially, so your system must be able to run that same resolution and refresh rate, otherwise the game will abort. If you are using any refresh rate override program/method, disable it (e.g. if you're using Refresh Force, click the 'Restore Original Settings' button and apply). Once you've got the game running, you can then change the resolution to suit your taste in the in-game settings, and importantly you can select a higher refresh rate. Then you can reapply the refresh rate override and the game will launch without any problems. To set a non-standard resolution such as 1280x1024 see the Command Line options under the Advanced Tweaking section.



Account Issues: The first time you go to start multiplayer in BF2, you will have to create an online account. However you may find that once you enter all the details and click the Create Account button, it may sit at the 'Creating Account' stage forever. If that's the case, simply exit the screen, restart BF2 and click the 'Retrieve Account' button using the same details - hopefully your new account will be loaded up. Further note that at the start of the game, if you keep pressing any keys to skip the intro movies, these keystrokes will be recorded in your Password box, thus when you click the Login button it will say you have an incorrect password. Either don't press any keys during startup, use the skip intro movies tweak on the next page, or clear the password box and re-enter the correct password each time you start the game just to be safe.



Punkbuster: Battlefield 2 uses the Punkbuster anti-cheat software commonly used in most other online games. This software helps identify and prevent cheating in the game, and cheaters can expect to have their account banned. Make sure you have Punkbuster enabled in the game, as most multiplayer servers require it to allow you to join. Importantly, do not modify your Battlefield 2 files in any way - including the use of programs to alter the shader versions - as these will be seen as cheats by PB. Editing the .con files and other tweaks as described in this guide are fine, but be careful as to what you alter if it's not covered here. If you are having problems automatically updating your Punkbuster version when online, you can manually update it by following the instructions here.



Graphical Glitches: If you are experiencing strange graphics, obviously first make sure your graphics card is supported by the game (See Official Support above). Secondly, make sure you check out my ATI or Nvidia Tweak Guides (See Essential Optimization above) - especially the instructions on page 4 of those guides for doing a 'clean install' of the latest drivers. If you run an ATI graphics card, use the latest 5.6 Catalysts, and if you run an Nvidia graphics card, use the 77.30 Forceware drivers included with the BF2 demo. These can be found under your \Program Files\EA Games\Battlefield 2 Demo\nvidia_driver\ directory, and they should resolve glitches such as the 'black square' bug.



In-Game Lag/Freezes: Most people experience a lot of in-game lags, pauses and several-second freezes. Aside from optimizing your system as per my guides in the Essential Optimization section, and the tips in this guide, it is quite clear that BF2 requires a lot of memory to operate. Basically the pauses/freezes are usually related to loading information from the hard drive, and for those of you with only 512MB of RAM this will happen very often, particularly at the start of a match and whenever new areas/items are encountered. Even with 1GB, there is a lot of loading, so clearly BF2 would benefit from 2GB of RAM. More importantly, graphics cards with 128MB of Video RAM will also experience more pauses as textures are loading into/out of Video Memory. I will try to find more tweaks to help with this situation, but it is clear BF2 is very memory-intensive and hence almost always relying on your hard drive.



Gamma, Brightness, Contrast: Battlefield 2 does not seem to have any in-game options to alter the brightness, contrast or gamma of the game. You will have to use a third-party program like PowerStrip which works with all graphics cards, or the gamma options in your graphics card's control panel to alter the game's brightness/gamma/contrast.



Antialiasing: To make sure Antialiasing works in the game, first go to your graphics card's control panel, and for Nvidia cards under the Performance & Quality Settings in the Global Driver Settings section select 'Application Controlled' for Antialiasing and Anisotropic Filtering. For ATI cards go to the 3D section of the Control Panel/Control Center and select 'Application Preference' for Antialiasing and Anisotropic Filtering. Now you can go into BF2 and set the level of Antialiasing you wish to use, however obviously it will reduce your game's performance. If you are unfamiliar with what Antialiasing or Anisotropic Filtering do, see my Simple Antiasliasing & Anisotropic Filtering Guide. Note that using a forced resolution (like 1280x1024) may cause problems with Antialiasing, since it is an unsupported resolution



Laggy Menus: Unfortunately these are a common part of the game for many people, and appear to be due to both the way the menu system is implemented, as well as generally low FPS. There are no fixes for this at the moment, especially since the relevant game files can't be altered due to Punkbuster detecting any such alterations as cheats.



There are obviously many more problems people are experiencing with the game, but most of these are due to a lack of system optimization. BF2 is very stressful on your system, and if you do not cool it properly, reduce/remove your overclocks, stablize and optimize your system with the correct Windows settings etc. then you will experience more crashes, freezes etc. Read the guides I link to under Essential Optimization above for more details, as well as the game's Readme.txt file - there is no single quick fix to problems like these.






In-Game Settings



I will provide full details of the in-game settings shortly but for now I'll mention several specific things I've noticed about the settings:



Game Options



Connection Settings: To make sure you have the smoothest online gameplay, tick the 'Cable 256KPBS or Better' option, since the T1(LAN) option will cause a lot of jerky gameplay for most connections.



