DICE's Karl-Magnus on No PC Mod Tools for Battlefield 3 and that Frame-Rate Thing
In a forthcoming interview with AusGamers, EA DICE's Karl-Magnus Troedsson talked openly about the lack of out-of-the-box mod-tool support for Battlefield 3 and touched on that precious argument of 30 frames-per-second versus 60 frames-per-second.
"I will say that there’s been a lot of cool things coming out of the mod community for many years; I have a lot of respect for the people in the mod community," he told us when asked about the decision behind no mod-tool support. "At the same time, as developers of a game of this magnitude -- I mean, it’s the biggest thing we’ve ever done -- we have to select what it is we’re going to spend our focus on. We cannot do everything; it’s basically like that."
However, it's not all bleak with Karl assuring their mod community fans that they're being heard, and most certainly not ignored.
"We have heard the community very loud and clear on this topic -- that they want mod tools," he said. "We are considering it, back in the studio. The game won’t ship with mod tools, but we have heard it. I’m not saying that we’re going to do it, I’m saying that we are thinking about it."
And on that see-saw topic of which frame-rate is the better one to play your game on (in the console space), Karl quickly asserts the team don't want to get into too much of a slinging match, reminding us they've released every Battlefield game on consoles so far, at 30 frames-per-second.
"We have been working on this game for three years. We’re very conscious about quality and we’re polishing it to the last bits. Secondly, our games have been running at 30 FPS since we started doing console games," he told us. "There’s nothing “bad” about this. This is a unique selling point for some of the other competitors out there that are running at 60. I believe that they want to create an experience that are more twitchy, and it’s faster and these kind of things.
"I believe this matter is completely blown out of proportion," he adds. "If you look at the frame-rate, a lot of games do run at 30 FPS and [for] shooters from console, it works very well. The tempo of Battlefield 3 is slightly lower so it works really well for us. It also comes with the fact that our games have large open environments; we have tonnes of vehicles; we have more players; we have all-out destruction in the environment.
"60 FPS is not a technical problem, it’s very easy to do," he concludes on the topic. "If you turn off all the things I just mentioned, we can also get it to run at 60."
We'll have the full video interview feature up and running a bit later today, so be sure to stay tuned for more on Battlefield 3 from AusGamers and DICE's Karl-Magnus Troedsson.