BZStocks - The BZ Population Decides

External websites, for and about BZFlag
User avatar
SkillDude
Private First Class
Private First Class
Posts: 336
Joined: Sun Apr 01, 2007 4:50 pm
Location: United States

BZStocks - The BZ Population Decides

Post by SkillDude »

Greetings, I am introducing a simple website that is mildly amusing for players who want something else involving BZFlag every once in awhile.

This website was originally developed in 2010 as a server stats tracker by me, but eventually became more.

BZStocks, as the name suggests, is the idea that every server holds a certain monetary value. This monetary value is directly influenced by the player counts in game! The actual formula is much more complex (And unpublished), but the idea is that the longer the server remains popular, the larger the stock grows!

Each server that enters the list server is considered and is given a starting amount (Which generally falls very quickly). The website has been in alpha testing for a long time and is now in Public Beta testing. You are free to sign up and start playing along, users that sign up during the beta testing get an extra $10,000 for their portfolio, starting off with $30,000 "BZ Dollars" to use to buy any stocks you want!

Get a BZStocks Account today!

Not convinced?
Some quick screenshots:

Choose your investments and purchase wisely to reap the most benefits.
Image


Get detailed stock history for any server on the server list!
Image

See how your portfolio stacks up against the competition!
Image

View the portal for the latest on which stocks are IN and OUT
Image

Every 30 minutes is another update to the market simulation, and thus you will see that over time stocks are influenced. Obviously, the stock market game is a slow paced game, so you are not expected to always be online, and in fact, unlike a real stock market, there is no opening and closing times, the market is always opened. (Having a closing time, especially since this game is region-free is silly.)

Buying shares is easy, you specify the number of shares, and you get that many added to your account. Note that you may only purchase each stock once every 6 hours, and for a maximum of 10,000 shares per transaction. Though, this should be plenty. Should the value of your stock increase, each share does as well. You may also sell shares at any time (Partially, or the bulk of what you purchased), but to prevent pulling out money right when a decline occurs, sell transactions take 6 hours to process.

Feel free to also suggest ideas if you would like. It's just a fun little "add-on" to BZFlag as I would call it to try out every once in awhile.

As a side note, all data that you enter on the website is secured and in a database that cannot be read by me or anyone else. Just some information for paranoiacs.

I actually came up with the idea on my own, but there are other great minds that thought alike! See this old topic! http://forums.bzflag.org/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=9179

-------------------------------

An update for server owners. I have added in a feature to BZStocks that runs bzadmin on servers where players of BZStocks are playing at in game in order to provide them with an update at each half an hour. The message is and will always be exactly as displayed below to the recipient:
"You {gained/lost} $X.XX and now have $X.XX in your BZStocks Portfolio."
"You are currently ranked Xth."
{"You need an additional $X.XX to beat X in Xth place." / "You are the leader, keep it up."}
What happens is my script checks for all players online, pinpoints and matches the ones on servers, collects all players that may be on the same server, and then goes to the servers to display these three messages to each recipient. The bzadmin client is named BZStocksNotifier and only remains on the server for 3-8 seconds.

If you do not want BZStocksNotifier bugging the BZStocks players on your server, you may choose to ban the IP address 173.230.152.119 and it will not appear anymore. Note that this will stifle the purpose of the notifier for players on that server however, but I do not mind if you would rather have your server untouched. Finally, all servers where the notifier has no talk permissions (such as the league servers) have already been taken out of the list of servers that BZStocksNotifier is allowed to join, so no worries about leagues.

In the future I will also be adding a little option for players to not get notifications from the BZStocksNotifier while they are in-game, as this should not be forced upon them.
Last edited by SkillDude on Fri Jun 15, 2012 3:17 pm, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
Sniper752
Private First Class
Private First Class
Posts: 192
Joined: Tue Dec 15, 2009 8:43 pm
Location: TRAVL Headquarters, Orbiting Mars in the year 2236

Re: BZStocks - The BZ Population Decides

Post by Sniper752 »

That is so cool! I'm already buying stocks :D
[center]::|:|::|Sniper752|::|:|::
Map Maker
Avid Airsofter
Owner: Hosting.BZAddict.net ports 5242 and 5243
Admin: bzsupreme.webarts.bc.ca[/center]
User avatar
ducktape
Private First Class
Private First Class
Posts: 1206
Joined: Sat Jul 01, 2006 2:06 am
Location: Right Behind you!

