Should we renew the htfleague domain?

Longhair · Post by **Longhair** » Thu Sep 28, 2006 4:25 am

pyr0 asked me this evening if he should renew the htfleague.com domain.

The league has been defunct lately due to varying reasons. Is there interest in getting it going again, or is it enough to simply play the occasional HTF match for fun?

pyr0 · Post by **pyr0** » Thu Sep 28, 2006 4:57 am

i wouldnt mind doing some htf league play again, i never had a chance to do it before. when the league came around i was jumping job to job so stuck and didnt get to, but the domain goes the 30th if people dont want to try it again. if you do, ill renew it...

-pyr0

hookah · Post by **hookah** » Sat Sep 30, 2006 7:51 am

heh how to register there?

EnderWiggin · Post by **EnderWiggin** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 4:13 pm

I would love to try

SportChick · Post by **SportChick** » Wed Dec 27, 2006 4:50 pm

It's true, it hasn't gotten much play lately, but I have enjoyed the htf matches we played and would love to play more. I'm not sure how much the domain cost him, but if it's not too much, why not?

SC

kc9foh · Post by **kc9foh** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 2:02 am

Count me in! As soon as I can get BZflag working on Vista!

Longhair · Post by **Longhair** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 2:55 am

Count me in! As soon as I can get BZflag working on Vista!

Okies, we'll look into it next year

Personally, I'm trying to decide if it's worth the trouble or not. We should certainly play some matches though. They are fun.

Grace F · Post by **Grace F** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 6:10 am

I'd like to come along too only i dont know what a HTF match is

Triumph of the Soul · Post by **Triumph of the Soul** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 7:11 am

Grace F wrote:I'd like to come along too only i dont know what a HTF match is

I don't know what it is either, but if I had to guess, I'd say it is a cross between Capture the Flag and Hunt the Rabbit... So Hunt the Flag maybe?

But seriously, I am slightly interested right now, but I might be more interested once I find out what it is.

Longhair · Post by **Longhair** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 1:43 pm

HTF stands for Hold the Flag or Hunt the Flagholder.

Here's how it works:

Any map you feel like playing on and has two bases of different colors works. All players are on the same team. The object of the game is to take your team's flag and bring it to the other color base, "capturing" your own team flag. Of course, the entire team blows up, and the whole process starts over. The individual player with the most captures after the agreed upon time expires is declared the winner.

Menotume wrote a snazzy plugin that takes care of the scorekeeping.

We also experimented with a few ideas like having more than one team flag, so you're racing to get your own copy of the flag to the other base. (I think I Died Once gets credit for that one)

Grace F · Post by **Grace F** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 7:59 pm

Oh i see. Sweet sounds fun

So you have to take your own flag and cap at the enemies base? Are you racing against your teammates too, are you meant to kill them?

Longhair · Post by **Longhair** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 12:39 am

Are you racing against your teammates too, are you meant to kill them?

That's the idea. Lots o' donkey noise

By the way, this game is not for you if you actually care what your lowest score records will be. Often, the person with the lowest score is the one who is winning.

Grace F · Post by **Grace F** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 1:02 am

Longhair wrote:That's the idea. Lots o' donkey noise

lol

Nah i dont care what my lowest score records are, the records arent that important to me. My lowest score is like -84

, it was on HIX after a match, we all joined the same team and were trying to cap our own flag at the enemies base as well as shooting eachother etc., so its pretty similar to this HTF aye?

CannonBallGuy · Post by **CannonBallGuy** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 10:25 am

What you just described IS HTF.

Grace F · Post by **Grace F** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 11:12 am

Oh yea no worries then

Are there like certain servers that this is played on?

Red Cobra · Post by **Red Cobra** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 12:17 pm

I was playing HTF with on GU the toehr day. I had a blast. It's actually very fast action gaming since everyone is trying to kill everyone for the flag. When you have for teams for CTF it's not that fun because you have two teams going against each other. (Not as much action) The HTF is a blast because once you get the flag you have like 8 people swarming around you and your the mouse and there the cat and you run like hell. (excuse my language) Please restart it. Though i'm interested what map do you use. GU was very fun when I played HTF on it.

