Client R11 Beta Patch (795745)

[[RC]Hunter]

What's this?

DICE has produced a candidate for the next game client update for BFBC2 PC. If this is deemed good enough, it will become the official patch, and will be pushed out to everyone. For now though, the patch is still in Beta.

House rules:
You install and run the patch at your own risk.
The Beta client can only play against a couple of special Beta game servers.
You are expected to report problems and overall impressions in this forum (BC2 PC Patch Feedback - Electronic Arts UK Community).


Should I install the Beta Patch?

If you are technically minded and you want to try it out, feel free to do so.
If you just want to play the game, wait until the full release takes place.


How do I install the Beta Patch?

First off, this will only work with the non-Steam version. The updater will refuse to update over the Steam version.

• Ensure that you have at least 12GB free disk space.
• Download the offline-updater archive here
• Locate the directory where you have installed BFBC2 -- usually it is "C:\Program Files (x86)\Electronic Arts\Battlefield Bad Company 2".
• Make a copy of that directory. Name that copy "BFBC2 - R10". This is your backup, in case you want to play the non-Beta version of BFBC2; if so, launch BFBC2Game.exe inside of that directory.
• Lauch the offline-updater. It should decompress some files to a temp directory; locate your BFBC2 installation directory; ask if you want to update to version 795745; then spend ~15 minutes applying the update.

How do I run the Beta Patch?

Launch "BFBC2Game.exe" in your "Battlefield Bad Company 2" directory.

THere are about 10 test servers up - some in Amsterdam, some over on the US East coast.


What are the changes?

• Removed some memory leaks
• Fixed crashes when the game attempted to render lots of content (high detail, high FOV or multiple-monitor modes)
• Chat window no longer causes lag spikes
• Chat window reworked opacity & visibility-time is controllable through settings in settings.ini
• Clantag is remembered when using auto-login
• Banner URLs can be up to 252 characters in length
• SecuROM wrapper removed from non-Steam version
• Minor performance improvements
• Reduced rubberbanding on >24player servers

What should I look out for?

Any problems that you didn't use to have with the old version, but has with the new version.
Especially the process of installing the patch seems to be fragile. Describe your experience.


Ok, then what?

DICE will monitor this forum. Depending on the response we either pulalalala out to everyone or continue working on it.


Some thanks

Thanks to those players who have helped us by running special debug builds on their own machines over the past year. Also cheers to the folks in noobgroup for doing the first round of validation of this latest patch.


Source:
EA UK Forums




Now adding at this point and this not yet an information for the public, but kinda exclusive for readers of ClusterWars.net (gg), if this client patch will be successful, as well the BC2 servers will receive an additional update soon, since a couple issues were found (well we all noticed them), some developer chat:

... we have found one reason why some players on BC2 servers with >24-or-so players online see severe rubber banding. We saw something similar happen in BF3 64p play sessions at Gamescom last week… and upon further investigation, BC2 servers have the same problem in theory. We haven’t verified this through double-blind tests but I’m convinced that this is one of the two main reasons why people complain about rubberbanding on 32p servers.

It boils down to the game server sometimes not sending server->client packets to those people who are at the end of the player list. Exactly when this happens depends on server CPU, NIC type, NIC driver, OS version, and how much activity the players generate in the game session. We are not going to figure out which the crucial parameters are; rather, let’s get the change deployed with a server update sometime soon and see what happens.


Who did really expect an another fix for BC2 at these days?

[[RC]BooZer]

Tsssss ... now they come out for that prob ... and they've found it on BF3-Servers?! No one of them ever had a look at BC2 or what? Strange days ... [img]http://www.clusterwars.net/userpix/3_weissnicht_1.gif[/img]

[[RC]Hunter]

I have reviewed all feedback in the forum threads another pass.

There are a lot of reports of perceived performance improvements (and the occasional about performance degradations) compared to R10. The performance difference, when played on full servers, will likely be smaller than now - but it will likely be there.

There are reports about hitreg being as-bad-as-usual or a bit worse than usual. I predict that hitreg in general will not be different with R10 vs R11 once everyone runs it.

The bugs reported are not new for R11. Some of them are minor, some of them major - all major already existed with R10.


I have done background checks on the 5 most commonly mentioned bugs here - none of those have obvious solutions. Now, both you and I know that the patch is rather late in the making. BFBC2 is not the prime focus for the company at this time. Getting the people with the right knowledge to efficiently and robustly sort those out would be challenging and simply take quite a bit of calendar time.

The one exception to this is the clan tags saying "[Invalid ]". Given that part of the purpose of Client R11 was to get the clantags to work properly, it actually was a 5 minute fix, and it could be done 100% serverside - the game server which goes out with Client R11 will correct those (they should really be treated as empty).


You have hammered on the patch and validated that no major issues have been introduced either through sloppy coding nor through the $magic in the packaging process.

Given this, I believe that it is better to continue forward with this patch as the official patch, rather than attempting to get further fixes into it.


What now?

It's time for Steam QA. I don't know the timeframe for it; it's been a long time since I spoke to those people.


You'll hear from me again once Steam QA is complete.


What happens now?

If Steam QA gives thumbs up, then those of you which have version 795745 installed on your PCs are already running the official client R11.

If Steam QA uncovers more problems which requires generation of a new client version, then you will be required to install the new version at the time that we roll out the patch to everyone.


I have installed the Beta patch on my machine, how do I clean it up?

Wait until the Steam QA results are available -- I will give instructions on "how to clean up your machine" then.


What about the beta servers?

For the time being, the Beta servers will stay up.

Source:
EA UK Forums