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With CyberGamer.com.au moving into the Battlefield franchise we took to the e-streets to track down some staff over at the DICE studios in Sweden. We were lucky to come across Parker the Community Manager who was kind enough to take our questions to the team to see what they could come up with.

CyberGamer.com.au DICE interview:

Contributors:

Richard Lawes: CyberGamer.com.au Community Development Manager.

Karl Magnus Troedssen: Executive Producer.

Barrie Tingle: Associate Producer.

Some questions about the upcoming patch.

Q: Is the dice team looking to address one of the issues in BF2 where users are binding their mouse wheel to their forward key and getting a "turbocharged" Vodnik or APC as a result? Most servers just classify it as exploiting and ban for it but is it going to be rectified in the 1.5 patch?



A: We are aware of the increased speed that people are able to drive certain vehicles at and are currently investigating. We'd also like to thank the community on the Official Battlefield forums for providing us with plenty of information about this.



Q: Another item that seems to be heavily debated in Australian Battlefield is the use of macros, we know evenbalance put some work into preventing the use of these but is DICE looking into the issue aswell? with some of the end results being the M16 being used at massive fire rates whilst in single shot mode.



A: With the emergence of programmable keyboards like the G15 macros have become a bigger part of gaming with both wanted and unwanted macros being used. We work closely with Evenbalance to prevent the unwanted effects appearing in game and this is something we will continue to do.



As for whether we will change game code to prevent macros is dependent on what we can achieve with Punkbuster. Each issue is dealt with on an individual basis, so yes; we do look into the macros and will look to update Battlefield if and when required to deal with them.



Q: We were lucky enough to get a sneak preview of some of the new enhancements coming up in the 1.5 patch and one thing that was good to see was a new map being made. Is that the only map in production? or planned?



A: At this point it is the only official map currently in production. We are always looking at ways to bring more gameplay to the Battlefield games. We never rule out adding more content to either Battlefield game and may even consider including community content as we did with Battlefield 2142 Update 1.50.

Some more generalised questions.

Q: With your noted interest and approval of the hard work the community puts into mods for Battlefield2 has that in turn given your team ideas for features abilities or gameplay themes for your own titles? I'm sure your creative team is overflowing with new ideas but have community mods come into discussions for the simple fact that these mods are based around things people want to see in the game?



A: Some of the things we see in mods are definitely impressive and can help generate new ideas that we can use. We avoid doing direct copies of what the mod guys are doing; after all they have put a lot of work into what they have made so to go ahead and take that away from them isn't something we would do.



As most people know, we even worked with a mod group that created the Battlefield 1942 mod Desert Combat. Those guys collaborated with us on what became Battlefield 2.



Q: Just in response to Total Gaming Networks excellent question about what generation of games are you looking to produce in the future be it "Korean war" or such themes I would like to ask more so do you feel that the titles you have released have covered all of the major weaponry shifts through the periods of combat? and if so will DICE turn its focus to innovative gameplay modes instead?



A: We don't see any specific purpose in itself trying to cover all major historical conflicts, we'd rather focus on delivering games taking place in settings which appeal to the audience of our games. Gameplay and, as we call it, the second-to-second experience is always most important no matter which battlefield the action takes place on.



When it comes to weaponry shifts; we believe that not only do we cover a lot of weaponry shifts in our games, but we also deliver innovative gameplay modes (with Conquest being pretty standard now). Then we added Titans and Supply Lines in Battlefield 2142 and Infantry Only mode to both BF2 and BF2142 to allow those who don't particularly like vehicles to enjoy Battlefield.



Whether we will stop at that, definitely not. We are always looking at new gameplay modes we could include and bring more to everyone that plays.



Q: Console gaming is a massive part of computer game sales but as you have said that DICE has been granted a level of creative freedom in the titles it creates, how does this impact what DICE does as a division of Electronic Arts? are you in turn giving more focus to console games first and possibly adapting them for PC later or will you remain true to PC gaming?



A: As a studio we'll continue to make games for both PC and console, some maybe exclusive, some might not. Battlefield was founded on PC and this platform is still very important for us.



Q: We have all seen and witnessed the fantastic abilities and feature sets of the Frostbite Engine, but do DICE feel pressured by the rest of the industry to match innovations with game physics? Do you feel that in turn this limits the amount of new game feature ideas you can implement due to the power of the engine turning more towards visual effects than overall features?



A: We don't see why there needs to be a tradeoff between innovations and game physics. The Frostbite engine in combination with Havoc allows us to do a massive amount of things with physics. Now we can combine all those with DICE titles like Battlefield and add new game specific innovations which we continually work to achieve.



Destruction is a good example of a big new innovation introduced with BFBC which we'll keep improving as we move forward. However, this focus will not limit our ambitions with the overall feature set of our games. We believe a game can look good, play well and be feature rich too. That's something DICE always aims for.



Q: Battlefield 2142 we were all to believe that 1.5 was the last patch being released by DICE for that title, if you could for the BF2142 community let us know what was the motivation behind the upcoming patch?



A: Part of the reason for Update 1.51 is obviously the security fixes for the game servers and clients. We also had the map waiting for release as it unfortunately wasn't ready in time for Update 1.50. So Battlefield 2142 1.51 was always planned to be released if only to let everyone get their hands on the new map.



While we can't always tell everyone the specifics of what we are working on we do have future plans for Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142 in 2009.

And just one last question just for fun.

Q: What is one of the funniest and most outlandish side effects you have had during the creation of your games? for example in my own modding experiences I somehow managed to turn a smoke grenade into a tornado with some poorly placed numbers.



A: Battlefield probably had some of the strangest things happen to it during its development. In the recent TGN article we mentioned a video called Dattlefield which is a parody of the BF2 intro. During that video they made use of an old issue where a soldier would spawn without their kit and run around with their arms outstretched.



Another odd side effect we had in BF2 was the rare ability to get a ladder kill. Yep you could actually be credited with a kill someone shown as a death by ladder, unfortunately (?) this was removed before the game launched.





Thanks to the team over at DICE in Sweden for taking the time out to talk to us over here in the Australian Battlefield community.