Official forums for BZFlag.org

I spoke with trepan about this and it is not really possible - the timing for the world weapons is cumulative, not based on the same timing as dynamic colors. I will pursue other methods of warning about the world weapon - maybe another 'harmless' world weapon to signal the damaging world weapon.

Does anyone know if it is possible to exactly synchronize a world weapon with an alpha sequence in a dynamic color definition? I am trying to create a numeric countdown (animated using alpha sequence - similar to the butterfly in Mystic Valley) that will count down the seconds to a world weapon. 5, ...

I have had problems with that on my LegoLand map - the only way I could fix it was to define the object as one big mesh instead of trying to build it by replicating and rotating smaller objects.

The norang servers are a blessing, not only to me, but to many other map makers out there that have maps hosted on his servers. Thumper has graciously spent a great deal of time setting up these servers and we should all be grateful that he does so. He has a fairly sophisticated system set up with s...

Attached is Revision 1 of 'Desktop' and a few screenshots. It is up and running at louman.bzflag.bz:2805. A few notes: 1) There are 34 textures for a grand total of 1.61 MB for the map; the initial join time may be delayed a bit, but should be relatively fast thereafter. 2) The map is best played/vi...

You don't need to mess with tank sizes - just make everything else huge

Attached is Rabbit Hunt and CTF versions of the map, if anyone is interested.

-and thanks for the positive feedback

Attached is "The Hive" map file and screenshots. The map is currently running at louman.bzflag.bz:2809 (thanks Thumper!)

NOTE: (Updated 03/22/06, 11:00 pm EST, with Revision 1)
(Updated 03/23/06 3:43 pm EST, with Revision 2 - bee kills you)

Yours would work Inferno, with the following changes: material name PyrWalls addtexture mesh.png diffuse .75 .75 .75 .25 end define spawnPyr mesh drivethrough matref PyrWalls # added for transparency vertex 0 0 1 vertex -1 -1 0 vertex -1 1 0 vertex 1 1 0 vertex 1 -1 0 face vertices 0 1 2 shootthroug...

This is a simple pyramid as I described with 4 sides, 20 meters x 20 meters base and 20 meters high. If you want to use this directly, you can scale your group instance of the object to suit. You can shoot and drive out of this pyramid, but not vice-versa.

If your pod walls have opposing faces, e.g. (inside) |__| (outside) then simply make the inside wall shootthrough. The shots will go through first wall (facing inside) because of shootthrough property and since 2nd wall is facing the opposite direction from the shot direction, it will pass right thr...

It's unlikely that I'll be releasing any demo maps. The biggest change to map making will be the forced use of DrawInfo's for applying per-vertex colors, tangents, and binormals (the last two are required for normal mapping). Actually, custom attribtues can also be applied with DrawInfo's. If I und...

Any good place to start learning this structure and terminology? I've tried looking into a few basic OpenGL Shading Language tutorials, etc., but most of the examples I have seen are C++ type programs that do not contain any of the terminology in the materials.bzw or color.bzw files. In fact, I trie...

I experimented with the 'inside' coordinates with the 'BZFlag Rocks!' map I made some time ago and found that it drastically increased the intial time joining the game, but seemed to play ok (fps) after that. I don't know what this is caused by (never claimed to be a dev :wink: ); it was sufficientl...

Map making would go a lot faster for me if there was some sort of positive way to prevent flags / players from entering meshes due to jitter or other reasons. Almost every mesh I now make needs to have 2 additional invisible faces added to them: 1) A 'flag blocker' face (usually a drivethrough) cove...

Just when I thought I had it figured, trepan improves the graphics.

Very nice trepan - can't wait to start playing with it. Any chance of getting a few example map files to examine before the release hits?

Trepan is correct in that you must try to update your server program to the newest version to obtain this functionality. The zone flags in Laser Mania are fairly recent (November 2005?) - before that I just 'piled' the desired flags (GM, SW and ST) one on top of the other like this: options +f GM{20...

Very cool Thumper!

On one of those rare times when Laser Mania was empty, I was playing around and something strange happened. There I was, minding my own business, and this darn pig started chasing me around! I tried to shoot him with my laser, but it just bounced off! I have never seen anything like it and I know th...

Latest version (10.2) will not allow team flags to be dropped on spawn pods. See Laser Mania original thread for more details about the new version.

LaserMania Revision 10.3 is attached.

Difference from LaserMania Revision 10.2: fixed flag drop in tower issue.

UPDATE: latest Laser Mania release(s) are posted under original Laser Mania thread.

Food for thought: how about individal spawn zones, protected by small 'force fields' (drive-thru, but not shoot-thru - semi-transparent) - this would allow safe spawns, but not clutter the map excessively...

UPDATE: Poll is no longer required - see Version 10 info further down in this post. Thumper and I are polling to see which version of Laser Mania is preferred so that we can host the most popular version. Please vote for your favorite! Version 8.1: No small barriers protecting spawn areas Version 9....

Attached is Laser Mania Revision 9. I added small walls in spawn areas to cut down on the spawn/corner camping. I also cleaned up the spawn/flag zones quite a bit.

** UPDATED 2/22/06: made small barriers drivethrough.

Update: See below for latest revisions.