Battlefield 1942 is the GTA3 of first person shooters [Archive]

Anonymous

08-19-2002, 12:33 PM

This game does boggle the mind a bit. The range of things to do, all the way between fighting house to house with small arms to dive bombing runs on carriers is pretty darn amazing in how well they've carried it off. And you can do both those things in a matter of minutes (seconds??!!).

Couple of things:

Server smush is killing me. Trying to get into those 31/32 servers is painful because they're always full. I usually end up on some sparsely populated server, although I'll try Derrek's tonight if I can. Hopefully the number of servers will continue to grow.

The 'C' button. It allows you to zoom out when driving or flying. Very effective for flying for me, because I'm terrible at using the cockpit view. The jeeps in 'c' mode feel a little GTA3-like. Otherwise, fp works great.

Questions: what button is for parachuting? I saw an american parachute onto the carrier. That was awesome. What button do you use for forward observing? For both the scout and the gun?

The game is so fast paced, that I don't see it being a whole lot more than constant skirmish. I would guess some disciplined squad tactics would be devestating against some rabble though. Comparisons to WW2OL and MOHAA aren't very realistic. WW2OL was so vast and slow, it was almost devoid of action. If I shot a limey or two a night I was pretty psyched. And MOHAA is so small in scope, its much more an action rather than a battle. 1942 seems to fall in nicely as one battle rather than an action or a whole war.

Supertanker

08-19-2002, 01:17 PM

BF1942 makes me think more of Day of Defeat than WWIIOL or MoH:AA. BF is on a much larger scale and has vehicles, but the respawning and fighting over objective flags gives it that same team-oriented action flavor.

The game dearly needs voicecom and strong server admins. I play a lot of DoD, and playing with voice and with good admins banning all of the idiots makes for games that are much, much more fun. I also agree that an organized team will run rampant over an unorganized mob. That's been the case in every game I've ever played, including paintball. Voicecom goes a long way toward providing some rudimentary organization.

If you go over to the HardOCP forums, there are threads running there about all the griefer things you can do, like putting mines on the wings of your team's planes so they blow up on takeoff. It will only get worse.

xahlt

08-19-2002, 01:23 PM

Use 'e' to exit the plane and then '9' to parachute.

FF on in this game is more prone to assholes dominating than other games. I've pretty much given up on using planes on ff servers because your jerk teammates will just stand in front of your plane in frustration.

Derek Smart [3000AD]

08-19-2002, 02:17 PM

In response to the topic.

No its not!!! Not by a long shot. Its more like OFP than anything else.

Whatever pills you'd swallowed prior to coming up with that comparison, must be good. Send me some! :D :D

Anonymous

08-19-2002, 02:41 PM

Maybe I'm being too easy on them, but I don't think tkers are annoying enough to put me off a game. Sure there are the occasional tkers screwing up an MOHAA server, but I just switch servers. There aren't that many jerkoffs in comparison with people just trying to have fun.

Also, this game is so new that some jerky play may be accidental. I'm sure I've stood in front of planes by accident, and I've definitely crashed them trying to take off. I've bombed my own troops and I've rammed my own jeeps with tanks, and run over my friends. I'm cracking myself up because I'm not kidding! Its just part of the learning process. And war is hell!

Tom Ohle

08-19-2002, 02:58 PM

Well, exactly. I remember the first time I played BF: 1942. I was like "So what the hell team am I on?"
I shot two guys that were running around (their names were Red, so I assumed they were on the opposite team)... nice shots, actually... but they were on my team.

And I didn't know how to type at that point, so I couldn't say Sorry heh.

Dave Long

08-19-2002, 03:04 PM

I'd like to know who dreamed up using the T key for tool tips and the K key ??? for talking. It took me a good four hours to finally figure it out. It's not even in the readme! Oy!

--Dave

Anonymous

08-19-2002, 03:06 PM

Yeah! The controls are so close to MOHAA, but not the chat functions. I couldn't communicate for the first 2 days. The guest above is all me btw...Rob in Boston.

xahlt

08-19-2002, 03:11 PM

Well, a specific example would be on the Axis aircraft carrier. About 10 people spawn for 2 available aircraft (some aircraft carrier, huh). Suddenly you realize, hey, I'm going to wait 3 minutes to have a 30% chance of getting a plane against these guys and everyone else who spawns in. That's frustrating. A lot of people get a little pissed and maybe fire a few shots into the plane. If 3 people get a little pissed off, the plane starts to take damage fire, the pilot has to avoid people on the runway, and sometimes crashes into the control tower. Sometimes the other plane runs into the first that crashed. And you've still got 8 people waiting on the deck (and half the people don't know there are 2 landing boats at the back, or don't want to take the time to get to shore)

What I'm getting at is that I don't think people are specifically being jerks, I think they get frustrated by the constricted design where if they are a split second behind, they have nothing to do for 3 minutes except get bombed by incoming planes. Or to jog behind an APC or Jeep which didn't slow down for them. Sure, some of that is just people not knowing what to do, but I think it's a valid source of frustration because the large map + limited vehicle design puts you more at the mercy of teammates.