Re: BZStocks - The BZ Population Decides

Post by ducktape »

Is there an online store where our BZ Bucks speak for us? Cause there should be.
Image
User avatar
Sniper752
Private First Class
Private First Class
Posts: 192
Joined: Tue Dec 15, 2009 8:43 pm
Location: TRAVL Headquarters, Orbiting Mars in the year 2236

Re: BZStocks - The BZ Population Decides

Post by Sniper752 »

ducktape wrote:Is there an online store where our BZ Bucks speak for us? Cause there should be.
that would be interesting. If it would apply in game though (buying flags ect.) (which would be awesome) it would have to be implemented in 2.99/3.0. In other words, wouldn't work now.
[center]::|:|::|Sniper752|::|:|::
Map Maker
Avid Airsofter
Owner: Hosting.BZAddict.net ports 5242 and 5243
Admin: bzsupreme.webarts.bc.ca[/center]
User avatar
JeffM
Staff Sergeant
Staff Sergeant
Posts: 5196
Joined: Fri Dec 13, 2002 4:11 am

Re: BZStocks - The BZ Population Decides

Post by JeffM »

not sure what 2.99 has to do with it. You could do it now in a plugin since they can give flags to players.
ImageJeffM
User avatar
SkillDude
Private First Class
Private First Class
Posts: 336
Joined: Sun Apr 01, 2007 4:50 pm
Location: United States

Re: BZStocks - The BZ Population Decides

Post by SkillDude »

Funny thing, was thinking about this today. Perhaps BZ bucks could be spendable in the future for various flags on servers, though, unless someone's willing to cooperate with a decently popular server to connect accounts with, I don't see that being a very good end result for spending it. Put the same idea with in game points (Start out with X amount of points instead of 0 every time), again, worthless unless done on a decently popular server.

Noteworthy mention of names? I don't see that being possible or worth spending any for it.

The other idea I was considering, with a significant amount of BZ Bucks earned, you can spend it to earn a BZFlag T-shirt, or the hoodies if those ever come back. something that may be worth the time to play. I'd buy for you guys and set up a small mini shop. Just throwing ideas around for the future.

I don't know, it has to be something of significance or value obviously, otherwise it'd be worthless.

Influence your servers you invest in and get the ball rolling folks. :)
User avatar
Sniper752
Private First Class
Private First Class
Posts: 192
Joined: Tue Dec 15, 2009 8:43 pm
Location: TRAVL Headquarters, Orbiting Mars in the year 2236

Re: BZStocks - The BZ Population Decides

Post by Sniper752 »

JeffM wrote:not sure what 2.99 has to do with it. You could do it now in a plugin since they can give flags to players.
Duh! forgot about the flag give command. In which case that would be neat to see.

The only other thing I could think of would require the cooperation of the forum admins. It would be a special rank (investor, or something like that) in the forums if a person does well enough in the stock market.
[center]::|:|::|Sniper752|::|:|::
Map Maker
Avid Airsofter
Owner: Hosting.BZAddict.net ports 5242 and 5243
Admin: bzsupreme.webarts.bc.ca[/center]
User avatar
blast
General
General
Posts: 4931
Joined: Fri Mar 21, 2003 3:49 pm
Location: playing.cxx
Contact:

Re: BZStocks - The BZ Population Decides

Post by blast »

Sniper752 wrote:The only other thing I could think of would require the cooperation of the forum admins. It would be a special rank (investor, or something like that) in the forums if a person does well enough in the stock market.
This forum would not be involved with the exception of providing the underlying user authentication.
"In addition to knowing the secrets of the Universe, I can assure you that I am also quite potty trained." -Koenma (Yu Yu Hakusho)

