BF2 Fixes, Tweaks, & Install Info

Reducing the number of Punkbuster hard drive checks.


Punkbuster scans your hard-drive for problems every 20 seconds. As you may have guessed, this causes a lot of lag. What we are going to do is to increase the amount of time in between punkbuster checks to 500 seconds (the maximum amount, don't try anything higher!) This will NOT cause any problems with Punkbuster thinking you are a cheater. Punkbuster even recommends this on their website.


How do you do it?


1. Join any ranked BF2 server which is running punkbuster.
2. Once you spawn, press the ` key. This key is located above the tab key and to the left of the 1 key.
3. The console will open up. Type "pb_sleep 500" (without the quotation marks) and press the enter key.
4. Type pb_writecfg to save your settings(important!)

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I did 2 changes at once. One was this, the other was moving my pagefile to the first partition of a 2nd hard drive. Not sure which one helped, but I don't have the hesitation at the beginning of maps anymore.

Another 'sticky' I've found out from taking to Paladin,, (yah, he gets credit for this one !).

When doing a fresh install of Bf, and patching upwards to 1.3..., make sure you drag the correct BF2 shortcut to your quicklaunch pad. Somehow I choose the 'find an online game' shortcut and was ending up with BF trying to find a damn game in a diff version. So it was taking like 4 mins on the acct server, and another 5 mins to load some game/server I did'nt select, only to crash to bios.

Later FNF Late, I managed to get on with you guys, but it was via Xfire, bypassing the bad shortcut... Nice catch Paladin!

Live and learn 🙂

Discussion on the Soundblaster X-fi & BF2

http://www.forumplanet.com/planetbattlefie...1922183&p=2

Hope it helps. . .

Here's an easy one that stops the "hard wired drivers" from the graphics cards from starting.
In the video card drivers they "look" for specific games like the newer Nvidia cards have code for BF2 in them.

So when they see bf2.exe start the driver adds it's own special sauce to the game. Usually slowing down the video performance. To negate this, do two things.

1) In the TARGET of your game icon (if use) Right click, properties, shortcut tab change the BF2.exe to something else.
I use BF21:

"C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2\BF21.exe" +menu 1 +fullscreen 1

2) In the folder where BF2 resides (typical path) C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\Battlefield 2

Change the BF2.exe to match what you call it in the shortcut path (again in my example BF21.exe)

Now the Nvidia / ATI driver for the game no longer starts when the game does. (There looking for BF2.exe)
And any personal set up of game and video card stays while you play.

Hope it makes sense....

Atomm wrote:
Duck,

What is the advantages of doing your tweak? It seems to go against everything I know, so I'd like to understand it better.

Atomm the drivers for Ati and Nvidia recognise the program BF2.exe as one of their own, so by renaming the file, you turn the game into a normal program, not a resource hungry dinosaur!

So they say.
I noticed a small improvement in frames on patch 1.2x when I made mine BF21. Enough to make a huge jump? NO. But it did helped more when 1.3 came out.


Hey checkout Sarges post:
http://forums.gamersradionetwork.com/Battl...00ad-t2817.html

Under performance issues: The guy from EA-UK even gives this as an option to resolve video issues
Option #9

9. Change your BF2.exe file and rename it to BF.exe, or basically something different than BF2.exe (Update shortcuts if necessary) On some systems this can provide a performance increase as the graphic card will treat it as a normal game and not run any special optimizations which can actually reduce performance

Paladin wrote:
Yes basically the drivers look for the BF2.exe process and adds some tweaks to said process. If you run the game under another process name it will not.

I also wonder if the tweaks they do are a bad thing. Do they really hinder performance? I mean the idea of the tweaks are to HELP it.

How to edit "Favorite Servers" list in BF2

Here is the default path.

C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR COMPUTER NAME\My Documents\Battlefield 2\Profiles\0001\General.con

(the "001" listed above may vary depending on how many player profiles are used, and which you need to edit)

At the bottom you will see two types of lines the top set are your chosen favorites EG:
GeneralSettings.addFavouriteServer "72.36.223.165" 29900 "24/7 Karkand StrafeRight.com"

Then below all of the favorites will be the general day to day log of servers.
GeneralSettings.addServerHistory "74.52.98.51" 29900 "24/7 CAL Infantry" 23

I find by going in and dumping the .addServerHistory keeps my list neat so when I do get on to play I can see just a few of the last servers I was on.
This also allows you to manually add favorites, just copy and paste the .addFavoriteServer to the standard .addServerHistory

Paladin wrote:
Ones you add as a 'favorite' are listed as:
GeneralSettings.addFavouriteServer "72.232.185.47" 29900 "GamersRadio.com"

Ones the server kept track of and that you can remove are similar to:
GeneralSettings.addServerHistory "84.207.19.13" 29900 "EA France Officiel 1 / E-N" 2

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While were on file manipulation go here:

C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR COMPUTER NAME\My Documents\Battlefield 2\LogoCache

And delete everything in the CACHE folder BUT NOT THE CACHE FOLDER!
This is where all the server graphics are stored when you play on a server. Bottom right hand graphics on the map load screen.

