Development – BZExcess

New BZFlag.org Site

blast — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 01:36:18 +0000

I’ve been working the last few weeks on replacing the BZFlag homepage with a more polished and modern looking site. I’m planning to get some more screenshots/videos of gameplay posted soon.

https://www.bzflag.org/

Let me know what you think.

Also, if anyone wants to check out the source code, it’s posted on my Bitbucket account, and licensed under the MIT License (the graphics/Javascript have various licenses, and are documented on the Credits page).

BZFlag 2.4.0 “Wake the Dead” released!

blast — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 18:05:59 +0000

BZFlag 2.4.0 “Wake the Dead” has been released. After BZFlag 3.0 development hit a brick wall, Bullet Catcher helped get the project motivated again by producing a plan to get a new release out that was based on 2.0.x. So what we did was bring back selective features from the 3.0 development tree that were low risk so that we could get a successful release out. We also, of course, put in some other fixes and features.

The big thing to note is that BZFlag 2.4.x is not compatible with BZFlag 2.0.x. You cannot use a BZFlag 2.4 client on a 2.0 server, nor can you use a 2.0 client on a 2.4 server. Servers will slowly upgrade to the new version, and some may run both versions of their maps for a while. There will be a transition period of several months. Windows and OSX users will be able to easily keep both versions of the game installed and in use. Linux users will have to do a bit more work for that, but it’s still possible.

Server owners will have to make some minor changes to their configuration files for BZFlag 2.4. They will also have to update any of their third-party plugins to the new BZFS API format. We have documented the upgrade procedures here:

http://my.bzflag.org/w/BZFS_2.4_Upgrade
http://my.bzflag.org/w/BZFS_API_2.4_Upgrade

Some of the major features include:

The ability to turn off teamkilling on the server
The OpenFFA game mode which is a teamless FFA, meaning you can shoot anyone regardless of color
Per-object ricochet, which lets map authors selectively enable ricochet for individual objects
Removal of local authentication
Ability for the server to force flags to be hidden on the radar
Fog can not be turned off
The screenshot code does not lag the client badly anymore
The ID flag identification was moved to the server
Public servers must have a -publickey
Polls only count users that are able to vote

Check out the ChangeLog for more changes.

Here are the downloads:

BZFlag 2.4.0 for 32-bit Windows (Also works on 64-bit Windows)
BZFlag 2.4.0 for 64-bit Windows (Only works on 64-bit Windows)
BZFlag 2.4.0 Universal Binary for Mac OS X
BZFlag 2.4.0 source code

UPDATE: The Mac OSX build is now up!

BZFlag 2.4 is in beta!

blast — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 13:11:08 +0000

BZFlag 2.4 is currently in beta, and we’ll soon be moving to a release candidate.

Find out info about the beta on the BZFlag forum thread.

BZFlag 2.3 planning

blast — Thu, 12 May 2011 01:14:30 +0000

Some serious thought is being put into getting a new release of BZFlag out. Essentially it’s been decided that version 3.0 was too big of a jump with far too many big changes. We got lost in all of the bugs and features and couldn’t get a release out. Feature creep from the last five or six years caused us to end up with something we couldn’t easily fix.

Now the plan is to move trunk (2.99.x/3.x.x) out of the way, copy v2_0branch (2.0.x) into trunk, and then relabel the new trunk as 2.3.0.0. Then we’ll start to bring back specific low-risk features from 2.99.x and put them into 2.3.x, which we’ll release as 2.4.0.0 (or whatever we decide on). The idea is to push for getting a release out in a month or so. This will mean there is less time for feature creep to take over again, which in turn will reduce how much testing we have to do. Less new features = less chance of breaking stuff.

It won’t be BZFlag 3.0, but it will be a new version that has features worth upgrading for. Here’s a wiki page that we’re working on that covers the plan: http://my.bzflag.org/w/BZFlag_2.3

We’re also going to work on migrating all of the web services (forum, list, wiki, main site, etc) to a different server that will be a bit more … responsive. The existing server has been less than ideal for a long time and has hit various resource limitations. It’s not that we’ve outgrown the server, but there is just a couple resource hungry processes (coughirssicough) on the old server that chew up lots of RAM (hundreds of MB) and make everything else very slow.

So, I’ll be working on the migration over the weekend here. During that time, there might be some temporary outages.

BZFlag geolist source released

blast — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 02:45:36 +0000

I set up a repository for the geolist source code. I released the code under the MIT license. You can go get the code at Bitbucket.

