Official forums for BZFlag.org

It is my observation that the default settings work against new players while seasoned players get the advantage of both experience and enhanced settings. Let me explain:

- Shot lines are lagging and short by default, when virtually every experienced player has changed them to long(even longer than possible through the GUI!) and leading.
- Zoom is a function unknown to most players, while those who make use of it know it is essential.
- Mouse speed adjustment is critical for anyone playing with a mouse.
- Shooting multiple shots rapidly and accurately depends on either assigning multiple KB keys for shooting , or using the mouse wheel.

What I'm getting at is, new players should not be handicapped by unusable settings. So what would you think the defaults should be? Or would it be better to make changing settings more accessible (selecting from preset profiles for example)?

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Mouse speed isn't a BZFlag setting. As for zoom, you mean radar zoom levels? Those are shown in the key binding screen and the help menu. Shooting multiple shots rapidly is possible without multiple keyboard bindings. I use q and left mouse button.

Shot line length and size, in addition to leading/lagging, should probably be changed. Some alterations to the default keybindings might be good as well.

Maybe along with the default settings, there could also be a suggested setting, so that less experienced players can see what more experienced people find to be best.

blast wrote:Mouse speed isn't a BZFlag setting. As for zoom, you mean radar zoom levels? Those are shown in the key binding screen and the help menu.

I know, but I think informing new players of the possibilities in a helpful way would be a good idea.
For zooming, I use one key to toggle between short range and normal range based on key down or up state. This isn't achievable through the GUI.
Again maybe redesigning input config GUI to reveal these hidden features would help some.

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We don't need a video tutorial...

good point Etigah, I have never played a game that required me to change pre set settings in order for me to become better/ more competitive. All games give you the best configuration right out of the box, EXCEPT for the good old BZFLag. You hit the nail on the head. Every new player that joins league play sucks. The reason why that player sucks can usually be solved by fixing their config file. So why not have set profiles right when the game opens? One for competitive play via mouse and one for competitive play via keyboard and then a regular default setting. At least someone wouldn't have to take the time to learn how to open up there config. What games require someone with knowledge on how to navigate there computer? Most games you click on a desktop icon and play. This game should be no different. With every new player joining league player/ competitive play I find my self asking them, what is your mouse box size?, what is your shot size?, is your shot leading? do you have a pre set zoom? What are your fire keys? Why do you only have 2 fire keys?.. Yah you get the point. And a video tutorial would be a hell of a lot better than everyone taking the time to explain to every new player on what settings to change when they could simply watch a video that can point them in a right direction right off the rip.

A video tutorial is not better than just adding sane defaults, adding some in-game context sensitive help text, and writing proper documentation. And those are easy to update since it wouldn't require recording a whole video when we change something.

Yet another classic case of the best being the enemy of the good, where a positive effort is discouraged because if our game was less broken than it is then it wouldn't be necessary. We all know that the development pace is very slow, that it is difficult to do major refactoring in the code, and that in the current climate there would likely be no agreement on what "sane defaults" should be (or it would have happened long before now). So realistically, as long as this game is dying a long, painful death, with little actual progress toward saving it, community-provided aids that could help people get up to speed (which do not require programming skill to create) should be welcomed, not discouraged, even if they are a crutch that we shouldn't ideally need.

I don't think there's any need for "major refactoring" to do this.

well it's because of ideas like these that are so quickly shot down the game has died a painful death. It's disappointing. I just hope who ever decides to fork this game isn't like the current leadership and might listen to players a bit better.

There seems to be a trend around here... Players find and point to a developer and say, "CODE THIS PLZ" and if they don't do it then "the leadership doesn't listen to the players." This attitude needs to stop; it's getting us nowhere and instead is just causing tension.

Documenting on how to use and edit the configuration file would be the best approach as this can be updated easily by anyone from the community; for the more visual people, screenshots would help a lot and even those would be easy to update. I can see how blast's comments could seem like they are discouraging a positive effort but he's right; video tutorials are great but can become dated and are not easy to update/maintain since we do not have a dedicated group of people to do so. Regardless of discouraging a video, there is absolutely nothing stopping anyone from making video tutorials to help new players and adding them to the wiki or coming to talk with other developers on IRC to see how we can improve the main BZFlag website to be more new-user friendly. Instead of hoping for a fork (that will not be successful) and blaming the current leadership for not listening to players, do your part to help the community The developers ARE listening to the players, unfortunately all we hear are how we're not listening to the players... No one's actively working to improve such matters.

