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'Stiq Tips: A Titanfall Guide
Titanfall is finally here, and you're going to be blowing up tons of Titans. Dozens. Hundreds, even. But with such a tiny body as a Pilot, it can be pretty intimidating to take on a giant robot -- until you read these tips, that is. First things first: Before you do anything, complete the campaign. Although it isn't a fully-featured solo story mode, the campaign is a separate playlist that's integrated into multiplayer. So basically, you're going to be playing with a lot of newcomers who just picked up the game (as opposed to hardcore people that are in the competitive playlists), which will better help you acclimate. Also, you can earn two new Titan body types by completing the story that will be unlocked for life -- so do it!
Titanfall PC's 48GB install the result of uncompressed audio
PC players will have to spend quite a bit longer waiting for their Titanfall download to drop than those on Xbox One. The PC download of Titanfall clocks in at a substantial 48 gigabytes, considerably larger than the 17GB download on Xbox One. The reason for the size discrepancy, developer Respawn tells Eurogamer, comes down to uncompressed audio. Respawn opted to use uncompressed audio in the PC version to account for less powerful hardware configurations, specifically dual core machines, which meet the minimum specs required by Titanfall. The concern, according to Respawn lead engineer Richard Baker, was that "a two-core machine would dedicate a huge chunk of one core to just decompressing audio," so the studio decided to use completely uncompressed audio – 35 gigs of it – in order to optimize performance. If you haven't started your download yet, you might want to get on that. [Image: Electronic Arts]
Metareview: Titanfall
Prepare for Titanfall! Today's the big day when the big mechs come falling from the sky. Our review said it "isn't tuned to perfection for everyone yet, but it starts as a smart, swift and startling movement in well-traveled space." If you're still cyber fence-sitting about the game, check out as team @Joystiq plays the game together today on Joystiq Streams at 4PM Eastern (1PM Pacific, 8PM UK). We'll have a post with the specifics up in a few hours. Let's see what everyone else has been saying about Respawn's debut game...
Respawn: Titanfall's server stability is in Microsoft's azure hands
Titanfall will be propped up by dedicated servers. As much was made known last June, but what may not be so clear to players is that post-launch hiccups are primarily Microsoft's responsibility. Respawn engineer Jon Shiring recently explained to Engadget how Respawn used Microsoft's "Azure" cloud computing technology to handle elements of Titanfall like AI hosting and physics calculations. "One of the really nice things about it is that it isn't my problem, right?" Shiring said of potential server issues at the game's launch. "We just say [to Microsoft], here are our estimates, aim for more than that, plan for problems and make sure there are more than enough servers available -- they'll know the whole time that they need to bring more servers online." Shiring said that during the game's lengthy beta program, the game's European servers filled up, and players were quietly transitioned to East Coast US data centers, indicating the developer's contingency plans in the event its launch is wildly popular tomorrow. Titanfall, a multiplayer-only game, is so reliant on the Azure servers that Respawn opted to not launch the game in some regions, such as South Africa. Shiring also noted in late January that server-side updates for the game won't cause downtime for players. Our review of Titanfall will be supplemented with our first of many State of Service reviews, so expect to hear more about how the game's online play holds up after it launches. [Image: Electronic Arts]
Joystiq Streams Special: Preparing for Titanfall [UPDATE: Relive the stream!]
The Joystiq Troopers are locked and loaded, waiting to spring like an angry mongoose, to take the Titanfall servers by storm when our usual Tuesday broadcast rolls around. Our motto, however, is, "Always be prepared when trying to commandeer giant robots while struggling in a horrific interstellar war." To that end, we're sending in the Joystiq Troopers advance team to lay groundwork and do some light leveling ahead of the main event. That's Titanfall on Joystiq Streams two days in a row. At 4PM EST on Monday at the Joystiq Twitch channel, Richard Mitchell (@TheRichardM), Alexander Sliwinski (@Sliwinski), Xav de Matos (@Xav), and Susan Arendt (@SusanArendt) will suit up for a few test rounds. Deck officer Anthony John Agnello (@ajohnagnello) will be hanging in the chat as liason between you good viewers at home and our Titan pilots abroad. Come hang out. Joystiq Streams' regular schedule is every Tuesday and Thursday at 4PM EST. [Images: Respawn Entertainment]
Titanfall review: Prime delivery
Titanfall is strictly coiled around the player. You couldn't excise even one piece without slackening it like a ruined kidnapper's rope. The serpentine level design, the liberating sense of movement, the flawless controls and yes, the enormous bipedal tanks dropping from the sky, are equally indispensable in this arresting shooter. Given the studio's splintered status as a former Call of Duty custodian, Respawn Entertainment has made a multiplayer game fit for those who have spent years peering through the eyes of a speedy killing machine – a seasoned six against six in battles for land or a higher kill count. A history with rapid-fire aim and fleet-footed 3D movement is not essential here, but recommended.