Image
User avatar
Sniper752
Private First Class
Private First Class
Posts: 192
Joined: Tue Dec 15, 2009 8:43 pm
Location: TRAVL Headquarters, Orbiting Mars in the year 2236

Re: BZStocks - The BZ Population Decides

Post by Sniper752 »

blast wrote:
Sniper752 wrote:The only other thing I could think of would require the cooperation of the forum admins. It would be a special rank (investor, or something like that) in the forums if a person does well enough in the stock market.
This forum would not be involved with the exception of providing the underlying user authentication.
That's what I thought.
[center]::|:|::|Sniper752|::|:|::
Map Maker
Avid Airsofter
Owner: Hosting.BZAddict.net ports 5242 and 5243
Admin: bzsupreme.webarts.bc.ca[/center]
ryanfesta
Private First Class
Private First Class
Posts: 49
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2012 10:57 pm
Location: San Diego

Re: BZStocks - The BZ Population Decides

Post by ryanfesta »

I like the concept of using "BZ Bucks" to purchase flags or other in-game objects, but I think a different way of gaining BZ Bucks should be established. The thought of using BZStocks is also very cool, but it shouldn't be th solitary way of obtaining BZ Bucks.



C.Dogg9200
User avatar
SkillDude
Private First Class
Private First Class
Posts: 336
Joined: Sun Apr 01, 2007 4:50 pm
Location: United States

Re: BZStocks - The BZ Population Decides

Post by SkillDude »

cdogg9200 wrote:I like the concept of using "BZ Bucks" to purchase flags or other in-game objects, but I think a different way of gaining BZ Bucks should be established. The thought of using BZStocks is also very cool, but it shouldn't be th solitary way of obtaining BZ Bucks.

C.Dogg9200
Are you suggesting that we develop other "mini games" or things of that nature that use this so called BZ Money? It seems like a cool idea, but the amount of upkeep and starting work would be tremendous up front of course. Again, I could easily develop a method of linking different parts of what is included in BZStocks together, but again the matter is what for? I never thought about extending anything beyond just this as it's a little "toy" to play with kind of as an addition or side to BZFlag itself.

While I'm all ears, if there's something you want to see, either devise a plan or write it up and perhaps the future holds more in store than just BZStocks.

Again, all this talk about purchasing things for the game is theoretical. And it would have to be applied to a map that is worth purchasing things on. I don't know if any server hosts or owners want to actually cooperate and have a system for such a thing, but there is still that matter to work out. Bunch of ideas now, going to attempt to sort them in some organized manner. Or someone help me. Ha~
ryanfesta
Private First Class
Private First Class
Posts: 49
Joined: Mon Apr 02, 2012 10:57 pm
Location: San Diego

Re: BZStocks - The BZ Population Decides

Post by ryanfesta »

A very good statement. I wasn't thinking along the lines of mini games, but now that you bring it up, it gave me an idea: what it you could gain this "money" during gameplay accomplishments? It's a little off the concept, and it might change the money into something like points, but it seems like a pretty interesting idea.

The more I think about this, the more of it feels like I'm on a tangent. Also, I think that it this turned into a success at some servers (those willing to comply of course), it will be adopted by other hosts. It could also take a while to implement into the game (maybe an idea for OpenCombat?).


C.Dogg9200
User avatar
ducktape
Private First Class
Private First Class
Posts: 1206
Joined: Sat Jul 01, 2006 2:06 am
Location: Right Behind you!

Re: BZStocks - The BZ Population Decides

Post by ducktape »

Thanks for your input, call of duty.
Image
User avatar
SkillDude
Private First Class
Private First Class
Posts: 336
Joined: Sun Apr 01, 2007 4:50 pm
Location: United States

Re: BZStocks - The BZ Population Decides

Post by SkillDude »

In terms of integration, I don't mean actual game integration. Not only is this something made by a fan of the game, but it's not really related or part of BZFlag either, it just uses BZFlag as a basis for the market. I don't see why it would ever get integrated into the game itself. Not to mention it's a system that would really have no meaning, points are enough honestly.

