Battlefield Play4Free

Hello Battlefield players,
Jeremy Miller – Art Director of EASY - here to fill you in on the Battlefield PLAY4FREE‘s rendering and lighting update we’ve just released.

The art team approached this with two things in mind: First, to use this classic game engine more effectively while minimally impacting performance. Second, to make each map more visibly unique and instantly recognizable compared to the others. This effort will be ongoing, but I’m very excited with what we were able to do!

Using the engine more effectively:

• The addition of “specularity” or “shine” to many elements in the environment. Objects such as tiles, glass windows, metal, cement now react to the light in a more realistic and interesting way.
• Increased the contrast and quality of the lighting for most of the level elements. The form, shapes and details of both soldiers and weapons are more easily seen both in shadows(!) and direct sunlight.
• Fog distances have been reviewed, fine-tuned and even pushed back where we could make it work.
• Increased the consistency of the *look* of the maps across detail levels. While Battlefield PLAY4FREE is certainly at its best on high settings, there should be less of a change shifting down to medium and lower settings. We’ll be putting some more time towards this in the near future as well as addressing a bug where Low and Superlow are much too bright.
  

Individualizing the maps:
There really are too many little tweaks to mention them all but here are some: balanced and optimized many of the textures used throughout the maps, improved the quality of some commonly used objects, added a few things and integrated some feedback from the community where we could!

• Matched the lighting to the “hot, bright desert town” setting.
  

• Shifted the lighting from "warm sunset" to "cool sunrise" and added some colour.
  

• Lightened it up overall and shifted the palette closer to that of a middle-eastern city.
  Emphasized that you are fighting in a half-finished development on the outskirts of the city.
  

• Brightened up the lighting slightly and added some elements to make it feel more wet.
  

• Reduced the brightness slightly, pushed the fog back and removed some of the blue.
  

• Minor adjustments, including pushing the fog back, to help the “oncoming dust storm on a sunny day” setting.
  

I certainly hope you enjoy these updates as much as we do.

Rock on soldiers and let us know what you think!

~Jeremy

Definitely an improvement! I like the change

GREAT WORK on "Fog distances have been reviewed, fine-tuned and even pushed back where we could make it work."

edit: suggestions: keep some maps in 2 settings (almost = more maps)

1. new Karkand (less fog) is great but you could also keep old Karkand with more "orange" sand fog (like in old map or even more fog = less distance seen), old reddish colors and add sand storm particles as seen in "The elder scrolls 3: Morrowind", something like moving wind sand trails on the ground (= effect, like DV has rain and DALIAN has WHITE snowflakes)

Karkand no.1 - hot, bright day
Karkand no.2 - sand storm with sand fog

2. Dalian plant - great work, add pine trees with some WHITE snow on it + add small areas with WHITE snow + muddysnow "WHITE WITH SOME BLACK MUD" areas

3. I didn't play Oman and DV (no internet for a few days since ISP is changing infrastructure) but same as Karkand:

Oman no.1 - cool sunrise (with blue sky and nice clear colors, like in BF2) edit: played it, looks great but sun is too low, maybe 11am-high noon would be better?
Oman no.2 - warm late sunset ("old" sand reddish and orange colors + hot red sunset sun)
DV no.1 - rain, fog, heavy clouds, poor light, maybe add random lightning strikes in the sky (clouds)
DV no.2 - like in BF2, clear sunny day with some small clouds hiding the sun, 2 pm (nice clear day like in new Oman or new Basra, bright green grass and trees)

@ kayack1
"it will be the snipers heaven" ... I agree, now they need to buff our weapons (legacy and standard) by reducing recoil and inaccuracy, adding more damage and ammo.

(12-01-2012 05:33 PM)kayack1 Wrote: [ -> ]- ouch my eyes , too bright !

The irony.

OT: Good job! Sticky this btw.

Nice. I used to think, that Karkand is all dusty due to some sort of sand storm Gotta see it all in action. Also gonna check if you can still see the edge of the world on Dalian.

Not sure I agree that all the changes are improvements (I liked the brightness of Dalian, and Oman now seems incredibly yellow), but the changes to shadow and lighting effects are brilliant. From a strategic point of view, Karkand is almost a completely new map now with a lot more tactical opportunities.

This game looks better than BF2 now. Pretty impressive.

Karkand and Oman looks lovely indeed but rest looks like before the update

and in the process due to your changes u cant see your crossair when zoomed in on a player who happens to be in a slightly darker part of the map? and you think this is a good thing? haha it really aint.

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Post edited by VitalBullet,
Please do not quote the entire original post when posting a simple comment. Instead, please try to quote specific parts or at least remove the image tags from the images.

Tbh this seems to be a really good update to me.

I really like the updated versions of Karkand and Basra. Sharqi and Dalian wasn't as noticeably changed. Oman feels a bit odd to be honest. On high graphics it's ok, but on medium (which I usually play on) it feels too colourful really.

All in all, nice job.

Really like the new Karkand!

Looks nice thieves. If I ever play this again, I'll check it out.

Like mono said, Karkand plays now like a completely new map. And I'm also not fond of yellow tint on Oman. So:
Oman - bad
rest - good
Karkand - total overhaul

not bad...

It looks awesome! Rly, it's just so much better! But I think the US default uniform got slightly worse, maybe too bright with shadows on the legs... gonna take a pic when I can.

(12-01-2012 06:56 PM)BoomStick. Wrote: [ -> ]Like mono said, Karkand plays now like a completely new map. And I'm also not fond of yellow tint on Oman. So:
Oman - bad

I see u didn't play BF2... well, at least u didn't play Oman in BF2

Congrats on implenting even more bugs.

(12-01-2012 06:59 PM)AJoao611 Wrote: [ -> ]I see u didn't play BF2

True. This is my first Battlefield game (not counting BFH). That yellowish tint over whole map looks unnatural to me. I liked it better before.