Evaluation of Battlefield Vietnam Presentation Aaron Curley For Professor Bruce Maxim CIS 487 Fall 07 1 Basic Information 1 Game Title Battlefield Vietnam Company Author Digital Illusions Creative Entertainment DICE Players often refer to the game as BFV Released March 14 2004 Owned by Electronic Arts EA Type of Game First Person Shooter Current Price Approximately 10 15 if purchased online 2 Basic Information 2 Manufacturer Stated Hardware Requirements Processor 933 Mhz CPU RAM 256 MB Graphics Card 3D accelerated GeForce3 64 MB or equivalent DirectX9 compatible video card cannot be integrated graphics Hard disk space 2 GB free hard drive space additional space required for Windows swap file and DirectX DirectX Version 9 0b CD Rom 16x CD ROM drive Sound Card DirectX 9 0b Compatible Sound Card Mouse MS compatible mouse Keyboard Any standard keyboard The manufacturer recommends a 1 2 Ghz CPU and 512 MB of RAM For optimal performance a Geforce 4 128 MB Not MX or equivalent DirectX9 compatible video card is recommended along with a 2 0 Ghz processor 3 Basic Information 3 Actual Hardware Required Actual hardware required is not precisely known Information here is based off of a test machine s ability to run the game The test machine had the following hardware specifications Processor Intel Pentium 4 processor 3 0 GHz dual core RAM 512 MB DDR SDRAM Graphics Card ATI MOBILITY RADEON 9200 64 MB dedicated Hard disk 80 GB enhanced IDE hard disk drive 4200 rpm Required approximately 2 4 GB hard disk space More than stated by the manufacturer but that figure included the WW2 mod patches and extra tools On lowest graphics detail the game ran with respectable performance The presence of jumps in the graphics imply that the test machine was just barely keeping up Doubtful that it could run on a machine with 256 MB of ram 4 Game Summary Overview Successor for the game Battlefield 1942 Based off of the Vietnam War Greatly emphasizes the use of teamwork and strategy Two teams the U S and N V A Maps weapons and vehicles are modeled after real weapons and vehicles at the time All maps have strategic control points that can be captured Captured control points are then used as bases for your team Different maps have different strategies rules Each team has a number of tickets When a team s tickets reach zero the other team wins Tickets are lost when team members die If a certain number of control points are not maintained tickets slowly bleed decrease 5 Game Summary Player Role Storyline Player s Role A soldier fighting for either the United States or the North Vietnamese in a battle during the Vietnam War Storyline No storyline beyond the current map User controls an anonymous soldier with no known history User switch sides easily and often Focus is only on winning the current map for your team There is no overall state of the game Winning a map does not affect for instance the state of the war Maps can be played in any order and with different settings Maps can be repeated 6 7 Game Summary Installation 1 Initial Installation Very easy Installer worked properly Requires data from all 3 CDs Installer prompts for the different disks when they required Can choose to install extra tools MOD development toolkit Map editor Dedicated server manager An anti cheat tool called PunkBuster is required for most servers online Installation is easy and automatically launched by the Battlefield Vietnam installer 8 Game Summary Installation 2 Patches To play online your game s version must be 1 21 Users who own the initial release version of the game not the Battlefield Vietnam Redux release will have version 1 0 and will need to patch It is recommended to also install the official WW2 MOD so it is available to be played when desired Three patch files need to be downloaded Two of the files are large Vietnam version 1 2 patch Vietnam incremental 1 2 to 1 21 patch Battlefield Vietnam WW2 MOD 295 MB 10 MB 298 MB The 1 2 update and WW2 MOD have a circular dependency problem WW2 MOD requires at least v1 1 but the 1 2 update says to install the WW2 MOD first To patch you have to install the 1 2 update WW2 MOD re install the 1 2 update and then finally install the 1 21 incremental patch Takes quite a while to do this because of the large patch file sizes 9 Game Summary User Interface 1 There are two sections of Battlefield Vietnam s user interface The configuration user interface This is used to start a game join a game or change settings The menu structure used can be confusing for new users it is not initially obvious which items are sub choices of the currently selected menu item The game does have a good lobby design it is very easy to locate a game with the desired settings The in game user interface This is used while actually playing the game Uses the mouse to face in a certain direction Clicking fires the current weapon Uses the left hand on the keyboard to walk move Other keyboard buttons perform actions such as crouching opening a parachute or chatting The default controls may be changed easily to suit any user s preferences Is this standard first person shooter set up 10 Game Summary User Interface 2 It s not intuitive that the second group of choices are sub items of the options choice Here these choices are subitems of the controls item It s easy to forget to press the save button after changing the controls A would you like to save changes message would be nice The so called configuration user interface 11 Game Summary User Interface 3 The user interface in the game Use the mouse to aim and fire The keyboard makes you walk 12 Game Summary Game Play Battlefield Vietnam s game play focuses on providing a realistic battle experience to the user Real physics and effects Real weapons and vehicles from the era Some compromises were made during design to make the game more interesting Vehicles are not exactly the same as real life versions to avoid having a vehicle that has too much of an advantage Ex Helicopter rockets require a delay between firing Weapon packs Each player can choose from a variety of weapon packs Each pack has advantages and disadvantages Players can steal weapons left by a dead soldier but they have to swap the entire weapon pack not individual weapons Players respawn at control points that are currently owned Many different strategies can be used 13 Game Summary Scoring The ticket system is used to determine the team that wins Each player is scored individually based on his own actions Number
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