sNeaksieGarrett on 20/8/2011 at 00:02
Quote Posted by Yakoob
Hmm, a little unorthodox, but not bad. Cuts down on the middle man, tbh. Like, I dont need to go through the hassle of waiting a minute for all the game assets to load up and splash screens to look through just to see the damn menu. Also solves problem of long-term memory leaks (unless someone plays on the exact same sever for hours).
But have you considered what happens when you want to switch servers?
From what I've read, you must alt-tab out of your game and go to battlelog in order to switch servers, then you are switched back to the game.
The thing about alt-tabbing is that it takes a bit of time and uses memory. Imagine having to do that multiple times and then it will get annoying. Whoever thought having to alt-tab out of a game to switch servers was a good idea? I mean, one wants quick, readely available options to get into a match. Alt-tabbing takes you
out of the game. I dunno, I just think it makes more sense to have a launcher inside of the game.
Plus, your browser uses up memory as well, and while that may not mean a flying fuck to you if you have an awesome computer, not everyone else will have the same situation. In any case though, I haven't seen it in action for myself so I may change my tune, and it's not really that big of a deal; it's just odd.
Jason Moyer on 20/8/2011 at 01:41
Having played online games that use a browser to launch the multiplayer client, I would imagine that a.) you would just stay in the client and continue playing through the server rotations once you've found a server you like and b.) if you want to switch servers you'd exit the client and relaunch it
june gloom on 20/8/2011 at 01:47
That's a gigantic pain in the ass, especially given how many shitty servers there are.
Jason Moyer on 20/8/2011 at 01:52
From what I've read it takes about 3-10 seconds to launch the multiplayer client, which is similar to stuff like Quakelive or iRacing. Plus you get all of the benefits of web-based server browsing and stat management as well as much easier fixes for server browser issues, since most problems can be fixed server-side.
Yakoob on 20/8/2011 at 02:21
Quote Posted by sNeaksieGarrett
The thing about alt-tabbing is that it takes a bit of time and uses memory. Imagine having to do that multiple times and then it will get annoying. Whoever thought having to alt-tab out of a game to switch servers was a good idea? I mean, one wants quick, readely available options to get into a match. Alt-tabbing takes you
out of the game. I dunno, I just think it makes more sense to have a launcher inside of the game.
That is a good point, but I'd imagine you would rather quit and relaunch than alt+tab. It all boils down to load/shutdown times, which hopefully aren't too bad (I never quite understood why games take FOR FUCKING EVER to close. I mean, I can kill the process in task manager and it takes a second. My own project that loads a bunch of assets closes in a second too).
Quote:
Plus, your browser uses up memory as well, and while that may not mean a flying fuck to you if you have an awesome computer,
Normally I'd agree but dude - this is BF3. If you dont have an "awesome computer" you're not even able to play the damn game. When a game takes up your 2 gigs of ram easily, padding an extra 50 megs for the browser is a minor issue (unless its steam which loves to eat 200 megs of my memory doing just jack shit. damn this super hi-res uncompressed BMP tray icons huh)
Koki on 20/8/2011 at 05:33
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
Plus you get all of the benefits of web-based server browsing
Such as...
TTK12G3 on 20/8/2011 at 14:45
I play BC2 from time to time. Apart from the latency report being stupid, I never saw the problem with the sever browser.
Bloated browser integration? That sounds like a spectacular waste of time.
Jason Moyer on 20/8/2011 at 14:57
Quote Posted by Koki
Such as...
Let's see. Expanded information on the server? Expanded information on the people playing on the server? Statistical information on the server/players. The biggest advantage imho is being able to update the server browser without requiring the client to be patched. Much faster time to launch the game and connect to a server, since you've eliminated the overhead from the game having to do anything besides launching the game itself.
Frankly, I'm surprised using an external web-based component hasn't become more popular because it works fantastically in every game I've tried that uses it. Of course, DICE could completely botch the job up as is their nature when it comes to each new BF release but if they're reasonably competent it should be an improvement over doing everything in game.
I wish iRacing had a free entry-level subscription just so people could see how well it works if it's implemented correctly. Their web interface for finding races and interacting with other users is such a vast improvement over the matchup services in every other multiplayer title I've played, including the already better-than-anything Nascar 2003 from the same people. If DICE can implement half of the stuff those guys are doing it would add a ton to BF's multiplayer functionality.
sNeaksieGarrett on 20/8/2011 at 15:47
Quote Posted by Yakoob
Normally I'd agree but dude - this is BF3. If you dont have an "awesome computer" you're not even able to play the damn game. When a game takes up your 2 gigs of ram easily, padding an extra 50 megs for the browser is a minor issue (unless its steam which loves to eat 200 megs of my memory doing just jack shit. damn this super hi-res uncompressed BMP tray icons huh)
True, but I think BF3's min spec machine (if (
http://bf3blog.com/battlefield-3-system-requirements/) this is accurate) still uses dx10 and requires 2 gigs of ram, which I DO have. (I have a dx10 card and 4 gigs of ram.) I'd just rather have the browser inside my game, but I'll have to see how things works out on my machine once I have BF3.
