Battlefield 3

[mborkp]

I'm picking my copy up later in the week, bought my new PC parts purchased x2 gtx580s to run in SLI and a 27" LED (it's massive)

wow, nice SLI and monitor . Picked up the game hour ago, still downloading setup stuff. Bad, I start my shift tommorow .
May 560ti SLI will get next week. See how it performs on 295 shortly.

Cheers

[mborkp]

Bloody thing, have to wait till 21.00 to start the game smells like a sicko tommorow.

[johnwinger]

Bloody thing, have to wait till 21.00 to start the game smells like a sicko tommorow.

chuck a sickie, I did when 2142 was released!

[DND]

Hows the multi player ?

[johnwinger]

I grabbed my cpu cooler tonight on the way home and eb games closed right on 6 and I got there a6 6:08 will have to wait till tomorrow and I'm still to build my PC anyway!

I also heard mborkp was up all night playing!

[mborkp]

Hows the multi player ?

So fa so good. It has the feeling of BFBC (at least for me), vechicles, jets, choppers all good. Better weaponary ballance I think. Yeap, played all night and all day after few hours of sleep , I had 2-3 crushes of the game over this period and few server disconnections but as for early stages I think is not that bad.

My card is GTX295 so had to play in low settings and this is only DX10. I will definitly get 2x GTX 560ti as it will look much better.

Over all, if you like BF series you will like this one for sure

Cheers

[DND]

Are the choppers like the ones in BF2 or are that like the crappy ones in BFBC2...?

[mborkp]

the choppers are not the same as in BF2... different filling, plus there are stingers from the ground, one shot - chopper down! You just need to practice to get use to the choppers/jets. New game, new things you need to learn or get use to. The biggest drawback so far for me, is no build in VOIP (that's for PC, consoles have it), new crappy VOIP system which does not make sense.

Cheers

[johnwinger]

so you cannot talk to your squad in game? you need to use a third party voip to talk?

[mborkp]

so you cannot talk to your squad in game? you need to use a third party voip to talk?

well, it is part of the game but you need to set up your friends and then you can talk to them. Stupid couse if someone join your squad you can't talk tothe person right away, you need to ad him/her to your friends group.
Dice is pushing it'snew system for this game, but this VOIP is radiculus, it is as a separate application. The consoles have build in VOIP in the game as BF2 had. Go figure....

Cheers

[DND]

yeah that sounds a but stupid, you'd think they just stay with the old bf2 setup it worked great,

[mborkp]

VOIP is availible via DICE's Battlelog, new browser based application.
Cheers

EDIT: this Battlelog is running all the time in the browser. I'm not sure yet if you need to minimise the game and add friends in it, or you can do this within the game itself.

[johnwinger]

damn, so if I want to abuse someone I have to add as a friend first!

Hopefully they make a few changes and get some bugs sorted

[max102]

You can always just buy the CDkeys (Pre-orders Keys $24) and then use the EA downloader to download the game or just download the CD image off a torrent.

You can get the pre-order keys now, But I'd want for the game to be released,
I think this is where I got my BC2 Keys from

Thanks for the info, less than $25 and working great.
Little bit of stuffing around changing the language but cheap.

[mborkp]

There is some tips I've read about so if you have a CTD problem (for Nvidia cards) or using 32 bit OS and your game crash after 5 or so minutes try those:
CTD:
1) Open the Nvidia control panel
2) Select 'Manage 3D Settings'
3) Under 'Global Settings' set 'Power mangement mode' to 'Prefer maximum performance'
or just select BF 3 profile.

5min. crush in 32 bit OS:

NOT 100% GUARANTEED, BUT PRETTY GOOD NONETHELESS - MANY PEOPLE REPORTING SUCCESS. Around 90-95% success rate for those who gave it a go. It doesn't fix it completely - people were reporting crashes after 20-30mins - but it's a hell of a lot better than 2-3 minutes.

*******************32BIT ONLY - SORRY TO 64BIT USERS***********************

I've been having the crash problem - games in MP crashing in ~5mins, and SP crashing every so often. Found the solution from another game actually where I was having a similar problem - Empire: Total War.

BE AWARE, THIS IS ONLY A WORKAROUND - THE ISSUE STILL NEEDS TO BE FIXED. THIS IS A FIX FOR THOSE RUNNING 32BIT WINDOWS 7 AND WINDOWS VISA WITH 4GB RAM OR MORE.

From here on, I'm copy-pasting the instructions. This works for both Vista and W7. Got me through 20mins of MP for the first time though - longest game I've had. Haven't tested for longer.


