Official forums for BZFlag.org

Over at Planet MoFo we like to keep things moving forward.
Looking towards that goal, we plan to make several minor changes during the next week or three. Expect to see a lot of small changes, some weapon variables, and some map tweaks.

Some of the things you might see:
1. We want to make wings a little less powerful. You may have already noticed some changes to wings. There are several variables that interact to produce wings' behavior. Me may experiment with several combinations before arriving on a new permanent wings setting.
2. Guided missile will be upgraded slightly. We want to see more pwning with GM, (but not on the corner-roofs) We don't want to eliminate the corner-roofs, but may take actions to reduce the ease with which players may camp with GM on the corner-roofs. (Perhaps lower them to be even in heighth with the second cake layer?)
3. Burrow may be changed slightly, depending on how wings and missile turn out. Maybe improved, maybe weakened. We'll see.
4. Machine Gun. working with machine gun has always been a problem, you get those shots that ricochet forever, or some clients don't pick up the changes. We're gonna try one more time to get MG right.
5. The eight pyramids will be changed, they will still be pyramids, just different.
6. Perhaps more of the oscillation-overthruser "cages" like are in the center cake now. This is definitely a maybe. We will experiment with it, to see how it works.
7. Other small changes.

That's it for now, I am posting this because we want to hear your opinion. If you've got one, please tell us what it is.

Yeah I saw yesterday or a few days ago when you were testing out limiting wings jumps. It's a good idea, especially to reduce the amount of wing hoggers who jump really high and do nothing.

Adjusting wings is long overdue...also machine gun has always been like a useless flag for me.I have talked about that before and I'm glad to see some change will be made to it..perhaps longer range but with limited bullets,hmmm 100? Geno is a staple on mofo and perhaps it could be on top of the cake with random OO flags so you drop to the bottom.Or even penalty flags..not sure which.Pehaps a random OO cage in a corner?I also think that burrow can be just as lethal as wings and any good player can dominate with it, maybe again, a limited shot count.Back to geno, don't change it,meaning,unlimited geno is cool for mofo,the owner of unlimited geno doesn't last long but a few lucky shots can cause great damage.

I agree on the whole geno thing,I always hunt someone with geno on mofo since im usually rouge,depending on who it is i can usually stop them and take geno,then shoot myself since im rouge But,on the wings thing,maybe add a few more jumps but not unlimited, last time i was on mofo wg was kinda useless with just 5 jumps,since most of the time someone has laser gm or sw so it's hard to kill someone and avoid all those enemy shots with just 5 jumps,maybe try 15? Now,burrow is a great flag on mofo since you move faster then a normal tank,so the only way to stop it would be high speed or agility,if you want to make it less powerful maybe make it slower so it's not an easy target and is still a threat,but not to fast to where all you can do is stop it is use sw,gm,high speed,or agility. On the whole osculation overthruster thing,i never thought it was that good until i found out about the cages one month earlier,so now i use it whenever i get it,but since all the cages are in the middle it's easy for an sw camper to kill you,so maybe one or two more cages in one of the corners wouldn't be a bad idea...

Our mission at Planet MoFo is to deliver you a stronger, higher powered game with lots of action. If you want shot limits and something a little more watered down, go play somewhere else. You can always count on our BU to be a notch above, our shockwaves a little bigger, and our tiny just a hair smaller. We'd make NARROW more narrower if we could.

We appreciate any and all input you have to give.

Here it comes, the NEW MAP is almost ready... Sometime this week it will make it's premier on port 4200. This will be the fourth
major revision to the Passion Map. It's still the same general pattern, one big center cake, 8 pyramids and 8 boxes,
but everything is different. Some changes will affect gameplay, and it will be prettier.

Cake Section
The center cake has been improved for both game play and eye candy. The center tunnels have a small diagonal section that will ricochet shots in new ways.
The center of the tunnels can be jumped through!
You can fire in any direction out of the oscillation "cages."
All three sections are the cake are exactly the same, just scaled down as you move up. The middle section is 75% scaled, the top is 60% scaled.
There is more room to move along the outer edges. This means the O-O-cages work on all three levels!
There are "collums" to hold up the cake sections, these are completely decorative, and do not affect play at all.

Crosses:
The crosses have new functionality. Easier to get to them, and camp there. This has to be seen to be believed.

Pentamids:
The pyramids are now five sided. (pentamids?) They are now Oscillation cages, meaning players with O-O can
go into the pyrs, and fire out. This will give OO some new options, lots of places to hide! but...
Burrow can fire straight through the pyramids. I'm not sure how this burrow feature will play, it might make
burrow more powerful than it already is, so this feature might disappear sometime in the future.Burrow is already the best flag if you ask me.
There is a section of the pentamid right at ricochet level, that is twisted in such a way that shots
ricochet in a seemingly random way, I am hoping that this proves dangerous to players with wings.

Corner and Side Boxes:
The corner and side boxes are the same, I couldn't come up with anything good enough to use, I have some ideas,
but do not want to change the ricochet in these locations. Just added eye candy. BUT....
The roofs over the corner boxes have been lowered to the same level as the second cake level, PLUS ONE HALF UNIT.
We really need to see how this plays, before coming to a final decision on the exact placement of these roofs. It's gonna change the way the corners play pretty signifigantly...
not sure if it will be better or worse yet.

Teleporters
Unchanged. The last change to the teles worked out really well.