Useless space hog.

________________________________________________________________________________

And just for the sake of word count - Here is one more area that should be periodically dumped especially if you make any changes to your video settings.

You should have a maximum of 2 folders here one for BF2 video and one for SF video (if you own SF). Every time you make a change to your video settings in game, the friggen' game creates a NEW driver folder not updating the original.

At one point wile I was trying to get the best of everything, I had 20 or so driver folders.... DAMN! and BF2 tries to read them all and decide who is master when loading... so keep this folder clean, it helps.

C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR COMPUTER NAME\My Documents\Battlefield 2\mods\bf2\cache

This is where your video driver settings for the game are stored. Again, leave the CACHE folder, but the other folders INSIDE the cache can be deleted.

This will force BF2 to re-compile the video driver and settings for your game. Remember that if empty the first time you load a map you'll get that black box telling you it may take up to 2 min to load because of the new video settings.

Moving "THE GAME WILL START WHEN X MORE PLAYER(S) JOIN" text out of the way.

It's the text that displays how many players before the game starts. I've found this HIGHLY annoying, centered as it is above the cross-hairs, blocking the view as we're goofing off in the server before a game.

I ran into this little bit of info, and now the text is out of the way, printed across the bottom of my screen. Quoted text in yellow below.

******************************************************************************

THE GAME WILL START WHEN 7 MORE PLAYER(S) JOIN

This message is something thats been annoying me for some time. If you like to go on near empty servers to practice things its obvious that its totally in the wrong place. As well as being slap in the middle of the screen, its also on the same line as the text we type into chat

so unless you like to
type things out in 5
word sentences like this

then instead you have to hope that you dont make spelling mistakes when your typing runs under that stupid message. . .but fear not, you CAN do something about it. In fact, you can put it anywhere on the same line or lower than where it normally is, including moving it totally off of the screen if you want. Moving it upwards is not possible (afaik).

The key to this is in the freely editable localisation files (if you dont know what localisation files are, then have a read of this useful guide here http://forums.bf2s.com/viewtopic.php?id=19541 )

Ok so find your Battlefield 2\mods\bf2\Localization\English folder and open up english.utxt in notepad (best to use notepad, nothing else) then search for a line called HUD_STARTOFROUND_NRPLAYERSNEEDED. Its near the bottom.

To make changes, simply use spaces or returns INSIDE the 2 pairs of boxes. Whatever you do, do not erase or edit those boxes but anything goes inside them. The only thing to understand is that the text is auto centered, so with that in mind;

Each space before the text will move the message slightly to the right
Each space after the text will move the message slightly to the left
A return before the line will drop everything down one space.

Thats it! Save and go check it.

To make things easy- here are the numbers to get some of the better text locations. Always start with the cursor after the second square and before the T.

1) To drop to the bottom press return 19 times. (yes 20 looks nicer on foot but sucks in some vehicles)
(Note: This is the one pictured below.-DocJon)

2) To split left, press return once, put cursor after the n in when and do 119 spaces, press return, delete the space then skip over the remaining text till your cursor is after the n in join (and before the box) and do another 119 spaces.

3) To split under the minimap, press return once, press space 114 times, put cursor after then "n" in "when", return once, then press space 113 times.

Feel free to experiment, as long as you include the #NROFPLAYERS# bit then you will get the number wherever you put it, the text around it is up to you. Finally, theres no way that its against any rules of engagement as the games not even started and noone scores anything during the time this message is shown.

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Here's a screenshot of mine I took on an empty server (shrunk down a bit). Punkbuster doesn't have a problem with this.

Official install order if you are reinstalling BF2 & it's mods(from the EA support site.):

1. Install BF2 (Note: If you have the Battlefield 2 Deluxe pack, install and skip to step 3.)
2. Install BF2 Special Forces
3. Run the 1.41 patch.
4. Install Armored Fury Booster Pack
5. Install Euro Forces Booster Pack
6. Run the 1.41 patch again.
7. Install 'Highway to Tampa' map

BF2 1.41 patch download:
http://battlefield2.filefront.com/file/Bat...141_Patch;72510

'Highway to Tampa' download:
http://battlefield2.filefront.com/file/Bat...way_Tampa;80461

How to bind the parachute key to the space-bar.


Go to your My Documents folder and look for:
Battlefield 2\Profiles\000* (* is any number)

Open the Controls.con with Notepad.

Change this line:
ControlMap.addKeyToTriggerMapping c_PIWeaponSelect9 IDFKeyboard IDKey_9 10000 0

to this:
ControlMap.addKeyToTriggerMapping c_PIWeaponSelect9 IDFKeyboard IDKey_Space 10000 0

Save.
Now Space is your Jump and Parachute.

Copied from BF2142 Newbie guide, to make finding it easier...yeah, it took me ten minutes to find it 😢

Punkbuster Manual Update:

Download this file:
http://www.evenbalance.com/index.php?page=pbsetup.php

Run it, and add the games you wish to have it check for updates. Give all necessary firewall permissions.