What does it do?
It has to do two things that both rely on each other to work. For 32 bit operating systems we have to tell the operating system it can use more than 2GB user address space, 2.5GB actually, while leaving 1.5Gb for the kernel. We also have to set the Empire.exe executable to be allowed to address beyond the 2GB ceiling. 64 bit OS users don't have to do anything.

What does it help with?
This is not the solution for all crashes. It deals primarily with the crash to desktop that is caused by lack of virtual address space.Due to the unique nature of how addresses are mapped differently on each machine this crash may happen at different places and times of the game, even loading a map, menu or waiting on an AI turn. If you try this fix, and you follow directions properly, and it doesn't help you then your crash is due to something else.

How do I do it?
Follow directions explicitly. I have seen people consistently skip steps or not read the directions properly so it doesn't work for them whne they don't do what it says. it's not as complicated as it sounds, I'm just being thorough.

APPLY THE WORKAROUND (juicy caramel center)

Requirements

Only real requirements is that you have atleast 2GB RAM. You don't need beyond that even though we are allowing addressing up to 2.5 GB. Also following instructions and being somewhat familiar with working with files in windows is required. Make sure you are using Vista SP1. If not then you need this hotfix that fixes a major blunder with Vista address space - [support.microsoft.com]
That's all, follow the 3 steps.

1) Prepare the operating system to be able to use beyond 2GB address space with a userva of 2.5GB (only 32 bit OS's need to do this): I am purposely using only 2500 for userva for specific reasons and any more will likely not be needed, as a result the kernel will have plenty of space to play in.

All 64 bit OS's
Nothing to do on the OS. Proceed to step 2 on setting the executable. 64 bit OS's running 32 bit binaries are also limited to 2GB application space.

XP 32
* Find your Boot.ini located usually on the C:.
If you cannot see it, you probably have system files hidden, then follow these instructions at microsoft (also uncheck "hide protected operating system files")
* Right click on the boot.ini and choose properties. Uncheck "read only"
* Open the boot.ini by double clicking it.
* Under the section called find the line that says "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Wind ows XP Professional...". Yours may look a bit different. We are going to make a duplicate, so that if you make a mistake you will not harm yourself from booting into your computer. Drag you're mouse across the entire line, right click and choose copy. Then right below the line you just copied right click your mouse and choose paste. You should now have two lines one after another that are exact duplicates.
* Change the bottom line that you just copied with the following addition on the end. Add a space at the end of the line and then this without the quotes "/3GB /USERVA=2500"
* In that lower boot entry you just made, find the name of the operating system in quotes and change it to something like "Windows XP 3GB", so you can differentiate at boot up.
* Close and save the boot.ini.
* Right click on the boot.ini, hit properties, check read only.

Windows 7/Windows Vista
* In Windows 7/Vista go to Start menu. Go to Accessories. Locate the command prompt shortcut and hover mouse over it. Right Click on the shortcut then select Run as Administrator.
* In the command prompt type this exactly: bcdedit /set increaseuserva 2500. Then hit enter.
* Make sure you get a message back confirming the change was made. To verify the entry is there you can type just bcdedit, hit enter, and you should see the entry now listed.
* Then close the command prompt. You just told Vista to increase user virtual address (userva) space to 2500MB.
* Changes take effect on reboot but don't reboot yet.

SUMMARY
We extended the user virtual address space in XP, Vista and 7 to 2500MB, so now applications can utilize up to that much if they are set to be Large Address Aware. While some 32 bit games/applications are set, Empire is not.

2) Now reboot the PC because Windows needs to set the userva at 2500 which only happens after startup.

If you skip any step it will not work. When you have rebooted you should be good to go. Run the game as normal with the original game shortcut.

TO UNDO THE CHANGES
For the XP 32 bit just delete the line from your boot.ini.
For Vista/W7 32 Open command prompt as administrator and type: bcdedit /deletevalue increaseuserva. That deletes the entry.
Reboot and you are back to normal.

[johnwinger]

Got my new PC built and game installed no hassles at all. Can max the display settings with ease. Loving playing it and can't wait to get back into it.

[RISKY_B]

yeah is a great game very real
anyone got the new cod how dose it compare?

[Hogi]

Going back a page about game downloads the way i buy my games is through the Steam software. download and play directly through steam, you can also load already installed games into it and play from steam. Really useful app

[johnwinger]

Going back a page about game downloads the way i buy my games is through the Steam software. download and play directly through steam, you can also load already installed games into it and play from steam. Really useful app

Steam is good for that reason but a pain in the butt when it decides to download updates whilst you're trying to play a game.

[mborkp]

Plaing now for a while I can say I like it very much. Patch is anounced to be released in december, few flaws to be fixex. So far, so good

Cheers