NEW CLIENT version R4

[Bazajaytee]

Yep, another client is heading your way on auto update (within the next 15 minutes) and Steam (in about 1 hour when Valve presses the button when they get into the office). This will be the LAST update before the Beta closes on the 25th and any issues found in here will still be taken and looked at to be fixed on the retail version of the game.

Here is the usual changelog from Kalms (I'm sure some of you will be happy with this one )

• Likely fix for "5-minute disconnects". Try it out, and say whether it helps or if you are still getting booted (if so: after how long? and always after the same amount of time?)

What happened on some machines was this:
When you are logged in, your game client has TCP connections to two of EA's master servers. During a game, there isn't much traffic on all those connections. Therefore, the master servers send dummy transactions every 150s. This is so your game client knows that the connection hasn't been broken. Well, guess what? It seems that they don't send dummy transactions to all players. Why not? Nobody knows. So what the R4 client does, is that when it has seen 160s of idleness on a connection, it sends a dummy transaction. This was enough to get rid of the disconnects on the test machines.


Oh, and: when the nearest known problem location is in Poland, the master servers are in the US, and you have no direct access to either machine... then debugging is a convoluted process.

• Workaround for speaker setups. If one of your speakers has lower volume (or is totally silent), try with one of the following lines in your Settings.ini:
  • SpeakerCount=2
  • SpeakerCount=4
  • SpeakerCount=6

Again, let us know if it doesn't help.

Rather few changes this time around - it's getting more and more difficult to "lift" changes from the retail version into the closed beta version.

Also, you may have read about people being able to crash others' machines with long clantags and nasty chat messages? There is server-side filtering in Server R8, and RSPs begun rolling those out a few hours ago.

[sutyi_hun]

Thanks for the headsup.

[Davuz86]

Sounds good Will give the speaker count a try and see if it helps.

[revdirty]

Didnt see this coming.. Way to go DICE!!

[Drwaz99]

*crosses-finger*

[BK_Cell-666]

wow last ditched effort before the beta close. Thanks will try. What time exactly does the beta end ?

[Bazajaytee]

Originally Posted by BK_Cell-666

wow last ditched effort before the beta close. Thanks will try. What time exactly does the beta end ?

http://twitter.com/OfficialBFBC2/status/9469963282

[BK_Cell-666]

Thanks fella

[Speed_insanity]

now all those who has complaint all this month. Now you can see DICE is doing their best, and is not just letting us out.

[RJayW]

Thanks DICE hopefully my sound will be better now.....we shall see

[Rambo-16AAB]

If this fix works you should try the same anti-disconnect fix with the BF Heroes clients. It happens on that as well, but not as often.
I'll try this tonight when im home

[IMTROOTOR]

Sounds great

[Bazajaytee]

In theory the connection fix is similar to that used in BF2142 so should work and if it does you should show thanks to BF2142 by buying it.

Now you can tell why I don't work in marketing

[Rambo-16AAB]

Could br worse you could have said " Buy BF 2142. Its got a brightly coloured box" which would have been even less convincing.

[StalkerSAS]

Also, you may have read about people being able to crash others' machines with long clantags and nasty chat messages? There is server-side filtering in Server R8, and RSPs begun rolling those out a few hours ago.

Thank you, now all we need is for you to leave the Beta open an additional 24 hours

[juni0rr]

outstanding, outlalalalaing standing, DICE! That's why I'm going to buy the game! Best devs ever! Only one question to baza - is the retail version going to be even more optimized? pls answer...

[sta_fras]

@baza: I installed a soundcard about a weekago soundblaster xfi, and when i removed realtek drivers my preformance in bc2 went straigt to hell, I get like 1-22 fps LOW settings, and i got C2D @ 2.6ghz 4gb ram and 8800gtx win vista 32. I think its a driver issue but i dont know:P

[SystemOAD8985]

thanks guys, I will have to get on a test some more tonight after work as its gunu be the last day for beta for me cuz Im at work all day tomoz so will not have any time in the day to play

Thanks for all your work guys and I hope the game is on retail on time

[fwhpinky]

Originally Posted by Bazajaytee

In theory the connection fix is similar to that used in BF2142 so should work and if it does you should show thanks to BF2142 by buying it.

Now you can tell why I don't work in marketing

I got it for free. Since my disconnects where different than those reported we will see what happens.

[CrazyCanuck]

D@mn Baza.

Great work!!!

i'll try this when i get home from the slave ship......

[NLmennoNL]

sweet man
just before the ending another update
well done DICE

actually i didnt have any of those errors actually
no disconnects or something similar

just still some Dual Core Problem wich are fixed in the Retail i hope
because i didnt cancel my Bad Company 2 game for the PC

[McNeally]

Ctd

[icarol]

just got disconnected worked fine until a new round began .

[Bazajaytee]

Originally Posted by juni0rr

outstanding, outlalalalaing standing, DICE! That's why I'm going to buy the game! Best devs ever! Only one question to baza - is the retail version going to be even more optimized? pls answer...

Yes it has more optimization in it than the Beta. There just wasnt time to bring it from the retail version into the Beta as well as fixing other issues the Beta threw up.

[psycho063]

Thanks DICE. I enjoy reading your changelogs. They provide more technical detail which is far more interesting then reading a wall of text with "fixed" check-marks while not knowing what the problem was.