Respawn Entertainment's Jon Shiring on Titanfall and using Microsoft's cloud
Jon Shiring, Respawn engineer When in the development cycle did the relationship between Microsoft and Respawn form? Early on, we were trying to figure out what game we were trying to make. We had a good relationship with people at Microsoft from working on Call of Duty, so we got in touch with them. I was pushing really hard on dedicated servers for all platforms. I talked to Microsoft about that, and I talked to Sony as well. Microsoft got really interested in that idea, and that was pretty early on. I'd say I started to nudge them in late 2010. It was really 2011 when we were coming at Microsoft like, "What can you do? We can't afford this, but we want to have dedicated servers for everything because we're trying to do new and interesting things." Did you get the feeling that this was something it already had in mind? The feeling I got from it is that we kind of brought it up and they came back with an idea of how to do it because they weren't originally planning to do it. At the time, I think they were looking for interesting things to do for the Xbox One; they were trying to get a bearing on what would be a new, interesting way for Live to go. We hit them at the right time. How intrinsic is Azure to Titanfall? Having these servers with a significant amount of CPU power and bandwidth available is absolutely essential to our game: Having these machines that are regional and servers that have good ping -- that's huge. That completely changes the way we make games. Really, the biggest thing with that is that it has uncapped our designers and let them do things that were previously impossible to do. That far back, we were letting the designers run and just do whatever was cool and it was really, really key to making Titanfall what it is right now. What will a player notice that's different between Titanfall and another game that's using dedicated servers? There are other games like Battlefield that have dedicated servers, but they haven't gone in the same direction that we have with them, though. We have all of this AI and things flying around in the world; that has obviously let us build a different game than we would have if we'd have gone in with the constraints of it having to be player-hosted. All of these things that make it a much more lively world are actually the really big win. With all the platforms that are using Azure (PC, Xbox 360 Xbox One), was cross-platform play ever considered? Not really. Mostly, the reason for that is with the 360 version -- we're not developing it. My expectation (and this is an engineering answer) is that we're going to be patching all of these but we're not going to be the ones doing the patching on 360. We could get ourselves into a very bad spot where if we patched all the servers, the 360 people couldn't play for a while until Bluepoint (the studio behind the Xbox 360 version) applies the patch and gets it through cert. Just on a purely practical level with three different methods of getting a patch out there, it's not going to work. Just on a purely practical level with three different methods of getting a patch out there, it's [cross-platform play] not going to work. Then there [are] a lot of other problems you get, like if you were playing against a PC guy and you were looking at his player info. He's not on Xbox; I can't bring up the Origin info for him; you can't add him as a friend and send an invite to him. It's not one huge technical thing stopping us; it's a lot of little ones. What does the connection flowchart look like from a user's network access point to the servers? With Azure coming in, it seems like a chance for more ping or latency. In a traditional player-hosted game, you're still connecting to the player acting as a host, but you have to punch through all these networks to get there. I'm kind of getting into the gears here, but what I've found is that a lot of the latency in consumer broadband is at the edges: Getting to another user is a lot slower than getting to a hub and back again. Since we're talking to these servers in big regional data centers, the latency is a lot lower than what you would get if [the connection] was exactly the same, except it was a consumer on the other end of that pipe. We have somewhere around a 19ms to 20ms ping to this data center and it's up in San Francisco [from LA]. We're talking barely more than one rendering frame to get a message to the server and back again, which is outstanding. It has a lot of wins. Longterm, what kind of benefits do you think consumers will reap with the groundwork that Respawn has laid? Back when we started talking to Microsoft about it, everyone thought it was kind of crazy and a lot of publishers were terrified of even doing it. I've heard that since our beta, they've been pounding down the doors at Microsoft because they're realizing that it really is a real thing right now. We can scale high, and, if you do it right, the experience can be awesome. Working with Microsoft is great, but we're kind of taking a bullet with doing the pain of proving that it'll scale up, and finding bugs that every system has at launch. After Titanfall comes out, we're just going to have a lot more confidence that the early system-type problems are solved. From then on, it's probably a simpler solution than building something yourself. My expectation is that within a few years, this will be the new normal. Not necessarily Azure specifically, but a centralization of the hosting so it'll be big systems that are being used rather than all of these homegrown things that people