Longhair · Post by **Longhair** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 3:11 pm

When the league was up and running, we mostly played on a Ducati style random map. 2 shots, the whole bit. My personal favorite was on the Adrenaline Factory map, with slightly souped up tank speeds and shot speeds. We played a few times HIX, and The Passion of the CTF.

There really was no official map, so long as it had two bases!

Grace F · Post by **Grace F** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 3:22 pm

Longhair wrote:There really was no official map, so long as it had two bases!

Oh ok, would be cool if there was 1 specifically designed for HTF.

ducatiwannabe · Post by **ducatiwannabe** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 9:14 pm

Never even knew there was a league

but hey, I have nothing against it coming back.

Lil Dog · Post by **Lil Dog** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 6:51 pm

Longhair wrote:When the league was up and running, we mostly played on a Ducati style random map. 2 shots, the whole bit. My personal favorite was on the Adrenaline Factory map, with slightly souped up tank speeds and shot speeds. We played a few times HIX, and The Passion of the CTF.

There really was no official map, so long as it had two bases!

When I played, I thought it was just for Ducati style maps, but lately people have been doing FM HTF on HIX, I aggree with Grace, a map made solely for HTF would be good, some thing new and fun, it would need to have auto team set, but max players on the CAP ONLY base would be 0, that way there is no mid game confusion with people hopping on opposing team and stopping that righteous cap..A poll would need to be taken on what it would look like, shot count and such.. Who would make it?

I think this is all a grand idea, if the HTF league came back, I would be all for it. /me cheers at Rebel Chikorita

Sir Lance-A-Lot · Post by **Sir Lance-A-Lot** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 8:08 pm

I havn't played HTF for years...

I would love to see it return - I'd be interested in joining the league and actually being active for once...Where is the league's website, may I ask?

Longhair · Post by **Longhair** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 12:19 am

Wow, seems to be a good bit of interest going on here

I coded the website about 1 1/2 years ago, long before I knew anything beyond basic HTML. Maybe now that I'm getting some skills together w/ PHP & MYSQL, I'll try putting something simple together. Probably nothing like the bzleague sites, but HTF doesn't really need such things, since there are no teams. Give me a few weeks to get around to it, unless somebody else wants to do it. (I really don't care which) If somebody DOES want to code it, I should still have all the old records from when the league was active.

There are a few other issues here. If you want to use the HTF plugin, which makes things way simpler to keep track of, you'll either need a dedicated server with a map and the plugin loaded, or a friendly admin on a server that has the plugin available. Ditto for any special maps you'd want to use. This, of course, will cost some $$$. When we last ran the league, I just left my home server up and running for the occasional match. My home server has a few troubles though. The bandwidth is plenty for the Ducati style matches, but I fear that it will bog down for servers with more shots and superflags. The other trouble is that I'm on a dynamic IP address that changes every three days or so. If you happen to have a match going when it changes, everyone gets disconnected, and can't reconnect for about 30 seconds. Needless to day, it screws everything up big time, but it is rare. On the upside, the matches weren't constantly going on like they are in the GU league. Maybe some ad hoc servers are enough. Personally, I don't have the funds to set up a dedicated server that is capable of running bzflag and Apache simultaneously. Apache, from what I'm told, makes EVERYTHING lag/jitter like crazy if it's run on the same box as a bzflag game.

Regarding maps, somebody DID make a perfectly good map specifically for HTF last year. Here's the forum post: http://my.bzflag.org/bb/viewtopic.php?t ... hlight=htf

Destroyer · Post by **Destroyer** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 6:51 am

I have rent a rootserver... If you guys want, i can host the server

and the website but i dont know when the serer is ready... he has said i must wait 1 until 2 weeks...

If i have the server i will say it and we can creat one

CannonBallGuy · Post by **CannonBallGuy** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 3:21 pm

I am guessing Destroyer's dedicated server is in Europe.
I can host servers on a dedicated in Ohio, USA.

It would probably be possible to set up a variety of different server configurations - ducati style, GU style, etc - and allow the players to choose whichever they want with the mapchange plugin.

Destroyer · Post by **Destroyer** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 7:08 pm

OK my server now aktive

Send me then the configs, plugins ect....