DICE says mod tools still an option. Talks Origin, Frostbite 2 and tuning the game for consoles.
Australia, September 18, 2011
by Cam Shea
IGN AU
Battlefield 3 is more than just one of the year's most anticipated games. It's also one of the most contentious, sparking all sorts of debates - some justified, some blown entirely out of proportion. Should the PC version have mod tools? And why isn't it on Steam? Is it a big deal that the game will run at 30 frames per second on console? And why can't PS3 and 360 support 64 players online? These were a few of the topics that have set the Internet alight this year. To get DICE's perspective on a few of these issues – as well as other topics, we caught up with Karl Magnus Troedsson, the studio's General Manager.
IGN: A core part of Battlefield's heritage is giving gamers tools to mod the game and take it to new places. Why not do that with Battlefield 3?
Karl Magnus Troedsson: Well, first of all, we have a lot of respect for the modding community. They've done some awesome things, and there's also a bit of a parallel there for a lot of us getting into the games industry; in the early days when we were looking at other games, making our own games, reverse engineering other games to understand what was happening, it's somewhat similar to modding a game - it's getting more and more close to actually making your own game. So we have a lot of respect for the modding community.
At the same time, we haven't had mod support in our games for a long time, and there's a lot of reasons for that. First of all, DICE is committed to innovation and quality, whenever we do something. If we were to do mod support, it needs to be proper mod support, not some hack that we've thrown out there and then people scratch their heads. If we let it out there, it's going to be a good tool.
It's a huge investment for us to do something like that, and also a bit complicated, and to some degree there's also [a concern] security-wise. It's a bit scary to take an investment like Battlefield 3 and just let people dig into that engine and do whatever they want. We're dedicated to try and really limit the amount of hacks and exploits that come out there, but as soon as you let something like that out, people have all the tools in the world that they need to sit there and try to create cheats that actually would destroy the experience for a lot of other people. I'm not blaming mod tools for hacks and exploits in any way, but there's a lot of things we need to consider.
Mod tools won't be in Battlefield 3 when we ship it, but I can say this – we have heard the community loud and clear. We are talking about it in the studio. I'm not promising that we're going to do it in any way, but we have heard it, and we'll see what we do in the future.
IGN: It must be pretty cool getting Frostbite 2 out there and into the hands of other teams.
Karl Magnus Troedsson: Naturally, we're very flattered by this, that other teams within EA want to use the engine, but it's also a bit of a challenge. We have a separate team – the Frostbite 2 team – that handles this, so it's quite a big difference from them supporting one game to supporting more games within EA, but it's also very cool for us on the game team for Battlefield 3 because when [multiple] teams are on the same engine they can really share a lot more things, so we're starting to see things coming back into the engine from the various teams that really can help each other out, and that's a really cool experience.
IGN: Can you give me an example of something that's come back?
Karl Magnus Troedsson: An example, which isn't a real example, but is what's probably going to happen further down the line – usually these integrations back into the engine will happen more when the games are done I would argue – but for instance, we have a physics system for our vehicles. Maybe the Need for Speed team took that physics engine and then implemented their stuff on top and made it even better, because their physics engine is much more complex than ours probably, when it comes to vehicles. Then maybe at some point we'll integrate that back into the Frostbite 2 engine all the way to the core of it, so other teams can use that as well.
IGN: How does the difference between 64 players on PC and 32 on console influence map design?
Karl Magnus Troedsson: We're dedicated to making sure each version of Battlefield 3 makes the most out of the platform it's running on, but there are some changes we need to make, especially with consoles compared to PC, naturally, the PC being more powerful. But we have a good grasp of this. Those who've been following the series for a long time know that in the old Battlefield games you could play it with 64 players, but also a lower amount of players, meaning that we then scaled down the maps and the amount of vehicles, and these kind of things. And it's a natural way of thinking about it when you then play it with less players on console as well. We have a lot of history of knowing how to do this, so it's more of a technical challenge to get the most out of that platform when it comes to visuals, audio, animation etc, and putting each console's technical features to best use.
IGN: Does the fact that some people will be playing on game pads influence the wider design? Or is it more subtle than that?
Karl Magnus Troedsson: No, I would say that the different input devices, on console compared to keyboard and mouse on PC, is probably a bigger change for us, where we need to spend a lot of time – not revolutionising it, it's still the same gamepad as [players used] for the last game that we did, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, but you always want to refine it, make sure that it's as fine-tuned as it can be, because – we like to call it the 'second to second' experience - when you run and gun and shoot, it needs to be perfect, because if that doesn't work, then it doesn't matter what you have with the rest of the game. So we're really spending a lot of time making sure that the different gamepads on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 are really fine-tuned, in collaboration with some assists, when it comes to how you aim at enemies and these kinds of things.
IGN: How do you guys feel about EA's Origin service and Battlefield 3 not appearing on Steam? I would assume that you guys would want your game to be available in as many places as possible.
Karl Magnus Troedsson: First of all, I like the idea of Origin. I like the idea that EA is dedicated to creating a service that actually latches onto the games, lets us have a direct communication with our players. It makes it easier for us to get updates to them, it adds that social layer of having your friends in one place. There's a lot of cool stuff in there. I can understand that people are a bit reluctant towards this in the beginning, but I would ask people to give it a shot and have a look at it. There's been other services out there that are now very established that have had perhaps a harder time in the beginning as well.
Our ambition with this game is to make it available in all channels possible, retail as well as e-tail, of course. In some cases, business terms get in the way, and it's sad when this happens and I really hope we can sort this in the future, but right now we're not on Steam.
and the rest on Drives D: or X:.
There definitely is a difference though in other games but the difference is in mere seconds so its barely noticeable. Although with the big maps of BF3 and all it might be too early to tell whether we'll gain anything by putting it on one of our Super Spectacular Drives