In terms of making achievements or goals to earn some, I suppose that's possible. Anything really is, the communication can be done with plugins rather easily through HTTP communication, and if it gets implemented on different servers, it might be more interesting.

I really think at this point we are getting too far, I think this requires another topic of discussion, but also before that happens, an amount of organization needs to be done. There were a lot of ideas thrown out already, but none of them were organized or thought out. I suggest before going any further take a chill pill and try to think things more thoroughly. Realize this for now, it's one website, for a fun little activity to do outside of the main BZFlag game, that is partially related. That's all it should be right now.

Finally, I'm not going to be getting involved with Open Combat (And the concept has been laid out by JeffM, so I don't see why he would suddenly change things). I don't know if you realize this yet, but this game and that game are barely identical.

[EDIT] I also got the website looking a bit more themed, which makes it look nicer overall. Here is an updated screenshot of the player records page (The 24 hour feature was just added, so the last two values in the table are not accurate yet):
Image
User avatar
Sniper752
Private First Class
Private First Class
Posts: 192
Joined: Tue Dec 15, 2009 8:43 pm
Location: TRAVL Headquarters, Orbiting Mars in the year 2236

Re: BZStocks - The BZ Population Decides

Post by Sniper752 »

A "stay logged in" button would be nice
[center]::|:|::|Sniper752|::|:|::
Map Maker
Avid Airsofter
Owner: Hosting.BZAddict.net ports 5242 and 5243
Admin: bzsupreme.webarts.bc.ca[/center]
User avatar
JeffM
Staff Sergeant
Staff Sergeant
Posts: 5196
Joined: Fri Dec 13, 2002 4:11 am

Re: BZStocks - The BZ Population Decides

Post by JeffM »

OpenCombat would not do something this silly ;)
ImageJeffM
mr64bit
Private First Class
Private First Class
Posts: 89
Joined: Fri May 06, 2011 4:58 pm
Location: Hang on, let me get a map...
Contact:

Re: BZStocks - The BZ Population Decides

Post by mr64bit »

Sniper752 wrote:A "stay logged in" button would be nice
Yes, it is quite annoying to have to log back in after each server update.

Perhaps the BZCash could be some sort of negotiable currency here on the forums, e.g., for "paid favors"? That would require no integration in the forums, only a "send BZCash to: " option on the BZStocks website.
---mr64bit
User avatar
SkillDude
Private First Class
Private First Class
Posts: 336
Joined: Sun Apr 01, 2007 4:50 pm
Location: United States

Re: BZStocks - The BZ Population Decides

Post by SkillDude »

Interesting thought mr64bit! Never considered letting the BZ Money have its own trade-in value or market of its own. Transferring funds will be considered. I am considering adding in a "review" system so that when someone sends money, they specify the reason. The receiving end will be notified they have an incoming amount of money, which they should be expecting, and have to type the reason they are receiving from that person. Both should match up of course, and can be voided if there are suspicions of users transferring money just to take advantage of the system. But yeah, people can request things from each other and perhaps get a little bit of money from this simulation itself in the process, kind of neat.

I'll update cookie information to get persistent sessions going.
User avatar
I_Died_Once
Special Forces
Special Forces
Posts: 635
Joined: Sun Nov 28, 2004 5:27 pm
Location: The Dark Side
Contact:

Re: BZStocks - The BZ Population Decides

Post by I_Died_Once »

What about server owners - Why should I "pay" to "buy" stock in a server thats in MY name on it to begin with? Is there any accounting for such circumstances? Should those who initially buy stock from a server should buy it... "from" that server? Like an IPO, its the company that sells the stock off. That money should go towards the server proprietor, should it not? The server owner should be able to set how many shares of stock go on sale to begin with as well, so all the stock holders can't rally together and mutiny.

And what kind of policies do you have re: insider trading?

Can your stocks system query the "/owner" command and match up the info versus a stock owner's user name? I think such a system should use the bzbb's system of authentication to prevent people from registering other' names. Other than that, this is neat and fun. Excellent work.

