Official forums for BZFlag.org

If BZFlag dies it's because it has lost its way. Instead of focusing on general gameplay and ease-of-play the newer releases have only been on focused on excluding people by voting bans and kicks, global bans, making camping impossible, censorship and registration. In the past BZFlag was easy to jump into and start playing immediately.The maps were simple and the admins were mostly nonexistent.

I noticed that the new 3.0 focuses mainly on visuals, ultra-complex maps and censorhip. If this continues only a few dozen hardcore players will remain, the ones who have grown with the game. Maybe someone should fork BZFlag and start anew, reverting back to its old simplistic roots. What we need is the good ol' turn-of-the-century BZFlag with no censorhip and no wings.

Godson2 wrote:If BZFlag dies it's because it has lost its way. Instead of focusing on general gameplay and ease-of-play the newer releases have only been on focused on excluding people by voting bans and kicks, global bans, making camping impossible, censorship and registration. In the past BZFlag was easy to jump into and start playing immediately.The maps were simple and the admins were mostly nonexistent.

I noticed that the new 3.0 focuses mainly on visuals, ultra-complex maps and censorhip. If this continues only a few dozen hardcore players will remain, the ones who have grown with the game. Maybe someone should fork BZFlag and start anew, reverting back to its old simplistic roots. What we need is the good ol' turn-of-the-century BZFlag with no censorhip and no wings.

• The poll system has existed since 1.10.0.
• The global ban system isn't really used at all anymore.
• Making "camping impossible" isn't anything to do with BZFlag development - that would be the map developers that decide that.

Anyways, let us know when you fork the game and make it all great and stuff.

The global ban system works, I can assure you.

Godson2 wrote:The global ban system works, I can assure you.

Uhm... you have never been globally banned, I CAN assure you. I think what you believe to be a global ban is actually just a server network (ie norang) propagating the ban from one of its maps across all of its maps/servers.

I never said it doesn't work. I said we don't really use it anymore.

Godson2 wrote:What we need is the good ol' turn-of-the-century BZFlag with no censorhip and no wings.

You may have to set up your own server to get the badwords filtering turned off. There are plenty of maps without wings (and even without jumping), but they aren't very popular any more. Maybe if you seed one (be the first player there) others will join and you'll have fun.

Cobra_Fast wrote:You could put a "Register Callsign" button on the bzflag.org front page which would then be pointing to the initial bb-registration site.

What about putting a register callsign button right the main screen when people open up the game?

Cobra_Fast wrote:

diing for the team wrote:I did not register until I went to boxy wars and you couldn't speak unless you were registered.

exact same thing happened to me.

Me too! I miss Boxy Wars

In-game registration is definitely something we want at some point. We also want registration to be it's own web application and not the forum registration.

It would be good for global groups to move out of the forum system. I imagine it to be a complex system now.

Dr Robotnik wrote:It would be good for global groups to move out of the forum system. I imagine it to be a complex system now.

Very true indeed.

Blast has written up two articles: http://my.bzflag.org/w/Group_Management_System laying out the group management system and http://my.bzflag.org/w/Web_Services/Player_Portal laying out the new registration/player information center

In the near future, the BZFlag admins want to move registration out of the forums and have the forums be, well, just forums.

Although this is a concept, if you have programming skills and want to help out, join #bzflag on irc.freenode.net and talk to blast about it.

I didn't write the initial version of the group management system documentation (nor most/any of the code for the group manager that had been started before). I just recently updated that page a bit.

zaphod wrote:sorry ::: sounds pessimistic but general player activity goes really downhill ...!

Sorry to say, but people usally quits this game when admins banning you for false reasons. Not saying that you have something to do with this, I talk about other admins.

edited to remove complaints against specific admins

sos wrote:edited to remove complaints against specific admins

If you have a problem with an admin, pm them here on the board. If they are no use and you feel further need to pursue the issue, pm the server owner on which you were banned.

99% of the time, admins are banning for the right reason. On the rare occasion that there is a mixup, contact them.

Trust me, I know. I've done it before

Main reason i think is tooo hard to rego and tuff esecially for leagues

just googeling "free-online-games" ...
1st in my list is freeonlinegames.com
using their search option (among many hundreds of games) for bzflag returned :::

0 results for bzflag

I personally believe this is the problem for the continuous loss of activity!

the dev-team is working hard and maybe one day the V3 will be available ... but for whom if nobody takes care of making BZFlag known?
what about a marketing-team next to the developper-team to get BZFlag at least close to the 1st page for a "free-online-games" search?





.

zaphod:
first off, freeonlinegames.com is exactly what it says. so bzflag shouldnt be found in there. those are all flash games that you play in your browser. secondly, there are thousands of free games with way more appeal than bzflag. the eye candy for bzflag is not top notch. really, i dont think bzflag is dying. bzflag's community is constantly fluctuating.

zaphod wrote:the dev-team is working hard

We are?

zaphod wrote:and maybe one day the V3 will be available

Yes, "maybe".

Stage one... nearly complete. Four more to go

[sarcasm]well then I guess everything is all right and activity comes back all by itself ... ufff and I was so worried.[/sarcasm]

As everything else bzflag has it's ups and downs, too. I think, it's just part of a cycle we 're in.
However, I 've the uncertain feeling that the 2teamleauge could change a lot. Of course you got to give it time, it wouldn 't change from today to tomorrow, but after a few month it could have helped us to more activity. Especially in the leagues.

Anyway, this inactivity is just sorting all the unprofessionals out.

League activity has little to no bearing on the development progress.

All we need is a little viral marketing.
Release a version with custom skins. George Bush on an Elephant, Barrack Obama on a Donkey, Sarah Palin on a Moose, Hillary Clinton on Bill's back and the rogue Osama bin Laden on a magic carpet, all shooting "LIES" at each other.
Make a YouTube video with a link where to download the game.
Problem solved!

Someone could actually creat a facebook advert.

Knox wrote:Someone could actually creat a facebook advert.

Who's gonna pay for it? You?

Cobra_Fast wrote:Who's gonna pay for it? You?

Than tell me, how do you want to promote BZFlag without paying for it? Is there a special free service?
You know, we 're talking about getting hundred, or thousand people to play BZFlag, not just a few?