The first week of February 2015, while many of us were trying out Battlefield Hardline, CTE was running the test version of the upcoming retail version patch for Battlefield 4. It is described as a “Winter” patch, and for us in the northern hemisphere, winter has only three weeks left. With Hardline slated for release March 17, 2015, and a logical presumption that you wouldn’t want to roll out a major patch and a new release the same week, that doesn’t leave much time before everyone will get to see this latest improvement for the game.
Update: You will all see this soon, but the patch date is March 3, two weeks before Hardline.
http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf4/news/view/whats-next-in-battlefield-4/
Winter Patch Arriving in March
In March, we’ll deploy what we call the Winter Patch, polishing things like netcode and soldier collision. This update will also tweak one of our competitive game modes, Squad Obliteration. Fast-paced and hugely focused on team work, this will become the lead competitive game mode for Battlefield 4.
In case you haven’t had the chance to try it yourself yet, Squad Obliteration features two five-player teams fighting for possession of a bomb on the map. Your goal is to destroy two out of three enemy bases with these bombs to win. Our ambition with Squad Obliteration is to create something fast and challenging for the players and an entertaining experience for those who watch the matches.
Now, those of us who have played on CTE have a better feel for what that “polishing” actually means. For everyone else, it is much more impressive than the short description makes it sound.
Netcode. What a confusing term, since what it means to players is anything where the game world’s approximation of reality — in terms of weapon fire, damage, physics, etc. — is mismatched between players and someone gets hurt (usually fatally) in the game when everything they saw said that they should have been unharmed. Or at least, harmed less.
The first initiative of the Community Test Environment (CTE, http://cte.battlelog.com/bf4/) was the game update rate improvements, which produced immediate results. We are almost a year later with CTE, and the amount and quality of the changes that have come from that project have been impressive. This latest patch will have the improvements made between the last patch (Final Stand, November 18,2014) and now.
http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf4/forum/threadview/2955 65237349802180/
Look at the change list! There is a lot of stuff there. This Winter Patch will probably have at least as long a list.
Key netcode fixes:
A very big one — the delayed HUD health update bug. If hit with this bug, the player HUD won’t show the actual health of the player, won’t show the damage indicators, and will cry when dying from minor damage when at (apparent) full health — because the player’s actual health is much lower, possibly with 1 HP remaining. From the enemy’s point of view, it can be bad as well, with a clear hit failing to produce any effect on the target — at least, until the next damage update.
This issue seems entirely fixed in CTE, and will be in the patch. One major cause of “wrongful death” rage in the game will be eliminated.
Battle(non)sense: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42oF0OlnH0k
Improvement to the “burst fire” impact where network packet delay would cause a stream of bullets to be resolved (from the view of the target) as if it were one large hit. The engine should show every projectile impact in sequence, even with network delays.
High frequency updates improved for enemies in field of view.
Overall bandwidth use improved. This makes a lot of the network delay problems go away simply because there is plenty of time for the server and player (client) program to deal with them.
Lots of fixes with regard to soldier motion and environmental changes (like explosions and trees moving).
And perhaps more, as gleaning just how much was improved just from the ongoing CTE patch updates can be hard to pin down.
“Soldier collision” doesn’t sound like anything special. But the CTE developers have been trying to fix every element on every map where the game world’s physics doesn’t work as expected. Invisible walls, impassable objects, rocks that trip you to death, getting “stuck” on pebbles, and any remaining “glitch spots” where players can go to inaccessible locations. These are also sources of frustration in play. Invisible objects blocking fire can appear to be a netcode issue stopping hits from registering, but though the cause is different they are no less frustrating to “hit”.
Helicopters gain maneuverability, with improved flight handling. This is especially good for the Attack Helicopter, which should be agile. Soldier camo now persists between rounds. Footstep sounds will be much clearer, making it easier to hear enemies running near you (and add increased benefits to stealthy movement).
There will be other things included in the patch, but we will probably have to wait for details on many of them. Things tested in CTE are not always incorporated into a patch because they are still in testing. No need to inflict not-quite-working changes on everyone. That is what CTE is meant for, finding and fixing things.
But there are also game improvements and additions, as well as fixes.