-- Sincerely, the 1% of BZFlag.
...This has been a recording.
User avatar
I_Died_Once
Special Forces
Special Forces
Posts: 635
Joined: Sun Nov 28, 2004 5:27 pm
Location: The Dark Side
Contact:

Re: BZStocks - The BZ Population Decides

Post by I_Died_Once »

Also, lets say a server changes from... say Free For All to Rabbit Hunt (same IP, URL, port, list server key, same everything except server header and game type)... does that count as a "new" stock to be had or does it count as the same?
...This has been a recording.
User avatar
SkillDude
Private First Class
Private First Class
Posts: 336
Joined: Sun Apr 01, 2007 4:50 pm
Location: United States

Re: BZStocks - The BZ Population Decides

Post by SkillDude »

Global authentication using the BZFlag authentication system could be done (And not potentially difficult I must add). Not only would this make things easier, but at the same time we would then never store any "sensitive data" as we call it since we would be getting it from an external location, only being handed down a username / BZID upon successful authentication. It may be something to look into in the future, the only change I'd be making is linking a BZID to each account versus just a username. All the conversions could be made in due time, I'll see if I can work something out.

At the current time, all the stocks are not "owned" by anyone so are considered to be up for grabs with no limitations. No dividends have been considered either, so control of the stock from the owner perspective would not be beneficial at this point, though that could be easily changed. Perhaps some tweaking can be done to the system. If the above mentioned authentication works out, owner authenticity would not be an issue and from there could lead to a more realistic trading market. Any ideas to further extend or perhaps create an enjoyable market are recommended.

The servers are kept track of by server URL and port. Changing either leads to the creation of a new stock. A server changing out from one port and the same URL will keep it under the same name. Perhaps it may be a strategy for the owner to market one map and later change it out for another to continue an increase in popularity, but I have seen no negative consequences this has as of right now.
User avatar
mahem1
Private First Class
Private First Class
Posts: 91
Joined: Thu Jan 14, 2010 2:18 am
Location: Antarctica

Re: BZStocks - The BZ Population Decides

Post by mahem1 »

Here is some of my feedback/ideas/preferences:
1. One nice feature would be to have the highs, lows and averages for each specific time-frame(24hours,3days,week, etc.) on the individual servers info page. The All Time highs and lows are fairly worthless because, for instance, PMAIA2's all time low is 0.1, but since the Apocalypse(Map) has been up it has never been that low.
2. Have each server's IP and port number on the 'Home' page. The 'acronym' is useless to my since I suck at remembering things.
3. Don't mix stock when you buy it from the same server twice, it makes things harder to manage and you loss information about the stock.
4. Also, if you could keep my name at the top of the player records, regardless of my balance............
Other than that great site!
Lag makes me miss all of the good stuff.
And random bans..........
Image
User avatar
SkillDude
Private First Class
Private First Class
Posts: 336
Joined: Sun Apr 01, 2007 4:50 pm
Location: United States

Re: BZStocks - The BZ Population Decides

Post by SkillDude »

mahem1 wrote: 1. One nice feature would be to have the highs, lows and averages for each specific time-frame(24hours,3days,week, etc.) on the individual servers info page. The All Time highs and lows are fairly worthless because, for instance, PMAIA2's all time low is 0.1, but since the Apocalypse(Map) has been up it has never been that low.
Very true, those stats are truly useless for that scope.
mahem1 wrote: 2. Have each server's IP and port number on the 'Home' page. The 'acronym' is useless to my since I suck at remembering things.
Can do.
mahem1 wrote: 3. Don't mix stock when you buy it from the same server twice, it makes things harder to manage and you loss information about the stock.
Makes sense, I actually went through the trouble of combining them, so removing them just simplifies the process by one step. And now that you mention it, definitely makes more sense when tracking purchases.
mahem1 wrote: 4. Also, if you could keep my name at the top of the player records, regardless of my balance....
Ah I see. That would be nice, I'll go ahead and add it in.

