Forgotten Hope 2

[estoylisto]

Filled with authentic weaponry and vehicles the Forgotten Hope 2 team brings you WW II battles using the BF2 software engine. You can choose to fight on landscapes ranging from the expanses of El Alamein to the twilight roadways of Operation Hyacinth.

forgottenhope.bf1942files.com/main.php?lang=english

Scroll to the bottom of the page for instructions and another site to do the actual download.

[pershainovitsh]

Seems that this is the only thread here on the old forum about FH2. Good enough for me.

I know BF3 is right around the corner, releases tomorrow here (for some reason I got a weird backward flashback of me smiling at this later and thinking "Battlefield 3, oh it's been so long since that game. Better go and play BF5, or even better, FH4" ), but I still think Forgotten Hope 2.4 is the best online multiplayer game right now, and more proper seuquel to BF2 than BF3 is.

What is Forgotten Hope, you may ask. It's a WWII modification to Battlefield 2.

But what makes FH2 so great, you may ask. Why shouldn't I play BF3, BF2 or BF1942? Well, it comes from many things. It has fixed some of BF2's most annoying things, such as grenade spam and random deviation. You will hit what you are aiming at, unless you are moving. But there is a lot of recoil to prevent it being too easy.
Only some kits have hand grenades at their disposal. This prevents the annoying grenade spam.

FH2 also balances the game: there are no overpowered jets or any other vehicles in the game. The only flying vehicles are (WWII) fighter planes, such as Messerschmitts and Spitfires.

The driving/flying models were improved in the 2.4 patch, so they feel more realistic. For example, if you turn your mouse 180 degrees fast while driving a tank, the turret will move behind your mouse. It's not realistic to have lightning-fast turrets.

Were you disappointed that BF3 (or BF4 or 5 if you're reading this in the future) didn't have that much vehicles? Sorry about my language, but there's no other way of saying it: there's a nutsload of them in the mod.
Take as an example the ground vehicles of the Germany side, here: forgottenhope.warumdarum.de/fh2_vehicles.php?country=1&type=1
About 50 ground vehicles, 14 of them being tanks such as the fear-inducing Tiger tanks.
All the vehicles can be found here, sorted by country: forgottenhope.warumdarum.de/fh2_vehicles.php?

What about weapons? Just like in real life, most of the soldiers were carrying bolt-action rifles. Thanks to limited classes, the ratio between automatic weapons and single fire weapons is realistic (unlike in Red Orchestra 2, from what I've read).
The Germans had the coolest weapons if you ask me. Here's the list: forgottenhope.warumdarum.de/fh2_weapons.php?country=1
There's K98, carried by most German units, and there's MG42 and MP44 (Sturmgewehr 44), which is basically an assault rifle with almost the same damage as the bolt-action rifles but with a full-auto mode.
All the weapons can be found here, again sorted by country: forgottenhope.warumdarum.de/fh2_weapons.php?

Most of the maps are really great, and the linear ones just aren't in the playlists. The flag positioning is something DICE should have borrowed when designing BF3. There's always a possibility to flank, there is infantry fighting, there is vehicle fighting, there is everything.

But what about teamwork? There is a commo rose both for general use and for squad leaders and members. The normal commo rose is made of three horizontal lines, each having seven messages to pick from. The middle one is used for spotting.
There is also the usual BF2 VOIP, which works pretty well. And there is teamwork, especially if you create a fireteam (=squad) called Teamwork. Yesterday I did so, and the people in my squad were amazed by the teamwork that they had rarely seen. I didn't do that well myself, but without my orders and my presence, even though I was mostly just a mobile spawn point, made it possible.
And today I had very good teamwork with some Germans, although the server was only half full. It wasn't even a fireteam called Teamwork, just random people with microphones playing. Great fun.
The low fanbase is a bit of a problem, but on Fridays there is at least one full server, usually two with a couple of half-full ones.

So, why not download and try the mod yourself? I can teach the basics and would surely enjoy other people playing with me.

[swfwebmaster]

"...vehicles? ... there's a nutsload of them..."

I do not know about the rest of you, but this got my attention.

I'm in!!

[pershainovitsh]

Heheh, the censoring works pretty cleverly here.