Tom Ohle

08-19-2002, 03:17 PM

If you spawn on the carrier, jump off and head onto the battleship-dealie. You can scale the side of it, then hop in a boat and head to shore.

Mike Cathcart

08-19-2002, 03:19 PM

If you go over to the HardOCP forums, there are threads running there about all the griefer things you can do, like putting mines on the wings of your team's planes so they blow up on takeoff. It will only get worse.

Usually tkers can really annoy me, but the mines on your own team's planes is kind of hilarious. I mean, I'd hate it if it happened to me, but sometimes I can't help but appreciate the bastardliness of those guys.

[Yes, I know it's not a word, and no, I don't care :) ]

Doug Erickson

08-19-2002, 03:21 PM

Ah, but they DO have something to do: man the guns, man the flak cannons, make a shore landing, repair the ships.

I love it when we have paratroopers roaming loose all over our carrier because everyone on my team is too busy queuing up to fly planes and feuding over who gets the Zero. Me, I get in a landing craft and try to co-op a tank - and unsurprisingly, I'm the guy with all the points at the end.

I was on the Allied team one game and I watched a guy show up at the landing strip in a jeep, jump out while the jeep was still moving to grab a plane before another guy, and then plow the plane into the jeep as it continued to roll across the landing strip. PRICELESS. Except that we lost.

Doug Erickson

08-19-2002, 03:22 PM

There's landing craft on the carriers. By the way, is it just me, or is it hard as hell to disembark from a landing boat? I can't seem to jump over the front ramp consistently.

Doug Erickson

08-19-2002, 03:25 PM

Another funny bit: I watched MrAngryFace rack up several kills just by moving a battleship near the Allied landing strip and then firing on it at regular intervals. People would RUN INTO HIS SHELLS to get to a plane, over and over, like some sort of electrified rat feeder only with shells instead of shocks and dumb-as-dirt teens instead of rats.

Derek Smart [3000AD]

08-19-2002, 03:30 PM

There's landing craft on the carriers. By the way, is it just me, or is it hard as hell to disembark from a landing boat? I can't seem to jump over the front ramp consistently.

You have to lower the ramp first, using the up arrow key (or maybe its the down arrow key)

But whatever you do, get out BEFORE you beach it. I find that if that craft gets beached, you CANNOT get it out. I usually have to commit Hari Kari and start over. So, hop out before it gets to far into shore or the ramp won't get lowered. Just a minor quirk I noticed.

MRUS

08-19-2002, 03:34 PM

There's landing craft on the carriers. By the way, is it just me, or is it hard as hell to disembark from a landing boat? I can't seem to jump over the front ramp consistently.

You do know that you can raise/lower the ramp of the landing craft using your up or down arrows. It makes it much easier to get out. :wink:

Tom Ohle

08-19-2002, 03:34 PM

I usually jump out the back of the landing craft... but now that I know you can lower the ramp, cool! heh.

MRUS

08-19-2002, 03:40 PM

But whatever you do, get out BEFORE you beach it. I find that if that craft gets beached, you CANNOT get it out. I usually have to commit Hari Kari and start over. So, hop out before it gets to far into shore or the ramp won't get lowered. Just a minor quirk I noticed.

I've never seen this happen. Sometimes I just go full blast up on the beach when the big guns are shooting at me. The gate has always dropped for me. Is this maybe on only one particular beach location?

Getting the big ships grounded stinks though. They should have a position for depth sounding on these things. :oops:

Anonymous

08-19-2002, 03:43 PM

Yeah I dunno. TKers ARE dumb, but I have seen the majority put their differences aside to hunt down team killers for the pure pleasure of giving some of it back.

I think what more players need to do is form some groups. Since people are constantly dying and respawning at different parts of the map, it is very hard to create unified fronts across the island. Usually players just trickle into a captured area getting murdered by tank fire and aircraft drops.

I usually play as an engineer since I like his old rifle.

xahlt

08-19-2002, 03:48 PM

Boat landing with the up/down arrows seems glitchy to me, I rarely can get it to work right. If you jump right before you run onto the "flap" you can generally get out regardless (though it often takes several tries)

Linoleum

08-19-2002, 04:09 PM

Wow, I had been wondering how you lowered the landing ramps. I knew there must be *some* way, but I missed the errata section of the readme and I'm not sure I saw it in the key remap menu.

