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Review: BZFlag 3D Tank Game
GonzoJohn writes "LinuxOrbit.com reviews the 3D Tank game BZFlag. 'Have you ever been walking down the street, minding your own business, and suddenly look down to find something you hadn't expected? It might be money, it might be a decoder ring, it could be anything. But the almost universal reaction is pleasurable. 'That's a nice surprise,' you think as you stoop and pocket whatever good fortune has dropped in your path. The same thing can happen in the strangest places. For example, a recent post on our message boards inquired, 'What's your favorite flag in bzflag?'. Not being familiar with the game, I had to ask "What's bzflag?' Little did I know that such an innocent inquiry would result in an almost indecent obsession with a very cool game.'"
If I looked down and saw something I hadn't expected, I think I'd close my zipper.
linux games need better names. bzflag sounds like a compression utility or something. i bet we'd all be playing it if it was called something like 'armoured smashing-fist 2000', not bzip2.
http://www.bzflag.org/
I'm not surprised about the addiction. It was so good for its time, even in its single-player mode, that the military took a look at it to train its troops.
Based on Atari's BattleZone, it remains my favorite Video Arcade game.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
i became hooked on this game in school... a bunch (usually 8 or so) guys would stay after class to play until the kicked us out. this went on for the better part of four months.
but the best flag, imho, is stealth. guided missles are pretty good, but invariably, everyone teams up on the dude with missles. stealth allows you to act as an assasin - picking your targets on your own terms.
some would say this tactic is 'cheap' - i think cheap is getting missles and jumping onto the highest building and firing constantly. stealth isn't 'cheap', it's 'tactical'. 8^)
The CS Department at my school has a 24 hour access rule, meaning that when a good game of bzflag starts, nobody has to leave. These games start very randomly. If a bunch of people are sitting around the lab working on stuff, all there needs for a game is for one person to *cough* and say "bz." The next thing you know, there are 5 to 10 people signed in, with the first person starting the server. It is an amazing phenomenon.
As far as flags go, here are the best flags:
- Guided Missle - This flag is the best flag for longevity. Right click and then fire, you just killed someone.
- Laser flag - instant death from across the board.
- Stealth - When you are not on someone's radar, they get really pissed.
- Cloaking - It is hard for them to shoot at what they can't see.
- Narrow - You become two dimensional in a 3D world.
- Shock Wave - Everyone within a certain radius of you becomes no more!
There may be more flags, but those are the best on the version that we play with.BZFlag is an excellent example of a game which places gameplay above graphics. THe graphics are certainly not like Q3A, but instead made mostly of simple polygons. There are some interesting effects (such as the smoke from the Guided Missile) but clearly the focus is on gameplay.
:)
The gameplay is simply excellent! It is amazing how such a single game can produce such varied gameplay. For example, several friends and I have been playing BZFlag with max 1 shot delay and good flags only. Of course, each of us developed our own strategy and all was fine until we decided to increase the max shots to 5. Interestingly, all the strategies we used went to waste since they actively took advantage of the 1 shot reload delay. With 5 max shots delay, different flags became more important (ie SuperBullet is vastly more useful in 5 max shot delay).
All in all, this game is very addictive. Highly recommended
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The official BZFlag website dosen't ist the OS X version, but you can find the port Here (3.2MB)
If you play this game make sure to set UDP instead of TCP in preferences. TCP is just to slow, and the lag will make the game intolerable.
badness 10000
Actually, more proof that generating the same thing 10000 times isn't the brightest thing to do.
Make it once, save the resulting HTML. If the story changes, remake the static HTML.
More people don't notice 1million downloads of a static page (server wise, bandwidth is another story) -- but you certainly notice a couple million queries with php instances behind them.
Rod Taylor
It was an "official" event in the Linux section of Xuventude Galicia.net (only spanish and galician, sorry!), a LAN party born about 3 years ago here in Galicia (Spain). And there was another "almost official" tournament in the Arroutada Party (the mother of the galician LAN parties). I even partaked in this one (I was only a spectator on the Xuventude's one), and though I was quite The Ultimate Killing Machine in the "training games" (being first almost all the time), I only was the 3rd on the oficcial game. Man, do I suck :-/ ;-)
Anyway, everyone had a fun time, as I've been told :-) The game is very network-friendly, and very addictive. Some game balance problems that people tell happen because they allowed too many "special options", IMHO. We just played with flags, and no other option (i.e.: no jumping, only 1 shot each time, and so on). That way, game is quite balanced, though if you get the Guided Missile flag, the Stealth flag or the Laser flag, you can be the ruler of the game for a long time :-)
The Laser flag is my favourite, and specially fun when you play with shots being all ricochet. Well, at least it's fun until you kill yourself for firing straight against a wall. Ouch :-)
Stealth flag is fun, yes, but Real Men (tm) play guided by their radars, and not their eyes (Or was Stealth the flag that didn't show you on the Radar? I don't remember now :-m) Use of The Force and any other special powers is also encouraged, or course :-)
Anyway, speedwise it sucks in my P2-366 Compaq Armada 3500 :-/ I think it's because of the graphic card, but haven't looked at it deeply. Well, it absolutely rocks in my Athlon 800 with GF2MX, at least ;-)
My weblog in spanish
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my sig's at the bottom of the page.
This is really a gem of a game but I urge people setting up servers not to do the easy thing and hike up the shots to 10 or something and allow jumping.
The game is *much much* more fun without jumping, though it doesn't immediately seem so. You start to learn how to drive correctly and defensively and it is a much richer experience.
Games with and without these options can be described as follows:
With jumping and lots of bullets: You spend most of your time jumping up in the air dodging other people's sprays of bullts, spinning around and landing in directions you just don't want to land in.
Without jumping and lots of bullets: You actually can play cat and mouse. When your opponent's 2 shots are gone and you've dodged them, you can release at will. Much more interesting game. The other is just silly, but that's how people tend to start and they never learn better.