Play Prepared! BF2 Advanced Tactical Center + Tweak Guide

[Liquidize105]

I love the slogan (http://www.foolishentertainment.com/index.asp?p=3&s=1&c=39).

Foolish Entertainment proudly presents Advanced Tactical Center for Battlefield 2, designed to increase your clans’ performance.

Get all your team mates connected to your online session and create vivid, detailed tactics together. The wide selection of tools included offers your clan the control to grasp the tactic easily and evolving them together in real time! Brand new tools like zoom, text, export tactic and the Custom Map Wizard builds upon the already large library of tools!
Click on this link (http://www.foolishentertainment.com/index.asp?p=4&s=1) for a list of ATCs for other games.

The ever helpful Koroush Ghazi at TweakGuides.com also released his comprehensive BF2 tweak guide (http://www.tweakguides.com/BF2_1.html). Good timing.

[kurr]

I read the guide, but it didn't answer the question I had. How do you increase the draw distance of identifications? At least just the friendly ones. I'll be cruising along as a gunner in the Mi-28, laying down 30mm shells, and at certain ranges, it is all but impossible to tell friendly from hostile, unless the little text tag pops up. And sometimes, it just doesn't do it in time. Does anyone have any advice on how to fix this? Or at least deal with it better? It's annoying to have to wait until we're almost right on top of them before their tag shows up, so I can start firing.

[EvilBob46]

I don't think you can. This is a "feature" of the game AFAIK.

[Demize99]

Check your minimap. If there's no dot there, fire away!

[kurr]

I don't remember, but does the minimap show when you're using the different camera views? I use the camera view that shows the crosshair, but not the rest of the cockpit, because you can't see down there, but you can still shoot down there. I noticed that using the other camera views like that makes the nametags appear very late, if at all. And it's even worse in the TV missile cameras, because the nametags aren't colored. It's really annoying.

[anakin876]

I agree - but if you look at it from the perspective of "modelling a war situation" then I can see why these tags would not show up. In the future maybe there will be augmented reality headsets for every soldier that show exact positions of friendlies and identify unfriendlies - but I do not think the military has this tech in use yet. Check the mini-map, make sure you know who you are firing at. If the penalty for dying were higher you'd get more realism, and people would be less likely to shoot at that man shaped blob down there w/o proper ID.

[greensky]

I read the guide, but it didn't answer the question I had. How do you increase the draw distance of identifications?

I've only played the demo, but I have 2 questions:

1. Do people actually play together in the commercial version?

2. Is there any way to find and connect to games without using the built-in game browser?

[sebastard]

I'm finding that with the commercial version you will more often find servers where the teams are organized.. A key indicator of whether or not your side is going to be efficient is if people are in squads or not. If no one's in a squad, switch sides or change servers :-)

But seriously, I've had some SUPER fun matches where everyone was in squads and everyone had VOIP set up, and we had a functional and responsive commander and I had a blast.

I think my favourite map so far is Strike at Karkand. Hard-fought street battles, no air power at all, and that nice fog that makes everything happen at close range... I've had some seriously hairy block-by-block street battles on that map and with a functional squad (meaning you have a support and a medic and people are actually listening to the squad leader) it gets intense..

For now you can only use the in-game server browser to find games (which sucks) but the patch this week is supposed to add support for All-Seeing Eye and external server browsers.

ATC is a cool program, I downloaded it.. It's basically a collaborative whiteboard software that lets a bunch of people share a workspace.. Nothing new, but it's custom-tailored for BF2, so you have overhead maps and detail screenshots of all the key locations on the map (in the opinion of the software designers - I've already found a few maps that don't have screenshots of certain parts - I don't know if you can add some).

You have drawing tools and icons you can drop around on the screenshots and chat about strategies.

I think it would be cooler if it supported animation somehow, and zooming/panning of the maps instead of just that one level of pixelated zoom. But it's still an interesting tool..

Does anyone out there play in a clan that actually uses this seriously (for another game or for BF2) to plan out strategies?

[GrinR]

I just realized that BF2 takes up almost 2 fucking gigs of ram to run at high settings. Order for new ram with newegg - PLACED.

[Ravana]

Excellent. Now all I need is a LAN co-op patch, and I'll never have to see the sun again.

[kurr]

It really needs two gigs? I thought it was running ok on my GF6600 GT, athlon 64 3000+ and 1 gb of ddr 400. No crashes, at least. But I had to enable the pagefile, or else it would run out of memory. I get like 30-70 frames per second in the demo, depending on how heavy the action is. I still have to pick up a headset mic. Do they make just microphone setups? I don't like using headphones. Are there any official EvAv servers? My copy should be coming in on Tuesday, along with a drive to actually read all these DVDs I've picked up.

[Crus]

Excellent. Now all I need is a LAN co-op patch, and I'll never have to see the sun again.

Co-op would be great, its already halfway in the game (see here (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~bf42players/index.php?showforum=23)) but pretty raw.

Theres a petition (http://www.petitiononline.com/coopBF2/petition.html) to get Co-op properly implemented, sign up! 1636 (and counting) people can't all be wrong. Disappointed yes, wrong no.

[outontheporch]

Captain Jean Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise.

[LilAbner]

I just realized that BF2 takes up almost 2 fucking gigs of ram to run at high settings. Order for new ram with newegg - PLACED.

Now that's a well-coded game. Good job, DICE! :eek:

[sebastard]

Excellent. Now all I need is a LAN co-op patch, and I'll never have to see the sun again.

Check out the tweaks guide, there's an explanation of how to play co-op in single-player.

[EvilBob46]

It really needs two gigs?

He said for it to run at the highest settings. The game runs fine with low settings on my machine:
Athlon XP 1.5 Ghz, 512 Ram, Radeon 9700 Pro

I've found that there is very little difference between Medium and High texture settings, so you might as well save some extra Ram there.

[51|RandoM]

co-op? uhhh, the game is co-op.

I'm gonna have to guess you mean multiple players on one side vs. multiple bots on the other?

You'd have to play on maps with little or no vehicles, as the bots are worthless with them, unless you just don't want any challenge at all, I suppose.