have done in the past. At the Xbox One's reveal, Microsoft said the new Xbox Live has 300,000 dedicated servers, how many does Respawn have access to? We're trying to figure out how many people will be playing and trying to make sure the servers will be there for that. One of the really nice things about it is that isn't my problem, right? We just say [to Microsoft] here are our estimates, aim for more than that, plan for problems and make sure there are more than enough servers available. To go back to your development experience, how has Respawn's approach to multiplayer changed since Call of Duty? We're still client/server, but we re-approached every problem and solved it in a new way. Some of the high-level stuff matches up, like the client/server and the service that connects the clients, but everything else is very different from a network architecture standpoint. I've been making multiplayer games (Call of Duty 2, Call of Duty 4, Modern Warfare 2) for a long time. A lot of it is just people here and even people at EA having faith in us that we know what we're doing. That has led us to things that were new, different and crazy. What's the contingency plan in case the servers start melting? This is one of the things we made ourselves deal with during the beta. The way it ends up working is that peak time in Europe is going to be much ahead of the US. We moved some Europeans over to East Coast US data centers, which is not ideal, but it at least let them play. We don't look forward to doing that at all, but if we have a bunch of people sitting unable to play the game, then we're going to make sure that the experience is good enough -- maybe not ideal -- to get them playing. We do have capacity at these other data centers that are a little bit farther away. If we have a situation like that, that's going to be my fault. If we fill up every data center out there, then we'll be there at Microsoft -- they'll know the whole time that they need to bring more servers online. When Forza Motorsport 5 launched, it used Azure for the Drivatar system. By all accounts it shouldn't have worked: It was a brand-new feature running on new software using then-unproven Azure tech. If Titanfall launches successfully too, it could galvanize Azure's reputation. What I actually think will happen, is if we come out and it works great and people play the game and see that it's a really good experience, [developers] will have a lot of serious discussions about "my publisher has their own system for hosting, but I don't know if it will work. We have a lot of confidence in Azure because Titanfall did." Suddenly, the publisher solution becomes more risky than the cloud solution.
Early Titanfall players won't be banned; preload now available on Origin
Those fortunate enough to score a pre-release copy of Titanfall can enjoy the game without fear of retaliation from Microsoft or developer Respawn Entertainment. This unexpectedly permissive news comes courtesy of no less a source than Respawn co-founder Vince Zampella. "About playing early: We won't stop or ban legit copies," Zampella tweeted, before warning early players that the pre-release gameplay experience may not be flawless. "It is prelaunch, so there may be interruptions in service as we prep servers," he added. On a related note, those who pre-ordered the PC incarnation of Titanfall from EA's digital distribution service Origin can now begin pulling down the game's necessary files. As with all preloading schemes, you won't actually be able to play Titanfall until its official, March 11 debut, but hopefully that wait provides enough time to download all 50GB of Respawn's giant robot shooter. [Image: Respawn Entertainment]
No Titanfall in South Africa
Once upon a time in South Africa, a young video game journalist named Ludwig Kietzmann collapsed for no apparent reason, falling to the floor in a heap of stylish dark-wash jeans and almonds. Seconds later, he awoke and knew something was desperately wrong. Something horrible was coming, and there was only one thing he could do to avoid catastrophe. He had to get out of South Africa. EA South Africa will not launch Titanfall in the region, attributing the decision to poor internet performance rates. The post on EA South Africa's Facebook reads as follows: "After conducting recent online tests for Titanfall, we found that the performance rates in South Africa were not as high as we need to guarantee a great experience, so we have decided not to release Titanfall in South Africa at this time. "We understand this is a disappointment for local fans and will keep fans posted on any future plans regarding the release of Titanfall in South Africa." In February, EA delayed the Titanfall beta in South Africa, but overall it marketed the game as per standard protocol. Reviews of the South African beta noted a ping in the 200ms range, but added that the game's built-in latency tolerance worked well and made it playable. [Image: Titanfall]
Titanfall Arcade kicks some Asteroids
What do you get when you mix the titans from Titanfall with Atari's popular retro game Asteroids? You get Titanfall's titans in Asteroids silly, what else could you possibly have expected? Respawn Entertainment recently thought it fitting to launch a small, free retro game portal dubbed "Titanfall Arcade" to promote its upcoming FPS, starting with an Asteroids clone. The browser-based flash game plays exactly like it sounds: After dropping a titan into a flat black space setting, players point with their cursors to shoot the classic outlines of space debris, racking up a high score after firing off charged beam shots. The game makes for a fun little excursion while your boss is looking away, to be sure. The other two Titanfall Arcade games that will be available to play sometime in the near future are spoofs on Missile Command and Centipede, the former sounding all too appropriate for a mech to be involved in. Titanfall launches next week on Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC. [Image: Respawn Entertainment]