That said, my habit with the landing craft is to beach them head on at high speed, so maybe it's good I didn't know that or I'd have gotten even more frustrated. I just kept trying to move forward and hopping until I worked my way out of the boat.

The game has so much potential, I'm just worried about post-release support, it's going to need a fair bit of work on the MP side. I'm having lots of fun at the moment, but if some of the issues aren't fixed it's going to not be fun a lot sooner than later (probably soon enough that I'll be content to just play the demo and move on to the Next Big Thing).

And why, oh why does nobody let you queue up several promising several servers to pick from and just periodically poll them and drop you in the first one that opens up? From a network standpoint that's *got* to be a lot less overall traffic than hundreds of impatient gamers mashing their refresh buttons every couple seconds.

Lino

Jason McCullough

08-19-2002, 04:53 PM

Anonymous

08-19-2002, 04:58 PM

Yeah, the way people behave in this game makes me wonder why the hell the Military wants to draw from this pool of US citizens.

deanco

08-20-2002, 07:30 AM

"What I'm getting at is that I don't think people are specifically being jerks, I think they get frustrated by the constricted design where if they are a split second behind, they have nothing to do for 3 minutes except get bombed by incoming planes. "

There's plenty of other stuff to do, and unless you're a skilled pilot, that other stuff will probably help your team a lot more than just standing there. And yeah, I've jogged behind a jeep, trying to catch it. So what if you don't, within 45 seconds you're there anyway, and you never get tired, so big deal. You just have to role play it.

I hate TK'ers, I'll quit the game and find another unless the guy explains himself or says sorry. Then he gets one more chance. Driving over friendly mines doesn't count.

I dicovered the engineer last night. The engineer is killer. Since I suck at aiming, I like these support classes. Like Tribes 2. I can repair stuff, you'd be surprised how many times you'll come across a friendly tank that is damaged. You can even fix the aircraft carrier, I'm gonna change my handle to Scotty I think. All this requires no skill whatsoever, and it really helps the cause. The medic is great too, people are just not used to getting healed up on a public server, I guess they're so used to griefers and showoffs. I prefer the medic's machine gun, at least I have a small chance of hitting something if I empty the clip. Anyway, last night I blew up a tank by close assaulting it and sticking one of those Duke Nukem pipe bombs on it, running away, and pushing the plunger. I got to admire my handiwork. What fun.

There are plenty of issues, but man this is a fun game.

DeanCo--

mtkafka

08-20-2002, 07:53 AM

Heehaw I want to plug my most favorite game ever! There's these guys from this site

http://www.ofpww2.dk/index.htm

that have released 3 BETA mods that could give BF42 a run at the WW2 franchise of 'realism' or whatever. They have fully ww2 German and US mods with some tanks.all weapons from the M1 to the Mauser to the panzerschreck to the MG42 to awhole lot. plus a a couple american tanks and a couple german tanks full uniforms for 3 types of soldiers of both sides (6 total) ... and I swear OFP just got better! BTW the best part of it they redid the sounds and they are AS good or even better than Medal of Honors!

Beat that BF42!!!!!!!!!!!

Ah nevermind! You BF heads!

etc

Mike Cathcart

08-20-2002, 08:18 AM

That said, my habit with the landing craft is to beach them head on at high speed, so maybe it's good I didn't know that or I'd have gotten even more frustrated. I just kept trying to move forward and hopping until I worked my way out of the boat.

I find that if you beach them like that it's actually easier to just jump out the back. Got killed a few times last night when I was stuck in one of those things, so I'm an expert...

xahlt

08-20-2002, 09:10 AM

Thought you got killed before the boat landed ;)

Alright, so apparently the trick is to hold down the up arrow. Here I was thinking you just click it and the ramp releases but it takes maybe 2-3 seconds of holding the button.

Dave Long

08-20-2002, 09:12 AM

RE: Landing craft

Be careful if the destroyer is moving! I almost flipped a Landing Craft over last night due to the speed of the destroyer/landing craft when I dropped it off the back.

Also, if you start lowering the ramp before you get to the shore, you can hit E and be running off the end with just a quick push of the up arrow right before that. Given how those things draw enemy fire (especially at the start of a round), you don't want to spend any more time than necessary on there.

It's also important to beach it somewhere you've either got help already or that isn't crawling with troops. Once you're onshore, it's a lot easier to sneak into a good position, commandeer a tank, etc. if you don't have any resistance to deal with. I find a lot of people will forget about the farthest spawn points once the next one down the line has been captured. Those two (at the tips of the island) both spawn a tank if I'm not mistaken.

