tank able to drive on a slope

[Dr Robotnik]

I realize that this idea has most likely been suggested in the past. With modeled maps becoming common, with 3d terrain, it should be possible to drive up and down sloped surfaces.
It is extremely unrealistic that a tank can not drive up or down a non steep incline. But, I also understand that adding sloped driving would most likely mean major mods to the physics engine.

[JeffM]

that is something that is specifically disallowed for design reasons not technical ones. Having the tank tilt makes aiming impossible with out a movable turret. BZ is not a tank simulator so it is not realistic The goal set forth by Tim is that it should be simple to play.

[Ragnarok]

I guess that it could only be possible on ramps, so people couldn't camp too much. I would be very interesting. Either it could do that, or you could make it so that you can not shoot while on a slope, and you can't get shot either. You could set it that if you stay on it a certain amount of time(depending on how long the ramp is), you will die. It would act very much like a self destruct that you can't turn off unless you get off of it.

[blast]

I guess that it could only be possible on ramps, so people couldn't camp too much. I would be very interesting. Either it could do that, or you could make it so that you can not shoot while on a slope, and you can't get shot either. You could set it that if you stay on it a certain amount of time(depending on how long the ramp is), you will die. It would act very much like a self destruct that you can't turn off unless you get off of it.

None of that seems to make any logical sense. Why would a tank explode from being on a ramp too long? And then at the same time they would be invulnerable?

Tanks will never tilt in BZFlag. Turrets will not turn. Both of these are design decisions.

[Runic]

I wrote code that does this already.

Came out of from work I was doing to improve the _maxBumpHeight functionality. It did not change the tanks angle, pitch or roll in any way, but allowed the tank to drive up slopes. Look just like a tank going up an escalator, but with better player control. The game does have support for escalators, so I really don't get why ramps are so bad, as long as the tanks pitch or roll is not changed. Allowing tanks to drive up a slopes solved allot of the issues I was finding with making _maxBumpHeight work well on mesh objects.

But to do this I had to remove one the the game rules. Namely the rule that a tank should not be bumped up if it hits the side of a object while inAir. Which was critical in making the bump code work correctly. Some of the other devs noticed this and put it back in, which in turn made my committed changes to _maxBumpHeight very much lame again. This stopped me from continuing to fix the _maxBumpHeight behavior, as the changes that I had planned on committing next were to fix the light speed bump to the top of the obstacle and allowing driving up slopes. which both relied on the the removal of the !InAir test.

My initial goal was to just make _maxBumpHeight work for boxes with textures and other mesh objects, as this always bothered me that it didn't work. I did reach this goal in BZFlag 2.99 code, but it doesn't work as well now that the !inAir rule has been put back, but _maxBumpHeight is working somewhat on mesh objects now in 2.99.

My long term goal was to make it so each object could have it's own _maxBumpHeight setting, so things like ladders and ramps could be made and allow map makers to have better control over _maxBumpHeight on a per object basis. (this long term goal was only an idea, no planning or code was ever done.)

I understand the other devs want to uphold this game rule, and I'm sure the issue could be worked out with some time and effort. But, when I told the other devs about where I was headed with it. I was told first not to do it at all. And then a little later not until BZFlag 4. (aka another 6 years to never) So, I stopped working on it. I could still do some cleanup on the code that is there.

The code in BZFlag 2.x and 3.x now that attempts to block _maxBumpHeight in the InAir situation is somewhat flawed. It will block the bump up most of the time, but a bump up is still possible at times, although it will be a several frames late if it does happen and looks very weird to both the player and his opponents.

Have you ever hit the side of a box and then all of a sudden found yourself on the top of that box,
if you have then you experienced this flaw.

[JeffM]

the max bump was intended to let a tank go from one object to another within that range, not drive up a tilted object with that slope.

Tanks should not be able to drive on surfaces that are not level "ish" ( as in they should have a normal of 0,0,1)

[Runic]

So as I'm sure you can see now, the core developers will most likely never allow this to be added to BZFlag. The only way I see this ever happening is if someone forks the BZFlag project into a new project not under their control. Forking BZFlag would not be to difficult, but getting a new player base most likely would be.

Although, to be fair, I have never tried talking to Tim about it, to see where he really stands on this subject.

Bullet Catcher was the only one that seem to be "interested in" / "supportive of" my ideas on this subject.

[JeffM]

Oh yeah it it could/should totally go into another game that is based on BZFlag . That game would just not be BZFlag anymore, but that isn't a bad thing.
It would be a fun game if turret control was added in addition to the tilt, then tilting up or down would not make it impossible to aim.

I think BZFlag needs a fork or something to survive. The nature of open source is for projects to evolve like that.

[Runic]

Open source projects can evolve just fine without being forked, if it's allowed by the Project Leaders.

Forked projects usually die fairly quickly, unless they have a dedicated team that does not lose interest.

No one mentioned tilting the tank, except for you JeffM.

This can be done without tilting the tank, tanks can sit on a slope now and shoot at other tanks, I don't see where being able to move up that slope would break anything game play wise in BZFlag as long as tilting the tank remains not allowed. In fact, I think it would improve game play and would get rid of the bugginess in _maxBumpHeight. I have seen this asked for over and over by different players over the years. It really seems strange to me that a tank can drive over a small box but not a small triangle or prism shaped object.

[JeffM]

I agree with you for shallow angles.

[Bullet Catcher]

I see Runic's proposed change as roughly equivalent to the addition of the Wings flag in the 2.0.0 release. Some people will never like it, but since its use is under control of the map maker the game will remain unchanged for those who choose not to use such a feature.

None of this really matters if the developers won't make the effort to get the regression bugs out of 3.0 so we can release it.

[Ragnarok]

No one mentioned tilting the tank, except for you JeffM.

This can be done without tilting the tank, tanks can sit on a slope now and shoot at other tanks, I don't see where being able to move up that slope would break anything game play wise in BZFlag as long as tilting the tank remains not allowed. In fact, I think it would improve game play and would get rid of the bugginess in _maxBumpHeight. I have seen this asked for over and over by different players over the years. It really seems strange to me that a tank can drive over a small box but not a small triangle or prism shaped object.

Oh yeah it it could/should totally go into another game that is based on BZFlag . That game would just not be BZFlag anymore, but that isn't a bad thing.
It would be a fun game if turret control was added in addition to the tilt, then tilting up or down would not make it impossible to aim.

I think BZFlag needs a fork or something to survive. The nature of open source is for projects to evolve like that.

I guess for a fork, you could make a much more realistic tank game with maybe destroyable terrain; as you said, tilting tanks and turrets; treads that are partially loose, so that your tank can stay level on bumpy terrain(and maybe even to annoy people with getting them stuck on certain pointy terrain. You could also add the ability to either get out of your tank and have building that you could go into and snipe out of, or be able to get into a different type of vehicle, like a boat or plane. It would be completely different from BZflags as it is now, but it would be good for the company(not entirely sure if it is a company, but you know what i mean). Some people might not like BZflags, but they might like something like this.

[Bambino]

That wouldn't even be close to BZFlag. That is a whole new game and you might as well start from scratch. BZFlag is not a company, it's a project.