First, the UI enhancements. There are a lot here, you’ll want to check them all out. The deploy screen shows more information about spawn locations and the status of your squad mates. A big one for some will be the new HUD and Optic color customization. If you find the look of your tank’s HUD hard to read, or the color of your red dot sight isn’t attractive, you now can change it. Dead soldiers show up in a different color in the scoreboard.
Squad Obliteration is improved for all maps, and should offer everyone a nice game mode for smaller, competitive matches. It is good to see new features added to the game, well after release and not as part of a paid-for DLC.
A Whole Lot Going On In CTE
The Community Map Project gives the whole CTE community a chance to help put together a brand new map for Battlefield 4. This map will be released for free to all players when it is completed.
All new developments in Battlefield 4 will be produced and tested entirely within the CTE community. That includes any additional new maps, game modes, and other new content which could be added to the game.
There are two big “Prototyping” initiatives in development. First, and one that a lot of players will appreciate, is the anti-Headglitching fix. What is headglitching? When your enemy is behind cover with only his head visible, but still able to shoot at you, making return fire difficult if not impossible. The “glitch” happens because your enemy doesn’t see the cover blocking fire, and may think that they are exposed to return fire normally. Many FPS games suffer from this, because the both player and weapon models “see” through the eyes in the head — rather than shooting from the weapon itself. In the open, this has no effect. Making it work for all weapons and circumstances is a big project, but it is active for many weapons in CTE and will be completed.
Second, and one which will affect game play even more, is the air vehicle and anti-air weapon physics model changes. There are also changes to all vehicles, in an attempt to make the game physics feel more real, and better balance for anti-vehicle weapons, especially rockets. One huge change is the elimination of the “magic” best turn speed (313) for jets. This brings it back more like in BF2, where the choice between speed and turning was much more complex, with no single, optimal speed. I personally think that the changes are great, but they will continue testing in CTE until all aspects are tweaked and balanced well.
If you want to join CTE, you must have Premium for the game, and a PC. CTE uses an entirely separate installation of Battlefield 4, with all DLCs included (thus Premium). Your soldier experience isn’t carried over from BF4, so you start over again. But since CTE has all items unlocked, the rank up is more for show (and to test the battle reports and assignment tracking) than to get tools to use in the game. The install size is a little smaller than the base BF4 game, but it still needs about 50GB of free space to be safe (28 GB download, 34 install, 3/3/15).
Sign up at http://cte.battlelog.com/bf4/. Note that CTE has very frequent patches — two a week more often than not. About 26 patches between November 2014 and February 2015 (current).
Night Mode Maps In CTE
http://bf4central.com/2014/12/battlefield-4-night-maps/
CTE is testing a new version of Siege Of Shanghai — Infiltration of Shanghai. The night version of the map isn’t just a change in lighting, replacing the sunlit scene with a darker version. The vehicles are changed to fit the new scenario (and work better at night), the lights which are present are made destructible, and they added blackouts (city lights go dark) and misty fog to enhance the atmosphere. The change in visibility also requires a change in spotting distances — otherwise, line of sight and 3D spotting would make the whole “can’t see anyone in the dark” element pointless. The Pearl Market map was presented as a Halloween special event for CTE, with night lighting including additional destroyable lanterns (and ghosts). More maps will receive the night treatment, and become available for everyone to play when complete.
The Unknown Future Before Us
The current CTE projects don’t include everything which may be developed for Battlefield 4. Remember the polls about favorite maps of past Battlefield games? The possibility of a “Third Assault” set of DLC maps remaking some of these remains out there, and a logical choice to continue development. Conversions should be easier than making maps from scratch, and the art and level design team has to be kept busy.
Ranked matchmaking with stats could come to Battlelog and BF4. The new squad game modes — Obliteration and Squad Conquest — offer more room for small groups of players to get together for competition with persistent results. Even without the stat keeping, the new game modes are always appreciated.
Adapting game modes to all maps. Capture The Flag is popular but not available on many current maps. Chain Link is only on one DLC, while the game mode is a decent variant of domination on conquest-sized maps. And while Air Superiority doesn’t need more scenery, what could it hurt to have some anyway?
There was discussion of adding alternate versions of TDM and Domination game modes, which share the same smaller versions of the full map. By providing a TDM2 selection, a 2nd play area can be carved out on the existing map, adding variety for matches and doubling choices without actually requiring full new maps.
What else? Anything that the CTE community can come up with. We don’t know what will be possible until we try it.
