The other day I tried BZFlag in "Windowed" mode on my PC (Windows 2000 machine). It occurred to me that it might be nice to have significantly smaller windows, each in observer mode on (collectively) all games that have active players.
I picture a sort of grid of these, similar to the banks of TV monitors you see in building security offices. Perhaps you could get into a given game by clicking on it, or you could bring up the names & scores of players.
The advantages are that you could see the map and the style of action, and have a larger sense of what's going on in the entire (public) BZFlag world. A disadvantage of course is that you're an observer to all these worlds, which might impose overhead - although it could be a restricted sort of observer mode - perhaps always driving with the lead scorer, no roaming allowed.
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The Purple Panzer
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I proposed pretty much the same thing about a year ago. Should have seen the comments. 
If nothing else, you'd probably need a DS-3 or an OC-3 to provide sufficient bandwidth.
That aside, yes, it would be really slick.
If nothing else, you'd probably need a DS-3 or an OC-3 to provide sufficient bandwidth.
That aside, yes, it would be really slick.
-toaster
"So there I was, all alone, facing all of the enemy. I started driving in circles, until I had them surrounded, and then I escaped in the confusion."
"So there I was, all alone, facing all of the enemy. I started driving in circles, until I had them surrounded, and then I escaped in the confusion."
How do you figure that, Pat?
If I'm sitting at home in front of my client computer, and I'm watching games on a dozen different servers at once, with hundreds of players, don't I have to have live connections to each of those servers and be receiving the server updates from each?
Granted, that would be mostly one-way bandwidth as I would be in observer mode. But wouldn't that be roughly a dozen times normal observer bandwidth, because a dozen servers are transmitting to the client, to be able to see a dozen games live?
And if you're following Purple Panzer's idea of watching "all games that have active players" you could be looking at 30 servers on some days.
Since when has the game client had playerstate for all servers currently running? It's not in the CVS source I'm looking at, but perhaps you devs have other things going on.
If I'm sitting at home in front of my client computer, and I'm watching games on a dozen different servers at once, with hundreds of players, don't I have to have live connections to each of those servers and be receiving the server updates from each?
Granted, that would be mostly one-way bandwidth as I would be in observer mode. But wouldn't that be roughly a dozen times normal observer bandwidth, because a dozen servers are transmitting to the client, to be able to see a dozen games live?
And if you're following Purple Panzer's idea of watching "all games that have active players" you could be looking at 30 servers on some days.
Since when has the game client had playerstate for all servers currently running? It's not in the CVS source I'm looking at, but perhaps you devs have other things going on.
-toaster
"So there I was, all alone, facing all of the enemy. I started driving in circles, until I had them surrounded, and then I escaped in the confusion."
"So there I was, all alone, facing all of the enemy. I started driving in circles, until I had them surrounded, and then I escaped in the confusion."