I had a great time kicking ass as Axis with a tank last night. My final tally was about 8 footsoldiers, a couple jeeps, one APC and one tank. By the end, I spent at least a few minutes in a smoking heap just knocking the hell out of incoming troops while I was teetering on the edge of death. I probably lost three top gunners in that time. We held the airfield though and eventually won the round. Lotsa bullets ricocheting off the tank...and even a failed jeep kamikaze. That was a ton of fun. Almost as fun as getting smacked by a jeep blown through the sky that hit me square in the face killing me instantly two days ago... :-) heh...forgot to add that while tanking, some engineer tried to slip explosives under the back of the tank... he paid dearly. Still, my face was probably white with fear the moment I spotted him. He exploded in a cloud of dust from the main gun after I hightailed it away from him.

I'll tell you, I'm having the most fun trying to stay alive for extended periods. I still fight tooth and nail, but I kinda wish it kept track of your time to live... I love that stat for Unreal Tournament's World Stats tracking. Thank God you can go prone. I make most of my headway on foot by keeping my head down. I also like the zoom...but I'd like it even better if they did it through "binoculars" instead of the typical game zoom. It's one of those things that jars you out of the you are there feeling of the game. But it's so useful, you must use it while on foot.

--Dave

Anonymous

08-20-2002, 09:51 AM

I think the reason BF1942 is catching on is because it isn't realistic to a fault. That's what annoyed me about OFP most of the time. The developers of BF1942 knew when to give the realism a rest, that just rocks.

Anonymous

08-20-2002, 10:12 AM

Hey Dave, what button do you use to go prone?

My girlfriend is going to kill me if I go home tonight and fire up 1942. She can't understand why I would want to sit in front of my computer and be yelled at by angry Japanese men. Then again, she doesn't understand why I listen to the commercials more than the music in GTA3.

Dave Long

08-20-2002, 10:29 AM

I think it's Z. You can also go to a crouch by holding the left shift key. Unfortunately, there appears to be no change to your head positon when you use the crouch. However, when you go prone, you'll definitely have your perspective change to lying down. Try it while running, you'll literally dive for the dirt. It's a pretty cool motion.

I'm heading home for lunch and will likely play. I've been having a lot of fun with this demo.

How do you resupply? I can't figure that one out. I've survived long enough to completely use up my ammo and I know you can resupply at those boxes in certain buildings, but what's the key for it?

--Dave

Anonymous

08-20-2002, 10:36 AM

I spent almost all of yesterday playing BF1942, I had to tear myself away just to do a little writing. Im resisting the urge this morning as my days off just fly by while playing the game.

Can't hold out much longer tho. Must defend beach...

Anonymous

08-20-2002, 10:37 AM

Dave: I believe just standing close to them will automatically replenish weapons, sorta like how the medic stations work.

xahlt

08-20-2002, 11:17 AM

re: losing top gunners -- man, you better write a letter home to your best girl before you become a tank top gunner, 'cause you ain't coming home. What can you expect when your driver is running down 4 infantrymen carrying auto rifles?

Having infantry and mechanics jogging along side a friendly tank is highly underrated. Tank drivers, look for support men, don't just run off!

Anonymous

08-20-2002, 01:46 PM

Yeah, being a top gunner is a deathwish. Remember that movie Black Hawk Down when they were escaping town and the top gunner kept getting killed and replaced. There ya have it.

Greg Williams

08-26-2002, 07:52 AM

Yup, top gunners are a snipers dream. If you are a tank driver with a top gunner, try to keep moving. Probably will only keep the gunner alive a couple more minutes, but better than nothing I guess.

Greg Williams
aka Grishka

Ben Sones

08-26-2002, 07:59 AM

Actually, the tank drivers need to stop moving every once in a while. Moving the tank makes the topgunner useless for anything other than covering fire, particularly on uneven ground (at least, I've never been able to hit much from a moving tank). And because the tank doesn't move very fast at the best of times, the top gunner is still pretty easy to pick off.

What the tank drivers should do is stop briefly to fire off a shot and let the topgunner clear some of the infantry out of the area, then change position (to avoid all the grenades that are probably bouncing towards the tank) and do it again. I've done pretty well as a top gunner when I have a good driver. But ultimately you do get killed. What can I say? It's a high-risk job.

Dave Long

08-26-2002, 08:16 AM

I'm with Ben. I've been top gunning a lot and driving tanks a lot too. As a tanker, you should be stopping to fire almost all the time. Unless you've got uncanny aim, you'll always hit targets more often from a stationary position. This is especially true of the Axis tank which seems to have a far more unstable gun due to more body roll when moving that tank.

