This isn't my area of expertise, but the way Unreal packages work I think that's just how it has to be for levels. Both copies exists on your 360 hard drive (sorry!) but only one is used. In the free DLC we updated all of the maps. Being able to do what we could was thanks to Unreal Engine plus a few modifications.
#Battlefield 3 modding code#
That was mostly related to content (textures, meshes, etc) rather than code (I think). There were also technical limitations on what we could add. What we could change in the title updates was very limited due to a 5mb download limit. On Xbox we were able to do a couple of title updates and a free DLC, but that's it. There is a patching process after each download where files are modified. That makes things super easy! We try to minimize download size, but it's still usually a couple of hundred megs. On PC we can make you redownload the entire game everytime if we want to. The terms vary slightly engine to engine, but the process is there. But we need to get more efficient at making games so that issues like this are reduced as much as possible.Ĭooking/Baking are pretty common for almost all engines these days I think. It goes back to something I've been thinking about lately, we don't just need to make the tech of games better (better looking etc), we need to make the tech (not just software, but the entire process) of MAKING games better.
#Battlefield 3 modding full#
"Pipeline issues- So how does this work in practice? It's not ideal, but it's good enough for us to ship games on it.The pipeline will normally crash about 2-3 times during a full rebuild." Most modders wouldn't be as crazy as we are to actually attempt to make content for this game." Admittedly when this came up for Bad Company 2, they had said it *might* not apply to Frostbite 2 (BF3), but considering the further complexity of the game, I'd imagine it might even be worseĪ favorite quote of mine from a dev regarding BC2 This roughly translates to: "we built a really painful and convoluted development process.
#Battlefield 3 modding mod#
In an interview with Edge, lead multiplayer designer Lars Gustavsson said "we could probably do a ten base Rush map! It’s definitely doable." He added, "there’s nothing preventing us, if people had the time and the will." That sounds like a challenge for the dedicated mod community to tackle, doesn't it? (Although that title used Unreal Engine 3.) Söderlund's statement seems like an invitation for the community to open up the game. For example, the community eventually released new maps for DICE's Mirror's Edge. Undoubtedly, the enthusiastic modding community would love to get hands on that tech-and it's likely they will, regardless of a release of an officially sanctioned mod tool. The Frostbite engine has been largely praised for producing such impressive visuals for Battlefield 3. So we think it’s going to be too big of a challenge for people to make a mod." "If you look at the Frostbite engine, and how complex it is, it’s going to be very difficult for people to mod the game, because of the nature of the set up of levels, of the destruction and all those things.
“As of now, we are not going to make any modding tools,” DICE's Patrick Söderlund told GameStar (via PC Mag). While Battlefield 3 is being targeted towards the high-end PC market, developer DICE has made the decision to omit modding tools for the upcoming FPS.