Controls



Controls: See the Advanced Tweaking section for a method of binding commands to the keys which are currently force-bound to other commands.



Video



Display Mode: Make sure you choose the display mode with the highest refresh rate listed - the refresh rate is the number after the @ sign, and the higher the number the more times per second the screen can 'refresh' (redraw itself), meaning less eye strain. Note that the commonly desired resolution of 1280x1024 - the native resolution for many modern LCD displays - is not supported by default. See the Advanced Tweaking section for the method of forcing this display mode. If you want to run a custom resolution, first select the resolution closest to it here, then use the Advanced tweak and then do not alter the resolution again here.



Antialiasing: Using Antialiasing correctly is covered in the Troubleshooting Tips section above, however despite the fact that BF2 looks extremely jagged and would benefit from AA, it will noticeably slow down your framerate, and may cause graphical glitches, so it is not recommended for all but the latest high-end hardware.



Dynamic Lights, Dynamic Shadows, Lighting: These three settings alone can make a significant difference to the amount of lag and freezes/jerkiness you experience in the game. Reduce the Dynamic Shadows setting to start with, as it has the most noticeable impact. Then reduce the Dynamic Lights setting if necessary, and finally the Lighting setting may also need to be reduced for smoother gameplay.



Audio



Voice Over IP: Enabling Voice Over IP (VOIP) will cause slowdowns, and regular pauses on many systems due to the system overhead (mainly bandwidth) that it requires. Disable this option unless you really want to use VOIP and/or you have a high-bandwidth connection.



Join Internet



This section is where you can find servers to join multiplayer BF2 games. It currently takes a very long time for servers to load, and there is nothing that can be done about it. The only suggestion I have is to make sure you tick several of the Internet Filters boxes to specify precisely which servers the game should look for. For example, tick the 'No Passwords' box to make sure the game doesn't waste time trying to find and display password-protected servers which you typically can't play on. I also suggest ticking 'Populated' as it's pointless joining an empty server. The Punkbuster box should always be ticked if you want to play on most servers.


Battlefield 2 Tweak Guide
[Page 2] Advanced Tweaking



This section contains all the advanced tweaks I know for BF2 at the moment. These have come from personal research and testing as well as various Battlefield forums on the Internet. If you have any details of additional tweaks you think would benefit the BF2 community, please Email Me with details and I will test and include them in both this guide and the full version.



Config Files



Battlefield 2 has a large number of config (.con) files spread throughout its directories. These can be edited using a text editor like Windows Notepad or Wordpad. Before editing any .con file, first make sure you have a backup copy of it.



However as you may have noticed, editing some of the .con files can prove pointless as the changes seem to have no impact. I have found that the main configuration files which do have an impact are found under your \Documents and Settings\[username]\Documents\Battlefield 2 Demo\Profiles\ directory, with the settings for each profile listed under a numbered directory (e.g. \0001 for the first profile, etc.). You should stick to editing the files for your specific profile, as messing with those under the \Default directory will affect all profiles. To see which particular profile is currently in use, open the Global.con file under the \Profiles parent directory first, then see which number it mentions, and go to that particular numbered directory to find the files mentioned below.



For the moment I've found few useful tweaks to these files, as most of their settings can be altered using the in-game options, or the tweaks have no impact. However here are a couple of things to note:



Video.con



This file contains the graphics-related settings. Note however that if you try to alter your resolution here for example, it will typically lead to BF2 not starting up, or crashing after the login screen, or simply not applying the desired resolution. Use the Command Line method further below to set a custom resolution.



Controls.con



To change particular keys which are automatically bound to certain functions in the game (and can't be changed in the in-game settings), find the line for that particular key (e.g. IDFKeyboard IDKey_LeftCtrl is the line which contains the Left Control key mapping), and delete that line. It should now be free to be mapped in the Controls section of the in-game settings.



Sadly the above is all I know about the config files at the moment, more will follow as I experiment and get reader feedback.



Console Commands



To open the BF2 in-game console, press the '~' key (or the key above TAB) to open/close the console. At present I have tried a variety of commands in the console in dozens of different forms and have had no luck whatsoever in getting them to work. If you know how to activate them let me know. For the moment the only commands which I know work are shown below:



Renderer.drawfps [0,1] - This command shows the frames per second in the top left corner of the screen (i.e. renderer.drawfps 1 to enable, renderer.drawfps 0 to disable the counter). Thanks to reader Roy Mudie for this.



Exit - Quits the game to desktop.



Admin commands - All the admin console commands are included in the Readme.txt file in your \Program Files\EA Games\Battlefield 2 Demo directory.



Command Line



There are a range of commands - mainly designed for servers running BF2 - which can be activated via the BF2 command line. You can use these commands by going to the 'Battlefield 2 Demo' shortcut you use to launch the game, right-click on it and select Properties. Then in the Target box, after the "C:\Program Files\EA Games\Battlefield 2 Demo\BF2.exe" +menu 1 +fullscreen 1 text, insert another space, then use any of the commands below. Each command must have a single space between it and the next command.



