Battlefield 3 night time mod is a tense stab in the dark

EA/Dice patch out new mod...Release 'night time' DLC...only £11.99!

I love how DICE spent years as gaming heroes, working their way up from the gutters of modding to the highest echelons of corporate bankrolling, and now they're just another whipping post.

Can't wait for official DICE/EA statement. Here's my guesses:

a) banning for breaking TOS which disallow modifying game files

b) "told you Frostbite 2 is way too hard for modders, he needed nearly one year to change sun into moon, which we can do with our maptools in 5 seconds".

IN YOUR FACE DICE!

If we can do this much without mod tools, just imagine if we had them....

damn greedy assholes and their DLCs

Just thinking how much better this could be is DICE couldn't sell us map packs.

Err, I mean, made mod tools.

An engine is never too complex for modders. It's just code for "I'm sorry, but we're releasing a shitload of DLC so we can't have people make maps for free".

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The mod looks pretty terrible, though. All smoke consists of unlit particles, so it looks terribly lit.

I actually find Planetside's Forgelight lighting capabilities much more impressive. DICE couldn't even get their sun right...

The reason that DICE will never release mod tools is because the modding community would make an utter fool of them, in terms of comparative content.

Not to be a party pooper here but it really does not look good at all.

I admire the effort, but it just does not look good with 100% lack of lights. Maybe if they figure out how to have street lights illuminated I'd give it a shot.

Not really realistic night time lighting, looks as if all they did was make the skybox black and take out the environmental lighting.

It would seem my original thoughts were right: The only reason DICE doesn't release mod tools/map tools/SDK is so they can sell DLC to grub more money and emulate CoD even more.

Weird smoke aside, I find this awesome! BF3 could really use mod tools, the game would finally live up to its full potential... DICE has proven that they are not up to the task! I know they just basically turned off all the lights but still.

Did they release a statement in reply to this? I can't wait to read their reaction given what they said pre launch regarding mod tools!

Good lord people, everyone has completely misinterpreted a selective, out of context quote from DICE. They reason they can't' release mod tools is because the REDISTRIBUTION LICENSING is too complex, not that modders couldn't figure it out. This was clarified in the original interview. Frostbyte is a collection of 10-20 separate technologies that EA would have to shell out huge bucks for to redistribute, money that, from their perspective, wouldn't make it worth it.

It bugged me that the game only had one night level and it was only in Rush mode. The game looks so awesome at night with all the bullets and ballistics flyung through the air. They should just patch in a nighttime mode for each map!

This is more like Darkness Mod than Night Time Mod.

Lol wow... I just saw a obvious terrible slow registry system. As he ran across the alleyway and bam hes dead behind the wall? Im glad I never bought into the hype.

So where is @TacticalNuclearPenguin & @R3DT1D3 a.k.a PAID EA BF3 defenders here on PCG site?!?!

"the lighting is great"...wtf? that looks like shit. Black everywhere with white smoke...looks fuckin dumb lol. DICE should release mod tools at the risk of everyone thinking their engine is complete shit, because this video makes it look like shit. Is this why there were no night maps? Frostbite 2 has horrendous lighting and pixel shading?

And Dice said it took a rocket scientist to figure out the engine, nice job modders.

i Stopped playing BF3 a while ago now, wasted money on it. One thing i hate so much, the fact that i cant talk to my team/squad by Voice. Bloody stupid that Auto sync battlelog squad chat is not available. DAMN U CRAP-A

Iraq, the first go around, December 1990 (yes the year is correct). I am a sgt, we are towing an M1A1 that blew its forward mod, (sand was hell on turbines), in my M-88, its night time...Pitch black, stars in the sky, no moon, and we can see about 25 meters in front of us, no blackout or ir so we do not get detected, nightvision is nearly useless, no light, just a nice olive drab glow and grainy sandbrush and sand. A first Lewy in a Hummer is leading us via map and blackout compass....with a solid steel cold rolled broken torsion bar (part of the tank suspension)one end sticking up front next to him (the plot thickens, think about steel and compasses). We travel for hours in featureless sand, then we see lights in the distance, we hear our secure light up as the lewy tries to contact the base, nothing. We get closer, the lewy says to stop and waits for the longest damn time. My driver and i are conversing about the situation when we see green tracers start to arc up....our way but they fall well short. I contact the lewy and say, "Umm, Lieutenant, our tanks and brads dont use green/white tracers....", just then a main gun round from a tank in the distance, cant see it but you know what it is, arcs up, slowly at first and and then descends really fast, a near max range shot, hits about 50 yards in front and to the right, the concussion rock us all just a bit but it isnt bad, then nothing, they are feeling us out as they do not know who we are. About that time i hear the aux pump of the tank i am towing engage and the abrupt shake as the tank turret slews left hard and the hydralic brake engages to stop it as the gunner dumps his lead, lases to the target and the main gun adjusts, its fast and brutal movement we can feel through the towbar. My driver and i are down inside talking when all this happens and we say "Oh shit!" at the same time, we pop back out of the hatches and our maduece gunner looks at us and says "he going to fire?". The gunner, whom we forgot about briefly during this incident was sleeping in the tanks gunner seat, when the one main round hit, he switched the thermals from standby and handloaded a sabot round by himself and then got back in his gunners seat, he then told the lewy over our net "Tank, 3 oclock, identified, sabot indexed, tracking!", this happened fast and the gunner was only waiting on the lewies order to fire. The next part you had to hear, so comical, the lewy told the gunner to please take his fingers off the handles and trigger and put the gun in safe, we hear this because we have the tank on our secure maint freq, the lewy asks the gunner how many he sees, after a second or two the gunner replies he has 8 heat signatures at 4800 meters, well out of range of accurate shooting for them but not us, even with a half broke dick tank. The Lt makes the right call and we slowly do a 180, after we tell the lewy the torsion bar has been screwing up his compass for the last 5 hours, he sheepishly agrees to finally let us throw it on the back of our 88 and we travel back another 6 hours and dawn, the base wondering where the hell we were at, i told my motor sergeant we just came from the kuwait iraq border, we got shot at, it was fun (sarcastic look), he just looked over at the lt and called him stupid. And yes i thought about ATmines the whole time during that trip, Lt caught holy hell.

That looks awful.

Yea these guys didn't do all the much. All it seems is just light sources removed and added headlines. This isn't the kind of mods DICE was referring too in their statement :P

Man, if only this game wasn't a waste of $40 for me. Can't even play or enjoy the game without dishing out another $50 for the premium pack and get all the maps--it's the same two or three maps for me on the same two game types. All thanks to those damn player-owned servers; or a lack of dedicated servers, whichever sucks worse.

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Nice mod, though. Seems a little unrealistically dark, but I thought it was awesome all the same.

This ought to stop those damn camping snipers >:-D

Needs some more lens flare

needs more cowbell