But if I am to believe in BF3blog, BF3 has about 30 vehicles in total. Some of the factions in FH have over 30 vehicles! If you count the stationary weapons, such as AT guns, the Americans have 25 vehicles. If I counted correctly, the German side has 62 vehicles in total! And Great Britain has 46!
There are also Italian, Australian, Civilian, Canadian and at some point Soviet (there will be a patch that will add Soviet army and the Eastern front to the mod) vehicles, but not so many.
So, with the three biggest factions, we have 133 vehicles in the mod! With the other factions' vehicles it adds to about 150, which is about 120 vehicles more than in battlefield 3!

Of course, to remain in historical accuracy, not all the weapons and vehicles are available in every map. For example, MP44, which I mentioned earlier, is only available in the latest maps, since it was only produced then, in 1944.
You might have gotten used to the BF3 style of "every faction can choose any weapon", but here, every class has a set loadout, which varies by the map and faction. In some maps the Britain's Anti-Tank kit (which is only there if it is needed, so only in tank heavy maps and possibly where it was really used) has a sticky grenade, which contains 600g nitroglycerine (and destroys any tank with one grenade, at least in my experiences. It just has a long arming time and a short throwing distance), but the German side "only" has a 3kg Ladung, which is a timed explosive that has to be set while prone, and can't be thrown. So some asymmetry, like in PR. And of course there is the fact that the German tanks were much more powerful than the American ones, which is just realistic.

[swfwebmaster]

wobbly,

When I initially launched FH2, the graphics were set to Low/Medium by default. After I went back through and changed everything to HIGH, the game looked very good. Similar to ArmA 2 graphics. Try changing your settings to a higher level and see if the game looks better.

[psyco6]

Learning curve like PR?

[pershainovitsh]

I wouldn't say so. If you've played BF2 and/or PR, you pretty much know what to do. Stick with your fireteam, cover all arcs, clear the church tower... Of course there are some differences, but it doesn't take long to learn them. No random deviation if you're still, no medics (well, you can give your bandages to a teammate that is bleeding, which happens rarely, and he will soon be back in full condition) or people giving ammo (unless you find a special kit), no reviving at all (realism), and some others.

Biggest differences are probably that the soldiers are almost always running (and they have a lot of stamina unlike in PR where you get exhausted if you run five meters) unless they are sneaking, there's no drop-to-prone-to-gain-perfect-accuracy stuff, the weapons are very deadly, and the kits change with the map. And there are no helicopters, but that's obvious.

If anyone wants, I can play with you guys at some point and teach the ropes. This Friday, 18th November at UTC 1930? Anyone?

[swfwebmaster]

Nov 14, 2011 13:30:28 GMT 1 pershainovitsh said:

Friday, 18th November at UTC 1930? Anyone?

I was really looking forward to doing some FH2, but, unfortunately, I will be unable to game on Friday.

[pershainovitsh]

Anyone else? If no one's available on Friday, we could have the match(es) on Saturday, at the same time.

One more thing that's different in FH when compared to vanilla and PR: spawning happens in "waves". So everyone will spawn at the same time. The actual spawn time varies from 10 to 25 seconds. Because of this system there will be waves of reinforcements, which is a good idea.

15 NOV 2011

Nov 15, 2011 20:07:04 GMT 1 pershainovitsh said:

If you want screenshots... You got it! forgottenhope.warumdarum.de/fh2_media.php?area=screenshots

Also some here: forgottenhope.warumdarum.de/fh2_about.php?

[psyco6]

Any screenshots I'm curious about this mod.

[psyco6]

Looks really good.

[swfwebmaster]

My initial impression was favorable.

[mcguirk2]

I have it.

[psyco6]

Link for dl?

[pershainovitsh]

Oh yeah, mcguirk was the other person I played with earlier.

psyco6: I assume by dl you mean the link from which you can download the game. Here it is: forgottenhope.warumdarum.de/fh2_downloads.php

It comes in three parts, like Project Reality.


A random thing to say: when in a tank, scrolling the mouse wheel or pressing "f" will bring up the ammunition type menu. Just yesterday I had problems with two infantry soldiers hiding in a pit, and the AP (armor piercing, good against armor obviously) rounds didn't do any damage even when they landed just a metre or two away from the target. Then I changed to HE (high explosive) rounds and shot once. They couldn't survive the explosion that filled the whole pit.
Some tanks also have smoke rounds and in some rare cases something even more powerful than the regular rounds. But the more powerful the rounds, the less you get them, so it's balanced.