So I move, fire, move, fire... you can take a few grenade hits with the tank and if you're tanking, being an engineer is almost a must. You can get out and repair the tank between fights. (Which brings up another pet peeve of mine...don't take my fucking tank while I'm fixing it!) If you've got a top gunner, stopping is crucial and keeping the turret from being on a swivel is as well. Top gunners can't keep up with you if you're swinging that turret around like mad. We may have a bead on some infantry that you don't see because you're whipping around like crazy looking for stuff. Slow movement of the turret helps and keeping it stationary until you know what's going on is better. Better to just move the tank backward or forward increasing your field of view or getting you away from grenades/dynamite dropped near your rear. Top gunners can save your ass from aircraft so while they're certainly going to die, they can also be your guardian angel. Treat 'em with some respect! :)

--Dave

Anonymous

08-26-2002, 08:29 AM

Playing a tank machinegunner makes me appreciate Audey Murphy so much more.

Bub, Andrew

08-26-2002, 12:17 PM

We may have a bead on some infantry that you don't see because you're whipping around like crazy looking for stuff. Slow movement of the turret helps and keeping it stationary until you know what's going on is better.
--Dave

Thanks Dave, exactly!
I've gotten so pissed off at tank drivers because I've got a bead on an incoming plane or an infantry guy hiding behind buildings and idiot boy the tank driver is screwing me up. "What are you doing?! You're tracking and trying to kill ONE GUY WITH YOUR CANNON?" -he wasn't even using his right click machine gun.

It's amazing how quickly that top machine gun can shred planes though.

MrAngryFace

08-26-2002, 12:41 PM

When fighting another tank, I am sorry, but I won't sit still. I KNOW I can hit them while moving with rough estimates with considerations made for lag. The chances of them being able to hit a moving target even while stationary seems to be less. Granted, ill stop when attacking infantry, but I am not much for these "who gets the last laugh" tank fights. If I keep moving while fighting a tank, I survive.

Of course when fighting a tank a top gunner is rarely thrown into the equation anyway unless the other tank has top gunner.

Dave Long

08-26-2002, 12:50 PM

But that's a slight bit different. You're fighting another tank and yeah, you've got to move a bit. Still, if you're shooting while driving you're probably about 50% less accurate at least as the guy who's sitting still. Tanks of the time weren't made to shoot on the run. You park, you shoot, you move. All it takes to throw off the other tank's aim is some forward or backward movement, preferably backward. If you're exposing your sides or rear you're going to be dead meat quick against a good gunner.

All we're saying is that flicking the turret around when you've got a less obstructed pair of eyes on your roof is detrimental to the teamwork needed to keep a tank alive among areas crawling with ground troops. That guy up there can see far more than you and faster. Let him direct fire by simply shooting at targets. You've got to keep your eyes on the road for enemy armor and kamikaze jeeps anyway. You can't hope to keep all the engineers away from your rear nor spot all the AT guys yourself. A good player will just lay down until you drive by. I've done it hundreds of times already while carrying a bazooka/panzerschreck. Tankers that are always moving are ripe targets because they can't spot fast enough to compensate.

--Dave

Lee Johnson

08-26-2002, 12:57 PM

Tankers that are always moving are ripe targets because they can't spot fast enough to compensate.
Lord knows, Dave, I've unloaded enough AT ammo in your direction as you drove past to verify this claim. :D

Case

08-26-2002, 01:37 PM

If BF1942 wanted to do anything to make this a more historically accurate
game, they'd enable the tank gunner to be *more* accurate when there's
a tank commander in the cupola. I'm not sure how you'd model this, though.

It's well documented that the Germans would lose tank commanders more
than the Russians, but an unbuttoned TC could spot much more easily, and
even give targeting information. I suppose it could work in a similar way to
the artillery spotter, but the mechanics would need to be simpler.

As ever,

Loyd Case

All we're saying is that flicking the turret around when you've got a less obstructed pair of eyes on your roof is detrimental to the teamwork needed to keep a tank alive among areas crawling with ground troops. That guy up there can see far more than you and faster. Let him direct fire by simply shooting at targets. You've got to keep your eyes on the road for enemy armor and kamikaze jeeps anyway. You can't hope to keep all the engineers away from your rear nor spot all the AT guys yourself. A good player will just lay down until you drive by. I've done it hundreds of times already while carrying a bazooka/panzerschreck. Tankers that are always moving are ripe targets because they can't spot fast enough to compensate.

--Dave