Technical Tips: Battlefield: Bad Company 2

Alrighto!!!! So you've got the beta installed, you've put in your beta key, and you've created your character. You're ready to go!!!! But....you're experiencing some really annoying problems. Well have no fear, here’s a guide with some very cool tips that should help you out.


Some things that don’t work:


- You can’t access the server browser; if you do the game will crash. A patch has been released for this.

- There have also been some problems with the friends list. A patch should fix this.

A Few Tips

- You can tweak settings the the in-game "advanced" graphics settings.
- Press play now to get into a game really quickly.
- If you're in a sqaud, you'll get more points for defending/attacks various points with your squad.
- You get indiviual update points for each class you pay as. The more you play as a class, the more guns you'll get for that class.
- If you live in the UK, try playing on a Multiplay.co.uk server, you'll get a near lagless experience.


Technical Tips


Alright, so here are some tips which should greatly improve your performance in-game.


IMPORTANT TIP: Force BC2 to run directx
If you've been having some problems running BC2 on the lowest, or middle settings (or even the higher settings) then this will really help you out.


What we're going to do:

Instead of making the game auto detect which directx version is suitable for your video card, we're going to force it to choose Direct X9. Direct X9 is the Direct X version that comes with XP. Direct X10 came with Vista, Direct X11 came with Windows 7. The game will probably put you at X10 (or X11 depending on your graphics card). By forcing the game to run in X9, you'll be able to play the game in fairly high settings, even if you can only play the game on the middle/lowest settings when the game auto detects what Direct X to use.


How to change it:

It's really simple!

First go to Documents, then you should find a file called BFBC2Beta, open it. Inside this file, you should find another file called settings. Open the settings file (if it asks you which program to open it in, choose notepad).

Alright, now go down to the line that says:

DXVersion=Auto

Change this to: DXVersion=9. Save the file and hey presto!!! Done . If you run the game you'll find you it much smoother and you'll find that it'll run better on the higher settings .

One problem is that sometimes the game may load in windowed mode. If this is the case just press ALT and Enter .

Adding +fullproc may make the game smoother
THIS HAS NOW BEEN TESTED!!! It works ! Especially for those who are playing the game on higher settings .

What it does
"Apparently" Bad Company 2 doesn't use Dual Core or Quad Core processors properly. Adding this code is supposed to spread out the power to all of your cores, instead of just the one. From what I've been hearing, this works particularly well with computers that are running the game on the highest settings.

How you do it
It's pretty simple:

1) Make a new shortcut for the game and then put it on your desktop.
2) Right click on the shortcut, then click properties.
3) From the General tab, go to the Shortcut tab.
4) Go to the Target line, and put +fullproc at the end of it. Then press apply. Then cancel.

Bingo!!! Done!!!

Once again...this has not been tested...however if someone could test this out and then confirm it, that'd be great !!!

Disable Bloom
This has apparently given a HUGE increase in performance! (Untested, although I'm pretty sure it works ).

What it does
This should remove the bloom graphical effect, making the game much smoother.

What to do:

Much like forcing BC2 to go into DirectX9, we have to do the following:

1) Go to Documents, then go to BFBC2Beta.
2) Open up settings.
3) Change Bloom=true to Bloom=false

This should give a huge increase in performance....it also helps if you don't like a reduced glow effect.

Change HSAO from true to false
This is a another big performance update that will work for those of you running the game at higher settings.

What it does:
"HSAO is Ambient Occlusion which gives shadows more depth, at the cost of tearing your framerate in half." Need I say much more?

What to do:
We're going to go to settings again!

1) Go to Documents, then go to BFBC2Beta.
2) Open up settings.
3) Change HSAO=true to HSAO=false.
4) Save the document.
(PLEASE NOTE, you can aslo change this setting the the in-game "advanced" graphics settings).

(^The above two will mainly effect those who want to run the game on higher settings.)

That's it!!! I'll add more tweak guides as I find out more !!!

I hope this helps!!! Happy gaming!!!

PS: I tried to put this in the guide forum...apparently I haven't got the permission to post there .

Also...if you have anything you want to add, then just post below and I'll add it to this main forum post .

Oh and if I've got some information wrong, then just tell me .

Patch Notes:

First Patch:
The RC2 contains the following fixes:

Front end:
Fixes server browser crashes. Server browser more resilient against corrupt online service data, and better support for large number of servers.
Several server browser ping issues resolved.

Windows XP stability:
Fixed crash on windows XP at end of round, exit game and display mode changes and.
Proper window style / mouse confinement when starting game maximized on XP .

Options dialog:
Mouse sensitivity setting gives more effect.
Mouse sensitivity loaded on game startup.

The update to RC2 will be 8.4Mb

~Animehero

Excellent post, off to do some tweaking.

There wasn't recently a patch....hopefully all these will still work as usual . The patch was supposed to fix the server browser...but I'm pretty sure it didn't .

server browser works fine now

the changing dx mode for me gives a problem. when seleting 9 and the running the game it starts to flicker bad.

Originally Posted by GoRedwings

the changing dx mode for me gives a problem. when seleting 9 and the running the game it starts to flicker bad.

What type of graphics card do you have redders? DirectX9, DirectX10, DirectX11? Maybe changing it to DX9 doesn't work to well with DX11 cards?

ok, i did what you said and i feel like a hacker, I dont see walls, which is good and bad...i can snipe like there is no tomorrow, but i do miss because i shoot walls i dont see. but i always knwo where everyone is on the map.

Originally Posted by DragonSVD

ok, i did what you said and i feel like a hacker, I dont see walls, which is good and bad...i can snipe like there is no tomorrow, but i do miss because i shoot walls i dont see. but i always knwo where everyone is on the map.

Cant say I've had a problem like that dragon and I've implemented all of the above.

Originally Posted by DragonSVD

ok, i did what you said and i feel like a hacker, I dont see walls, which is good and bad...i can snipe like there is no tomorrow, but i do miss because i shoot walls i dont see. but i always knwo where everyone is on the map.

What exactly have you implimented? Also what's your graphics card?

gtx280, this is my settings file, i only changed the bold settings, the rest were already there:

[WindowSettings]
Width=1680
Height=1050
Fullscreen=true
RefreshRate=59.882999
VSync=false
[Sound]
Quality=low
VoipEnable=true
[Graphics]
Effects=medium
Soldiers=medium
Vehicles=medium
Overgrowth=medium
Undergrowth=medium
StaticObjects=medium
Terrain=medium
Shadows=medium
Bloom=false
HSAO=false
MSAA=1
Water=medium
MainQuality=medium
Texture=high
DxVersion=9
Aniso=2
Detail=medium

I only played the one game though. I will try it again tonight.