Eye Candy:
We have a new brick texture, new roof texture, new ceiling texture... say goodbye to tired old boxwall.png!
I made some moving textures, these look best at night!
Extensive use of the drawinfo mapping technique should increase rendering speed (FPS), especially for slower computers. My calculations show a 30 percent increase in FPS
Almost everything is drawinfo.



You can see it now on MoFo port 4299.

Optic Delusion
My eyes are bleeding from the nearest texture setting.

Anyways, checked out the map earlier today. Looks good. A bit flashy, but has some interesting gameplay aspects.

I fixed some lighting effects, still not satisfied with them... but we moved this new map to the 4200 server. It's now the official mofo map. Passion V.4

It's pretty bug-free, i found one spot were a tank can get stuck, in the center of the cake. and once in a while a flag get through the invisible no-spawn pyramids i made on the corner roofs and pentamids.
If anybody notices another map bug, please let me know.

And we always like to hear from you, any and all comments are welcome.

I like what you've done with the place!

The additional OO cages in the pyramids are especially nice. Got shot by someone burrowed while I was in there, that seems to balance them quite well.

I like the lowered roofs on the corer boxes. Gotta re-learn how to laser or thief the campers up there, though.

Not sure about the cake changes yet. It seems a bit busy now. The second level (?) is awfully narrow as well. Give me a few more hours, tho, it could grow on me.

OO pyra cages ftw!

Optic, last time I looked wings was limited to 3 jumps. This is a shame because it completely removes the possibility of dogfights. I don't think wings was so powerful that it needed to be downgraded, and I miss the dogfights (actually I miss Mofo - see latest pm).

Otherwise, like most of the changes, esp the pentamids.

Drop

We had our Halloween map for almost a week, It was the same halloween map as last year, I just added a great pumpkin, charlie brown.
I got a lot of compliments on the drawinfo, thankyou for that. I'm happy to know my work is being appreciated.
I'm hoping to do more for Christmas. Last year's map was good, but had lots of room for improvement.


Now Free For All Mode is Back.

I changed the corner roofs, two have been returned to their original height, and two have been kept at the lower, jump-able height.
This is pretty controversial. I hate to break the symmetry, but i feel that it makes the the less boring, you have to look and see where
you are, before you make a move in the corner

The teleporter links have a changed. It used to be back-to-back, now it's back-to-front. This should make shockwave camping a lot
harder, once players realize they can shoot through there, and make a hit. This change will stay, it's a good change.

Laser has been changed, but i'm not very happy with the settings, they will be changed again. I'm trying to get the distance laser
travels to be about 1700 units. (the playfield is 800 units on a side, fence-to-fence)

The center cake has been rotated 45 degrees, back to it's "normal" position.

As for _wingsJumpCount being lowered to 3.... This is pretty controversial too. There are strong factions lobbying for a return to infinite
wings jumps. My goal is to make play as fast as possible. Having players fly away, never to be seen again simply slows down play for
the rest. I'd rather force them to make a decision about where they are ging to land, NOW. Just being able to turn while youatr in the air is a pretty big advantage.
Dogfights suck, they screw up the radar for all the players, and deny eveybody else the chance to kill you.
All through it's history mofo has sought to make play faster and stronger, dogfights slow it down.

When i went to the corners they seem to slow down jumping/dropping. I mean hugging the wall against the corner platform...It's like there's an invisible wall there which prevents you from jumping up sometimes and when you drop you drop really slowly, like bit by bit...Is that deliberate or a bug?

That's the barbed wire fence.
There is an invisible part of it, for ricochets. You can see the flash just barely.
You can (almost) hide behind it with tiny.

actually i wasn't talking about the fence on the platforms, anyways i just went and checked it out, what i was talking about seems to have been fixed, so no worries

All new center cake today, by Spazzy Mcgee.
There is a new Oscillation cage in the exact center, allows you to control tunnel access from all sides, should be pretty wicked for the OO fools.
The second level goes back in time, now it's a corner-to-corner X that allows laser to shoot thru.
The third level has four tunnels instead of 2, should make it easier to escape attackers when your up there. This is a big change.
Lots of new graffiti, and spaz prepared spots for even more. "This Space For Rent"
Light Bulbs in the tunnels.

Hopefully, we have fixed the problem with flags/players spawning inside the OO cage, and that spot where you could get stuck if you jumped into the wall.

One litle easter egg, i'm not telling what it is.

Added some new grafiti today. Me1, Zaphod.

Did away with the burrow shoot-through zone under the pyramids. Easier for OO, but might bite the burrow back with ricochet. This is a new type of ricochet that's never before been seen on Planet MoFo. We'll see how it plays out for awhile, maybe keep maybe not. This has already been changed 4 times.

Added a nice big Darth Vader Tie Fighter that comes swooping through the field every four minutes. I'm pretty happy with it. Maybe i'll try to improve the materials for better night-time viewing.

For the future...
Tested the Missles plugin and it still works. There will be a special "Cupid's Arrow" map for Valentines Day. .. Possibly in conjunction with rabbit mode.

4 team CTF this weekend, hopefully it will be 100 percent bug free. Last time i ran CTF it was 99.8% bug free.

On CTF, I was having problems with linux players spawning a tiny bit low, sealed inside the base. (the floating point error? 32 bit compiled app running on 64 bit machine? I'm not sure what causes it.)
I reverted to having old-style bases only. Hopefully this fixes it.