User blog:Apprentice125/Battlefield 4 CTE Updates: New Night Maps, Community Map Polls

Even with Hardline on the imminent horizon next week, Battlefield 4 is still getting some love over on the Community Test Environment. The CTE has a couple of notable patches recently and some more updates on the Community Map Project have also been announced.

First up, two more maps have been added to the Night Map Project: Golmud Railway and Zavod 311. Both maps are currently in their first lighting pass as night maps, and as of yet have no new names like Infiltration of Shanghai does. Like Shanghai, both have significantly reduced visibility and the majority of the light sources on the maps are destructible, so summon your inner Sam Fisher and prepare to shoot out some lightbulbs. To make them more useful on the night maps, the Thermal Optics for vehicles have also seen some major tweaking. They are now more effective for seeing targets out to medium range, but slightly reduce the player's spatial awareness and dims the surrounding areas.

Some other new changes to the CTE include more Netcode improvements, mostly for faster vehicles and Spectators, as well as a pass at third-person impact sounds. The new sounds are intended to help players understand more clearly when they've actually hit someone. The most notable new addition are the new headshot sounds; like in Bad Company 2, it's a lot easier to tell when you've actually managed to make a headshot now. Remember that the CTE is now accessible on PC for Premium users on Console too, so if your computer can handle it and you've got the disk space, go give the new changes a shot.

DICE LA have also made a few announcements concerning the Community Map Project announced last month. The first poll for the map regarding its location has been completed, and the winning choice was a Jungle environment. A new poll has been released, this time asking what Points of Interest players want to see on the map. Points of Interest are areas on the map that "drive the art, story, and design of a level", and are usually were the control points are located. An example of Zavod 311's POIs can be seen on the poll page. Go have a look at the choices and let your voice be heard!

That's all for now, but we'll be keeping you posted on the proceedings of the Community Map and Night Map Projects. See you on the Battlefield! -21:23, March 12, 2015 (UTC)