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I've been thinking about an idea. What if you could choose if your tank was a bit faster, but couldn't turn as fast, turns faster but can't move as quickly, or is just normal? You could expand that to having different teams have different characteristics, like red team moves faster,blue team turns better, green team gets a bit of both, purple team jumps a bit higher, rouge team gets a slight boost to everything. ( Of course, I'm getting a bit complicated there).

On the note of turrets- why not let players "plant" their tank. Then, you can rotate the turret, maybe a bit up, but not enough to become an Anti-Air cannon . *Wings guy takes off* *Planted laser guy spots him* *KABOOM!*
the tank is immobile, can be squished, and be shot, but GM only, like BU. You would hit the button (say q), your tank burrows to the point only the turret shows, then the thing can be rotated. Pushing again makes you come up. It takes about 2 seconds to do so. It could be a server option, as well as the height you can move the turret up, turning speed, burrowing time, the like. I'm guessing it's a bit too complicated

*boinkage*! wrote:What if you could choose if your tank was a bit faster, but couldn't turn as fast, turns faster but can't move as quickly, or is just normal?

Sounds like an easier way to get higher scores while using less skill.

*boinkage*! wrote:You could expand that to having different teams have different characteristics, like red team moves faster,blue team turns better, green team gets a bit of both, purple team jumps a bit higher, rouge team gets a slight boost to everything.

You can already do this to some effect, have players on a no-flag map spawn with a certain flag.

*boinkage*! wrote:On the note of turrets- why not let players "plant" their tank. Then, you can rotate the turret, maybe a bit up, but not enough to become an Anti-Air cannon

DTRemenak wrote:Things never to ask for:
Rotating Turrets - Another design decision. Rotating turrets will not be implemented simply because they make the game controls far too complex.

*Boinkage*! wrote:On the note of turrets- why not let players "plant" their tank. Then, you can rotate the turret, maybe a bit up, but not enough to become an Anti-Air cannon . *Wings guy takes off* *Planted laser guy spots him* *KABOOM!*

Why not just stop your tank, turn your whole tank, then (if the server has _shotsKeepVerticalVelocity) set appropriately, jump up and fire?

*Boinkage*! wrote:the tank is immobile, can be squished, and be shot, but GM only, like BU. You would hit the button (say q), your tank burrows to the point only the turret shows, then the thing can be rotated. Pushing again makes you come up. It takes about 2 seconds to do so. It could be a server option, as well as the height you can move the turret up, turning speed, burrowing time, the like.

Woah, getting pretty complicated. Technically there's nothing preventing regular shots from killing burrowed tanks except for the altitude. If a shot ricochets off of a pyramid, or _shotsKeepVerticalVelocity is set, a burrowed tank can be killed by regular shots. Making tanks invulnerable to specific kinds of shots would be very confusing to many people.

*Boinkage*! wrote:I'm guessing it's a bit too complicated

Yeah, probably so.

A Vicious Muffin

What I'm saying is the turret only rotates when the turret is planted.

Constitution

I suppose you could do that. Make the tank vulnerable to shots coming down, since I thought burrowed tanks were simply invulnerable. Silly me . The idea is especially for not velocity servers, and ones that have those annoying WGers! (Laser cannon, anyone?) You could try to shoot them out of the air.

*Boinkage*! wrote:... those annoying WGers! (Laser cannon, anyone?) You could try to shoot them out of the air.

And so you can. With Laser or Machine Gun or something. Check out WingsWizardry in the Divibox rotation at divi.fairserve.net:5155 for an example.

A Vicious Muffin wrote:

*boinkage*! wrote:You could expand that to having different teams have different characteristics, like red team moves faster,blue team turns better, green team gets a bit of both, purple team jumps a bit higher, rouge team gets a slight boost to everything.

You can already do this to some effect, have players on a no-flag map spawn with a certain flag.