Titanfall season pass confirmed [Update: $25 for three map packs]
Respawn co-founder Vince Zampella confirmed Titanfall is getting a season pass, in news that isn't giant-mechs-dropping-out-of-the-sky levels of surprising. Speaking to GameSpot, Zampella revealed there are plans for a variety of updates, both free and paid. "We're going to do paid DLC, we're also going to do free updates," Zampella told GameSpot. "There are things that we want in the game that we didn't get to ship in the final game. So we'll add private matches and things like that for free. There will be some paid DLC. We're going to do a season pass just because if you buy it up front, it's a deal. We're not going to do microtransactions. So a season pass is just buy it up front, and you get a better price." Respawn's multiplayer shooter combines the studio's FPS heritage with a big dollop of mechanized walkers to pilot and tear stuff up with. It's coming to Xbox One and PC on March 11, while the Xbox 360 version outsourced to Bluepoint Games is due on March 25. Asked if Xbox 360 players can expect the same longevity other platforms will receive in terms of upgrades and patches, Zampella said, "We'll have to sit down with EA and talk about that. My assumption is yes, but I don't know if I'm the best person to speak for that." Update: Respawn announced the Titanfall season pass is priced at $25, and represents a discount of $5 on three map packs. The packs may contain other content additional to the maps, but Respawn said that's "still to be determined and will be announced as we get closer to their release." The season pass is confirmed for all platforms, and PC players can opt in on a $80 Digital Deluxe bundle that includes the game on Origin and the pass. [Image: EA]
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Titanfall gameplay launch trailer prepares you for a mech drop
With Titanfall's launch just one week away, we feel the only proper course of action is to watch every video for the game that's in reach. That includes this gameplay launch trailer for the game, which combines an appropriate amount of drama, mech-like titans, explosions, bouts of slow-motion and guys getting punched in the face. Well, we could do with a little more face-punching, to be certain. If you're looking for more moving pictures related to the game, be sure to check out our video preview and our "beta massacre" special, in which six Joystiq staffers took on the game's PC beta as a team, meeting their digital demise collectively. Titanfall will launch on March 11 for Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC. [Image: EA Games]
Titanfall beta ropes in 2 million unique players
The Titanfall beta on Xbox One and PC last week attracted 2 million unique players, Respawn Community Manager Abbie Heppe told Polygon. Engineer Jon Shiring said in the same interview that Titanfall is completely reliant on the new Xbox Live Compute platform, Microsoft's cloud and scalability service: "If it's down, nobody can play." Titanfall did go dark for seven hours during the beta, as the team attempted to scale up the game for more players. Shiring called that one "human error." "People need to understand that when you write a whole bunch of new code, there's bugs in it," he said. "We have to find those bugs. That was the goal of the beta. We know it's not going to work right. We don't want to find out on launch day. Let's find out now. We found probably 10 real things that we worked on and fixed. That's 10 things we don't have to find on launch day. We still might find some new things on launch day, but at least those ones are not there anymore." We tried our best to master mech mechanics in the Titanfall beta last week, live and on-air, and our most memorable moments are saved for all eternity in this Joystiq Tiny Stream. [Image: EA]
Xbox One packs in Titanfall, drops price in UK [Update: Pre-orders open]
Microsoft will bundle Titanfall with Xbox One consoles starting March 11 in the United States. Additionally, the Xbox One's price will drop in the UK from £430 ($716.08) to £399.99 ($666.10). The price drop will go into effect this Friday, February 28. The Titanfall bundle will cost the same amount as the Xbox One system typically does in North America, $499.99, and can be seen on Microsoft's website. Players picking up the bundle next month will receive a download code for Titanfall packed in to the box, as opposed to a boxed, retail copy of the game. The bundle will be available for "a limited time only" at select retailers. Titanfall is the first game from Respawn Entertainment, the developer created by former Call of Duty veterans Jason West and Vince Zampella in April 2010. West left the developer in March 2013 after the duo settled with Activision in its Infinity Ward lawsuits in May 2012. Those looking for more Titanfall action should look no further than the six-person beta massacre our daring Joystiq editors took part in. Update: Players can pre-order the bundle through Amazon and the Microsoft Store. [Image: Microsoft]
Xbox One UK ad hid augmented reality game, Titanfall-themed prizes