These are all great suggestions and I am definitely looking for not just feedback and ideas on the concept itself, but any improvements to make the website more friendly and usable are highly encouraged. Thanks for pointing these out mahem1, I'll have them all incorporated as the day goes on here. :)

ALSO An update for server owners. I have recently added in a feature to BZStocks that runs bzadmin on servers where players of BZStocks are playing at in game in order to provide them with an update at each half an hour. The message is and will always be exactly as displayed below to the recipient:
"You {gained/lost} $X.XX and now have $X.XX in your BZStocks Portfolio."
"You are currently ranked Xth."
{"You need an additional $X.XX to beat X in Xth place." / "You are the leader, keep it up."}
What happens is my script checks for all players online, pinpoints and matches the ones on servers, collects all players that may be on the same server, and then goes to the servers to display these three messages to each recipient. The bzadmin client is named BZStocksNotifier and only remains on the server for 3-8 seconds.

If you do not want BZStocksNotifier bugging the BZStocks players on your server, you may choose to ban the IP address 173.230.152.119 and it will not appear anymore. Note that this will stifle the purpose of the notifier for players on that server however, but I do not mind if you would rather have your server untouched. Finally, all servers where the notifier has no talk permissions (such as the league servers) have already been taken out of the list of servers that BZStocksNotifier is allowed to join, so no worries about leagues.

In the future I will also be adding a little option for players to not get notifications from the BZStocksNotifier while they are in-game, as this should not be forced upon them.
User avatar
blast
General
General
Posts: 4931
Joined: Fri Mar 21, 2003 3:49 pm
Location: playing.cxx
Contact:

Re: BZStocks - The BZ Population Decides

Post by blast »

sigonasr2 wrote:ALSO An update for server owners. I have recently added in a feature to BZStocks that runs bzadmin on servers where players of BZStocks are playing at in game in order to provide them with an update at each half an hour. The message is and will always be exactly as displayed below to the recipient:
"You {gained/lost} $X.XX and now have $X.XX in your BZStocks Portfolio."
"You are currently ranked Xth."
{"You need an additional $X.XX to beat X in Xth place." / "You are the leader, keep it up."}
What happens is my script checks for all players online, pinpoints and matches the ones on servers, collects all players that may be on the same server, and then goes to the servers to display these three messages to each recipient. The bzadmin client is named BZStocksNotifier and only remains on the server for 3-8 seconds.

If you do not want BZStocksNotifier bugging the BZStocks players on your server, you may choose to ban the IP address 173.230.152.119 and it will not appear anymore. Note that this will stifle the purpose of the notifier for players on that server however, but I do not mind if you would rather have your server untouched. Finally, all servers where the notifier has no talk permissions (such as the league servers) have already been taken out of the list of servers that BZStocksNotifier is allowed to join, so no worries about leagues.

In the future I will also be adding a little option for players to not get notifications from the BZStocksNotifier while they are in-game, as this should not be forced upon them.
Or, here's a better idea. How about you have an opt-in option for server owners that want you to spam their servers?
"In addition to knowing the secrets of the Universe, I can assure you that I am also quite potty trained." -Koenma (Yu Yu Hakusho)

Image
User avatar
SkillDude
Private First Class
Private First Class
Posts: 336
Joined: Sun Apr 01, 2007 4:50 pm
Location: United States

Re: BZStocks - The BZ Population Decides

Post by SkillDude »

It is done privately, so I assumed that an observer that joined and left would not be a very harmful feature. A player from BZStocks will be the only one that triggers such a thing, so if it's really a big issue with something that doesn't occur very frequently and only when a player is actually online, then maybe it's not such a good thing... While I don't want to cause a commotion about it I do want the players that actually are interested in the data to get it on a constant basis. It seems like getting approval from the server owner side of things would be a big hassle... And it's not like there's an easier way or alternative to do this in game. At least, it was the only thing I could think of.

The private messaging and emailing could be other ways, but in game just seems so much more seamless. If too many people object, I will just remove it, but I thought it would be interesting to use bzadmin in that manner. I did provide the benefit of the doubt... What's the difference between this and the other random observers that just sit there uselessly?
Post Reply