Anyone remember Theme97's abilities? Apart from that it confused people, it was a good way to always play your favorite flag(s), and it worked best in CTF mode on the illegal Boxy Wars it first featured on.

I guess maybe I dont get the point of the proposed mode apart from this.

gnu-sense

I'm trying to get on Wings Wizardry, but it never seems to be on. Still trying. And gun-sense, that would actually work. You could give a specific team a certain flag that you mod to do just that.

*Boinkage*! wrote:I'm trying to get on Wings Wizardry, but it never seems to be on.

It's a rotation. If it's not on, and you're the only player present, leave and rejoin, which will advance the map. Repeat until WingsWizardry loads.

I did that. It seems to skip over WingsWizardry. Maybe I should pay more attention. Ill try more

*Boinkage*! wrote:I did that. It seems to skip over WingsWizardry. Maybe I should pay more attention. Ill try more

Hmm, oops, there was a bug in my rotation script that wouldn't allow the last map (alphabetically) to be selected. It has since been fixed. Thanks for the info.

Thanks, I'll check it now. I didn't know you hosted it .

Actually, this idea is the closest I've seen to a workable "moving turret" idea.

Instead of pressing a button to get it that way, though, you'd probably pick up a flag. Apart from the up-and down motion raising and lowering the turret instead of driving, it would be the same as burrow.

Well, the problem is if you were running... and SUDDENLY you get the turret flag. You get killed. Maybe the flag AND a button will do that, other wise it could be annoying

*Boinkage*! wrote:Well, the problem is if you were running... and SUDDENLY you get the turret flag. You get killed. Maybe the flag AND a button will do that, other wise it could be annoying

Well you can't really add another button that easily. And sometimes picking up a flag does kill you, like when you grab TH and you needed to shoot a flagless guy.

At least you have hope for him to not SR you with TH ;p. And you could add a button! six, seven, eight, nine, zero, insert, home, delete, end, anything really.

The problem with adding a button is that the client would have to be up to date for the flag to work. Anyone with an older client would just pick up the flag and go "huh?", since it's essentially another useless flag to them.

"plant" could be a slash command, though.

It would be cool if the next version had three or four "extra" buttons that didn't do anything by themselves, but that could be used to trigger something (like mines when you have the US flag). They would be called "function 1" through "function whatever" and mods could use them if they need a button.

Joe-Schmoe wrote:The problem with adding a button is that the client would have to be up to date for the flag to work. Anyone with an older client would just pick up the flag and go "huh?", since it's essentially another useless flag to them.

You can't add flags without modifying both the client and the server anyway. Adding flags breaks the protocol.

blast wrote:

Joe-Schmoe wrote:The problem with adding a button is that the client would have to be up to date for the flag to work. Anyone with an older client would just pick up the flag and go "huh?", since it's essentially another useless flag to them.

You can't add flags without modifying both the client and the server anyway. Adding flags breaks the protocol.

Ah, I didn't know that. But I suppose it could be another mod for the US flag.

Joe-Schmoe wrote:

blast wrote:

Joe-Schmoe wrote:The problem with adding a button is that the client would have to be up to date for the flag to work. Anyone with an older client would just pick up the flag and go "huh?", since it's essentially another useless flag to them.

You can't add flags without modifying both the client and the server anyway. Adding flags breaks the protocol.

Ah, I didn't know that. But I suppose it could be another mod for the US flag.

bzflag and bzfs handle various messages about the flags, e.g. when a flag is grabbed, dropped, reset, etc. The type of flag is indicated by an integer, and the client and server need to have the same interpretation of each integer value for things to work correctly. These interpretations are located in different places of various source files for each flag, so while flags can be added in principal, it is non-trivial to make these modifications.

Flag behaviors can be modified for any flag via the plugin API, in the manner of enigma's use of the US flag for mines. Plugins define the behavior of the server only, so there are still limits on what can be done, but for experimenting with gameplay, it's probably the best route.

gnu-sense