Here’s some additional features that I might add in the future:

HTML5 geolocation support to display servers sorted by distance.
KML file generation
Integration with Google Maps and/or Google Earth (the Google Earth plugin in the browser, at least – but could be for the desktop application as well)
Support for the MaxMind GeoLite City database.

Note that it does use a couple files (and will soon use more) from another open-source project of mine called mvcish.

Alpha release – BZFlag 2.99.60 SVN r21252

blast — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 14:36:50 +0000

BZFlag 3.0.0 is in the “alpha” stage right now. I have made a Windows installer of the latest development code, and a couple other people made various versions of an OSX build. Linux users (and OSX users that can’t run the builds below) can build a client with the source from SVN. You want the trunk code.

There’s a forum thread over at the BZFlag forum about this as well.

Downloads:

Windows Installer
OSX build by Constitution (NOTE: Probably Intel only, Snow Leopard only, 64-bit only.)
OSX build by mrapple (NOTE: Intel Only, should work on Leopard, and Snow Leopard)

As I don’t have an Intel Mac (much less a Mac that boots) I can’t verify the OSX builds will work as noted, soooo…. have fun! :)

If you encounter bugs or problems, please check if they have already been reported. Here are some places to look:

And feel free to mention/discuss the bugs (known or otherwise) on our #bzflag IRC channel. If you want to help contribute any fixes, that is welcome as well.

Happy tanking!

UPDATE: Removed “Tiger” from the note for mrapple’s OSX build. Someone reported it didn’t work on Tiger.

April Fools and BZFlag 2.0.16

blast — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 16:07:01 +0000

First off, I’d like to say that ALL server owners should upgrade to 2.0.16 as soon as possible. There was a security flaw found that allows player impersonation to occur. It was fixed in the server code as of late March. I would say a good chunk of the popular servers are already running recent enough code to prevent the exploit. But over half of the running servers are still using an older version.

So anyways, if you didn’t know, BZFlag 2.0.16 (named “No foolin”) is out. Source packages and a Windows installer are available for download. An OSX package may or may not happen. There are a couple notable new features in the client. There are a few other minor changes as well.

First, you can use the mouse to control the view in observer mode. If you are in either tracking (tank or flag) or roaming mode (press F8 to cycle modes), you can click and drag the mouse to control the view. You can use the left, right, and center (press the mouse wheel) to move differently. You can, of course, continue to use the arrow keys paired with the modifier keys for observer movement.

The second is a new feature back ported from the development code called “shot length”. This gives the bullets a different look. They will appear to have a tail. You can enable this feature by adjusting the Options > Effect Settings > Shot Length setting. View the full post for screenshots of the new bullets, as well as talk about my April Fools prank.

New style – Normal Bullet

New style – Superbullet

Here’s a comparison of the new and old style.

New style – Showing ricochet

Old style – Showing ricochet

A good number of you are probably aware of the April Fools joke I had on the server. It worked quite well. If anyone wasn’t on my server on the 1st, then you missed all the poorly typed sentences. I had effectively converted The AOLer Translator to a BZFlag server plugin. Anything that anyone said would get brutally converted into AOL speak. Here are some of my favorite parts (not in any specific order):

Burger King: Y MUST U BUTCHAR TEH 3NGLISH LANGUAEG

TASAIRES: MORE ADMIN!11!1!!1 LOL AND CHAT SARVER PROBLEM??!1!!111!!?!???!?!??! OMG LOL WHEN CAN FIX TAHT??!?!??! OMG WTF ;)

Blissarde: SI CAPS LOK ENABLAD ON DA SARV OR SOMETHIN?!!?! WTF

sleepyman: MAH TYPIGN SI BIGN CHANG3D ON SCREN

Animal Lover: MAYB IF I TYPE EVERYTHIGN IN CAPS 2 BGIN WITH IT WIL APEAR SMAL
Animal Lover: NAVERMIND

ekko.: AXCUES ME?!??!? OMG WTF
ekko.: WAIRD I DIDNT SAY TAHT
ekko.: WTH LOL
ekko.: SOMATHIGNS WRONG WIT MAH COMPUTER SORYY
think_tank: liar
ekko.: Y DO U THINK IM TYPIGN LIEK THES DUMB DUMB?!!!!??!! WTF LOL

genotronic: WUT SI HAP3NIGN I DONT HAEV CAPS ON BUT I SE AL IN CAPS

moonlight: IMM NOT WRITIGN THES IN CAPS BUT I DUNO Y ITS COMIGN OUT IN CAPS.!!1111!1!!! OMG LOL
moonlight: ALRIGHT SOMEONA HAEXD THES S3RV3R

Well, you get the idea. It was hilarious. It also made people say random things when they capped a flag, and all tanks spawned 4 units in the air.

