BC2 Mapping and Why No Karkand

[woowoo]

I found this an interesting post from one of DICE's devs about recreating the huge map from past BF titles - Karkand. Gives some interesting insight on the mapping process.

From DICE_Pirelli (http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/members/464020-dice_pirelli.html)
Recreating Karkand with the type of houses that it is built up of in BF2 in a fully destructible environment and with the ability to enter each and every house on every floor and at the same time keep an acceptable performance would not be possible right now with the amount of destruction currently in the game.

Making these buildings indestructible and closing off all indoor areas would also not be consistent with the rest of the game as it is.

I actually had to scale down the size of the town in Arica Harbor a number of times during production in order to get an acceptable performance in addition of removing some buildings that was cut during development.

It's not just "a case of rendering it with the Frostbyte 2.0 "
Karkand has a very static environment. Only a few buildings lets you go inside them, no building takes any damage what so ever and only a couple of banger objects has any destruction.

So in BC2, a full blown Karkand is not going to happen.

source: http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/battlefield-bad-company-2-pc/1033928-i-would-pay-good-money-dlc-karkand-etc.html#post14156628

[woowoo]

More on this:

Arica Harbor conquest is a bit of a specialty that we can do in a post launch level. It's a gift to the part of the community, both from Battlefield and other games, that likes fast paced infantry only combat (except for UAV), and to the ones that have enjoyed the town section of the original Rush version.

It has the same total length as White Pass, but is about twice the width, allowing for more choices of movement.

The capture areas are big, and can include several houses, so that it becomes more of a clear house and secure town sections gameplay rather than a survive near a flagpole kind of gameplay. The absolute flag positions are not the most important thing about this map - they indicate the middle of the town sections and displays who currently owns it.

When I designed the original rush version of Arica, it was never designed for heavy vehicle focused conquest. It wasn’t designed for conquest at all. It was only later decided to gift an added version to the community because we found it fun and different with its fast pace when we playtested it and we wanted you to at least have the extra choice of playing this version of it.

Surely the part of the community that prefers huge maps with vehicles will be a lot happier on Laguna Presa. They are different maps for different preferences.

Doing a big conquest map on Arica like you are suggesting, with a lot of different vehicles would hit hard on performance as there is a lot of demanding destruction in the town area. It would also slow the pace considerably from the rush version as a big part of the team would have to be on foot and spread over a large area. The distances that you are asking for here are quite enormous for 24 players. It would be better suited for PC and 32 players.

I am not saying that a larger conquest version of Arica would never happen if there was a demand for it, but it would be with a limited selection of vehicles with distances and flag setups that didn’t bore regular players on foot to death. (Yes - we did want BC2 to be more intense and action filled than BC1)

There is more risk involved with trying to do a big vehicle heavy conquest map out of the rush specialized Arica Harbor with predomenantly infantry focus on the last stretches, than to do infantry focused conquest in one of the sections that works well and has popularity in Rush.

When it comes to large maps and vehicles, I would even love to double the size of Atacama Desert, and provide double the amount of vehicles and buildings than I could during production, but I had to keep performance in mind at all times. Distances also have to be tuned in with the amount of vehicles can be provided for the players. We don't want to slow the pace down to a complete bore and having people running marathons to taste some action.

The current improvements of destruction and other features of the game has become more demanding on the hardware, but the team is continuing its effort to develop our technologies so that we will be able to do even more and bigger things for those of you that are looking for huge levels with more vehicles later on.

http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/battlefield-bad-company-2-ng/996804-what-arica-harbour-cq-map-should-have-been-like-4.html#post13740948

[bacon]

Does he mean not possible cross platform or on PC? Big difference there, and I am feeling more and more like we will never see BF3 as a PC exclusive thus it will be tiny maps, more like BC is just different weapons/vehicles maybe.

I hope I am wrong.:undecided

[TRTL]

Does he mean not possible cross platform or on PC? Big difference there, and I am feeling more and more like we will never see BF3 as a PC exclusive thus it will be tiny maps, more like BC is just different weapons/vehicles maybe.

I hope I am wrong.:undecided

I hope you are wrong to. I want the bigger maps back.

[woowoo]

The idea of the Rush game type is a good one - it gives you the "big" map but you enter it in stages to avoid the performance hit.

But to answer your question - I do believe this is due to both console and lower end PC limitations.