Remember that Xbox One ad full of mechs, soccer players, and Zachary Quinto? If you're a resident of the UK, you may also remember it for its strange, half-second image of a skull, a X-shaped symbol and a seemingly random string of letters. Xbox's UK division has unveiled just what was behind the mysterious imagery: an augmented reality game. You can take the red pill watch the reveal above. The augmented reality game (ARG for short) put forward a number of clues to be decoded, including a string of binary code, websites in Latin, images that needed to be rearranged and sound-based puzzles. The treasure hunt culminated in a grab-bag of Xbox One prizes, including the console itself, a Collector's Edition of Titanfall, and a VIP trip to the US. Said prizes were placed in an unmarked, white van in a secluded area, because nothing screams "come get your special prize" quite like an unmarked, white van in a secluded area. (We're relatively sure that part was staged considering winner Brad Butcher looks straight at a camera focusing on him, but still.) Congrats Brad! [Image: Microsoft]
Joystiq Tiny Streams: The Joystiq Titanfall beta massacre
Six Joystiq troopers went into the Titanfall PC beta on Tuesday, none came out. While these intrepid staffers did their very best to prevail, it was all for nought. Across all multiplayer modes offered in the early test version of Respawn Entertainment's upcoming shooter, Joystiq got thoroughly smoked. On the bright side, it was marvelously entertaining to watch them get positively obliterated by the competition. As captured in this Joystiq Tiny Streams edit of their adventures, the moment things truly got ugly was when all six got trapped in an alley during the popular Last Titan Standing mode. It's like the opening of Gangs of New York but, you know, with giant robots. If you enjoyed watching the Joystiq crew get taken to school, take note: Joystiq Tiny Streams appear every Monday and Friday at 4PM EST on Joystiq.com. Want to get in on the live action? Joystiq Streams broadcasts at 4PM EST every Tuesday and Thursday on the Joystiq Twitch channel. Our streams are chock full of developer commentary and schadenfreude. [Image: Respawn Entertainment]
Titanfall beta extended, now ends February 19
Those who've spent the weekend stomping pilots from the comfort of a titan's cockpit will be pleased to hear that the good times won't draw to a close tomorrow morning as originally planned. Instead, developer Respawn Entertainment has extended the Titanfall beta test for an additional day. "The Titanfall Beta will run through February 19th 6 PM PST," tweeted the official Titanfall Twitter account. No explanation is offered for this change of plans, but following Respawn's impromptu decision to kick open the doors of the beta test to the public only two days ago, it seems as if the game's pre-release incarnation has drawn more attention from players than the developer initially expected. Though Titanfall will be released for the Xbox 360, the ongoing beta test is only available to Xbox One owners with current Xbox Live Gold subscriptions and those PC gamers who registered for the beta test. Assuming you meet these criteria, getting into the game is as easy as downloading its client from either the Xbox Live Marketplace or EA's digital distribution service, Origin. [Image: EA]
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Titanfall beta to open to public on Xbox One 'later today,' PC soon
Did you win the Titanfall beta lottery? No, you're just pretending to build a crazy kill-death ratio from the innards of a Titan? Well, it's your lucky day - Major Nelson has announced that Titanfall's Xbox One beta will begin opening to the public "later today." That's right, you won't need a code to join in! In order to enter the beta, sign into your console and look for the download in the "New Game Demos" section of the Game Store. It isn't up just yet, mind you - Major Nelson's post states that the download may "take some time" to appear to all Xbox One users, noting that some users may say it appear before others. Twitter activity from Respawn Entertainment's Vince Zampella reflects the beta plans, while also noting that the PC beta will also open its gates to the public, "maybe tomorrow."
Behind-the-scenes video teaches us where baby Titanfalls come from
A new behind-the-scenes video from developer Respawn Entertainment is all about the birds and the bees. And by "birds" and "bees," we mean giant robots and jetpacks, and how they come together to form Titanfall. The video chronicles the journey of Titanfall, from baby brainchild to the massive hype train it is today. There's also some insight into the development of Respawn itself, including a look at how comfy their floors must be - one snapshot from the studio's early days shows a team member lounging about on the carpet, head resting on their arms. They grow up so fast. [Image: Respawn Entertainment]
Titanfall tips videos prepare you for beta battle
Microsoft dished out two videos that offer players some tips on Titanfall ahead of the game's beta, which starts tomorrow. The first video glosses over the game's basic mech-like Titan functions and elaborate on ways players can use the Titans effectively within combat. Additionally, it provides a few pointers for the parkour-like locomotion elements in the game, such as hanging on walls by holding the left trigger. The second video, found after the break, tours the game's three modes and their rules. Titanfall is set to launch March 11 on Xbox One and PC with the Xbox 360 version following on March 25. We got an extended look at the game ourselves, and had plenty to say about it in our video preview. [Image: Electronic Arts]