BZWorkBench r20937 Win32 Build

blast — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 21:21:44 +0000

We recently picked up a new developer named Runic that had started off by submitting some great patches to the BZWorkBench project. Since been given commit access, he’s added and fixed a good number of things. Here is some screenshots:

Some of the objects don't show up properly, but it looks way better than it used to. Previous to Runic's fixes, I think everything showed up white.

More screenshots, information and download links in the full article.

You can see it is properly loading remote textures! Awesome!

It isn't perfect yet. You can see the fake ground looks like water instead. Also, I had to comment out the waterLevel object in the map file, as that isn't yet supported.

Here are the notable fixes:

fix to allow per face matref to be parsed for pyramids in bzwb (Runic)
add support for parsing “passable” attribute (Runic)
mesh now outputs drivethrough and/or shootthrough (Runic)
Added an XCode project for building on OSX. (Runic)
Proper build system on Linux (BulletCatcher)
Added support for downloading and displaying textures from remote URLs. (Runic)

See that last one? Yeah, BZWorkBench will now download textures from remote URLs when specified within the materials of a map file! This is an awesome addition.

Anyways, I have an updated binary online. Just like before, there is no installer. Download and extract the ZIP file and run it. This is built from the stock SVN revision 20937code. You will need the Visual C++ 2008 SP1 runtime, which I have linked below as well.

Download BZWorkbench r20937Win32

Download Visual C++ 2008 SP1 ATL runtime

As always, please report any bugs or issues to theofficial BZFlag bug tracker, and/or discuss them on the #BZFlag IRC channel. Linux and OSX users can build from source.

Plugin release – teamFlagControl 0.1

blast — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 04:55:45 +0000

I’ve been toying with the idea of a plugin that can control various aspects of the team flag in CTF mode. Well, as of today, I have the first release of that plugin available. It’s pretty basic so far. Currently it only has one feature. It can control where the team flag will spawn. A new object of type ‘teamflagspawnzone’ will need to be added to the map. A lot more detail is available in the README file provided with the source. You can download the plugin in the full article.

IMPORTANT: This plugin will NOT work for a any of the officially released 2.0.x servers. A bug in bzfs prevented team flags from being moved via the plugin API. I did commit the change (8 days ago) to the official BZFlag SVN repository under the v2_0branch. So you have two options. You can eitherbuild the latest v2_0branch code (get v2_0branch, not trunk). Or you can manuallypatch your code base. Because of the changes required, it will not be possible for someone to compile this for 2.0.12, 2.0.10, 2.0.8, or anything older.

Read the README file for more information, including an example of how to use the plugin.

Download teamFlagControl 0.1

View teamFlagControl code online

Optimally, you should download the copy from Subversion directly. If you pull it from the trunk repository, you can easily update it to the bleeding edge version as I add features and improve it. You can do so by running:

svn co https://svn.porteighty.org/public/bzflag-plugins/trunk/teamFlagControl/

I’m not going to cover how to build BZFlag or how to add plugins to the build system. This is something that should already be covered on the official BZFlag forum or the wiki, so please search around.

BZWorkBench on Linux

blast — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:03:07 +0000

A few days after posting the Windows build of BZWorkBench, I was able to fix the build on Linux. There are still some issues with building on Mac OSX, but I can’t debug that as I don’t have OSX. Anyway, here are the steps for compiling on Ubuntu 9.04. It should be similar for other distributions. Instructions are in the full article.

Here’s an example with HiX loaded:

BZWorkbench on Ubuntu 9.04 with the HiX map loaded.

The first step is to install the various build dependencies that are required (Adjust this as required for your distribution):

sudo aptitude install subversion g++ libopenscenegraph-dev libfltk1.1-dev

Then we will check out a copy of the latest source code from SVN:

svn co https://bzflag.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/bzflag/trunk/bzworkbench/ bzworkbench

Then we will change directory into the Debug folder:

cd bzworkbench/Debug

Then we will start the build process:

make

Once this is done, there should not be any error messages showing. Of course, if there is, you’ll have to determine why. Or you could ask on the BZFlag forum or the BZFlag IRC channel for assistance.

We should then be able to change directory into the root of the source:

cd ..

Then we can run the binary using this command:

./Debug/bzworkbench

You should then be presented with a screen that looks like this:

BZWorkbench on Ubuntu 9.04

You can then load up an existing map file, or create a new one. Not every 2.0.x feature is supported. For instance, ‘group’ and ‘define’ are not yet supported. But this editor does have support for a lot of the features.