Getting back on topic, I agree that certain settings (e.g. shot lengths, leading/lagging shots) should be updated; however a lot of settings may be up to personal taste so deciding on what the defaults are may prove to be challenging. This discussion should move towards which settings should be updated and why (after all, that's the name of the topic).

Video tutorials are great, but in this case I think it wouldn't help a lot, as new players should not be expected to watch a video telling them to change the default settings to make the game playable. I think multiple settings profiles to chose between would probably work well enough.

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Here is my take on how the settings should be. I only use mouse to play, so my keyboard recommendations may be off -

General:
confine mouse: motionbox

Input:

- keyboard profile
fire: q,w (make more than 2 keys configurable?)
toggle zoom short: e (down=short, up=medium)
toggle zoom long: d (down long, up medium)

- mouse profile
fire: left button, wheel up
toggle zoom short: q (down short, up medium)
toggle zoom long: a (down long, up medium)

GUI:

- make the value of zoom levels configurable
short: 0.1
medium: 0.35
long 1.9

- profile 1:
radar size: medium
mousebox size: small
bullet size: medium
shot line style: lagging
shot line length: short

- profile 2:
radar size: large
mousebox size: medium
bullet size: medium
shot line style: leading
shot line length: medium

profile 3:
radar size: largest
mousebox size: meduim-large (+recommend to increase mouse speed)
bullet size: large
shot line style: leading
shot line length: long

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allejo wrote:There seems to be a trend around here... Players find and point to a developer and say, "CODE THIS PLZ" and if they don't do it then "the leadership doesn't listen to the players." This attitude needs to stop; it's getting us nowhere and instead is just causing tension..

Well this has been going on for a long time. And when the players are ignored when the players are the ones who play the game and know what is the best way to develop the game are continuous ignored for the past 10 years it would only be understandably right that there will be "tension" I appreciate what everyone does for this game, from the devs, to server owners, to the players. But devs can't code a game if there is no players, server owners won't host servers without players. So the most important person is the player, and if this game isn't attracting players maybe the game needs to be promoted to get some more developers on board that are willing to contribute to the game and listen to the players.

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Flak 18 wrote:Maybe starting a new topic in which experienced players post their configurations would be good.
This could make it simpler for players to base their settings on and to be able to easily try out which settings work best for them.

Instead of starting a new topic, tell other active players to post and discuss their configuration files here. After all, this topic has the intention of improving the defaults so having all of the players feedback in one location would be ideal. It'd really help us figure out what most players use and what they feel are important to have configured from the beginning.

There are league players who are far more adept with getting their configuration files to be "perfect" so hearing their feedback would be really valuable since some of the developers don't actually play as much or are not so familiar with how to use the configuration to get the best game experience.

In addition, if anyone is up for the challenge someone can create a website that will generate a user configuration file for players; there could be a step by step "tutorial" so to speak explaining key settings. I'd be happy to contribute to that but I'd need experienced players' feedback and recommendations (other than just Flak and etigah)

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Here's mine. I switch between keyboard and mouse depending on what map I'm playing, so I try to have all the functions immediately available to both keyboard and mouse. With my keyboard layout, pretty much all the playing controls except for steering are under my left hand, so I can steer with my right hand and not have to hunt for other stuff. With three firing keys, it's pretty easy to roll my fingers and fire triples.

I don't know if these are all good defaults for new players, since they probably will have some expectations like left mouse button for fire. It works well for me and several friends/siblings, though.

Keyboard:



Mouse:

As a quick note, if you're going to share your configuration, please share only the changes from the default configuration and a description of what the configuration options for. It'll be far easier to document and see what options are being used instead of looking through a lot of commented out options.

Bump. Since this is a recurring topic, I did hope to get something out of this thread... Can we get more feedback from more players? Or is this not of interest to players anymore?

I mean I know our player base is small but 3 or 4 shared configuration files isn't enough to go on.