For example, one of the most commonly requested commands is to run BF2 in 1280x1024 resolution (or another custom resolution) - particularly for LCD displays which display the best image at their native resolution. To do this, change your command line to look like this:



"C:\Program Files\EA Games\Battlefield 2 Demo\BF2.exe" +menu 1 +fullscreen 1 +szx 1280 +szy 1024



Note the addition of the +szx and +szy commands which respectively set the width and height of the resolution to be used. Substitute other values for other resolutions (e.g. +szx 1900 +szy 1200).



The following are the known command line commands for BF2, and descriptions where possible:



+dedicated - Start in dedicated server mode

+multi - Allow starting multiple BF2 instances

+joinserver - Join a server by IP address or hostname

+playername - Set the player name

+password - Set the server password when joining a server

+config - Sets path to the ServerSettings.con file to use

+maplist - Sets the path to the MapList.con file to use

+lowpriority - Run the game with slightly lower priority

+loadLevel - Set the level to load

+wx - Position game window on the screen at certain x-position

+wy - Position game window on the screen at certain y-position

+szx - Set resolution width

+szy - Set resolution height

+fullscreen - Start game in full screen mode

+nosound - Start game without sound

+demo - Sets the con-file with demo options

+maxPlayers - Sets max players

+gameMode - Sets the game mode

+modPath - Sets the mod path (default /mods/bf2)

+help - Displays help

+ranked - Allows GamSpy snapshot sending

+playerPassword - Sets the player password

+playNow - Use PlayNow functionality

+port - Specifies the network port to be used

+pbPath - Set the path to use for PunkBuster on multi-instance configs

+hostServer -

+checkForAvailablePatch -

+checkForPatch -

+ai -



As you can see, most of these commands are really only useful for those running BF2 servers, and the descriptions are fairly vague. As I find out more useful commands I will add to this list.




Neat Stuff



The following are some tips I have found which may be handy to most people.



Disabling the Intro Movies



The introductory movies to BF2 are quite annoying, and generally increase startup times for the game. To disable them, you should not delete the movie files - this may cause problems with Punkbuster. Instead, simply rename the relevant files in your \Program Files\EA Games\Battlefield 2 Demo\mods\bf2\Movies\ directory to something else (e.g. rename dice.bik to dice.backup). The files to rename are: demo_b2legal.bik, demo_bf2release.bik, demo_demolegaltext.bik, demo_locknload.bik, dice.bik, EA.bik and Nvidia_logo.bik. This will mean the intro movies are all skipped as BF2 starts to load.



If for any reason you experience any problems with the above method, you can download and use the blank movie files from here: SkipIntroBF2.zip (2KB) instead. Backup your movie files first, then extract the contents of this .zip file into your \movies directory.



Removing the Time Limit



To remove the 12 minute time limit for each round, do the following. Note for server admins, apparently GameSpy and EA Games do not like this, and may delist your server if you do it.



Go to your \Battlefield 2 Standalone Demo Server\mods\bf2\python\game\gamemodes directory or your \Battlefield 2 Demo\mods\bf2\python\game\gamemodes (depending on whether you want to implement this on a server, or for your own singleplayer mode), and open the gpm_cq.py file with Notepad or Wordpad. Find the following line (if necessary do a search for this string):



host.sgl_endGame(winner, victoryType)



Then simply place a '#' in front of that line, and add the word 'return' just below it. This should mean that the once the clock hits 00:00 you can still keep playing until all the tickets expire.



Increasing Singleplayer Bots



To increase the number of bots used in singleplayer mode, go to your \Program Files\EA Games\Battlefield 2 Demo\mods\bf2\AI directory and open the file aidefault.ai with Notepad or Wordpad. Read the instructions in the file, and remove the words 'rem' from in front of the relevant lines. To alter the number of actual bots, edit the number at the end of the aiSettings.setMaxNBots 32 line (e.g. aiSettings.setMaxNBots 64 for 64 bots). Note that more bots can really stress your system and hence destabilize it.



Measuring Framerate



Aside from using the console command to measure in-game Frames Per Second (FPS) - see Console Commands section above - you can also measure your current fps using the free utility FRAPS. This utility will display a very accurate framerate counter in the corner of the screen, and has other handy functions like the ability to take screenshots in various formats.



Taking Screenshots



If you want to take screenshots of the in-game gameplay, simply press the PRTSCN (Print Screen) key which by default takes a screenshot and places it in your \Documents and Settings\[username]\Documents\Battlefield 2 Demo\Screenshots\ directory.

-Mid

[PinkRabi]

Mid in all our time together what makes you think i am going to read the whole of that post

[Undead_Mercenary]

Well, if you take the time to read it, you'll discover some very neat tips (ie no more intro movies!). I dont think anything revolving around the hardware will help my game performance. The only solution is a new PC. But it isnt too bad, only laggy at the beginning of a map anyways.

[DenKirson]

Full BF2 Guide at http://www.Tweakguides.com later today.

[BadAsh]

does the no intro movies work on the full version or just the demo...god I would love to get rid of those non-skippable time-wasters

[DenKirson]

Go to the installed directory, then "/mods/bf2/movies/" and either delete or rename the bik movie files. Getting rid of the Menu and Menu_Loaded movies made using the in-game browser quite smoother.