BZFlag inspired game under development

[etigah]

Another long delay and little to show for it, but bear with me as I change gears

I have changed the site a little and added a short video.

Direct link to video page: http://45.32.180.51/what/#/1/6

[Danji]

Cool!

[Zehra]

I would be interested in testing the game when possible.

-Zehra

[The Noah]

Cool. Maybe use something like https://freemyip.com so you can use a domain instead of an IP.

[etigah]

Small update. I have recently redone the code for bots to be more adaptable. It is still far from finished, but the new code should be much more flexible.
Here is a short video demonstrating playing vs bots.

http://45.32.180.51/what/#/1/7
http://45.32.180.51/assets/2019-09-26%2017-44-57.m4v

Both links are for the same video.

[Lancer_MiG21]

Oh, that's quite awesome, I'll make sure to give it a try! Do you think you could put the video on youtube, or would you rather keep it "semi-confidential" so far?

[etigah]

Oh, that's quite awesome, I'll make sure to give it a try! Do you think you could put the video on youtube, or would you rather keep it "semi-confidential" so far?

Thanks! I'm just keeping it simple. Perhaps when the game gets some polish I'll start thinking about more exposure.

[etigah]

Here is a video showing recent progress:

https://youtu.be/fyjMoF0DsYI

The game received some play testing the last few weeks, I'm hoping it will be ready for release soon.

[etigah]

Hello again!

Here we go with a first public release!

That's not to say game is ready for public consumption, it's far from that. I'm releasing the game in the hope of receiving feedback from wider audience on the core game concept. My immediate plan is to gather feedback and push for making a full match between 2 teams of more than 1 player on either side a passable experience. After that I want to move on to the next version.

Please try it and give me your feedback!

The released package should work on Windows and on Linux (using wine)
For Windows: extract the zip file and use run.cmd to start the game
For Linux: extract the zip file and use run.sh to start the game - Wine is required (tested on v3 and v4)

The package also includes scripts to update the game (update.cmd,update.sh)

If you want to ask about anything or if you face any issues running the game, either contact me here or by pm or dm me on discord.

Here is a new video of the game

Download the game from here

[JeffM]

Umm why the heck does a video game need rsync? Just for updates? That seems like a huge security hole.

[Zehra]

From a quick overview.
Although the game concept is alright/okay, the handling/interface of it at this point in time is not intuitive.
This causes the game's appeal to lessen considerably.

There seems to be an uncertain game design, as in much of the "apparent" effort going towards the "graphical" end of the product, while being it being simply meant as a prototype. (This is a bit of a guess and assumption on my part based on a few factors.)
Networking was untested or rather "unknown" state of working. (Within testing/preview releases provide better debug info, as it will make a game testers job easier when filling reports on issues.)

-Zehra

[etigah]

Umm why the heck does a video game need rsync? Just for updates? That seems like a huge security hole.

I needed a method to quickly update game files without resorting to download the game every time something changes. rsync works very well for this. I couldn't find examples of how other games do it, I'm very much interested to know better ways. As to the the security risk, that's a valid point. I made sure rsync user has very limited access on the server (using chroot and ro access to just the files it needs)

Do you know any other tools more commonly used for this purpose?

[JeffM]

Most games just hash out the files and replace the ones that have changed. You just need a manifest and a web server.

Also for something that says it's open source... where is the source? Why don't you put it all on GitHub?

[etigah]

Most games just hash out the files and replace the ones that have changed. You just need a manifest and a web server.

Then I don't see the advantage over using rsync. Seems like more work and using a tool not designed for the task.

Also for something that says it's open source... where is the source? Why don't you put it all on GitHub?

The entire source is inside the archive. I will admit that the code is not in the best shape, it is not something I want others to start looking at and try to work with. That is something for another version .. You are still welcome to dig inside and do whatever the license of the project allows with it.

I'm looking forward to hearing what you think about the game!

[JeffM]

Well with RSync and all the batch and shell files you have, your archive is flagged as a possible virus. That's why people tend to not do things like that.

[etigah]

Although the game concept is alright/okay, the handling/interface of it at this point in time is not intuitive.

Is it the game menu, the ui, the controls or something else that you find not intuitive ?

There seems to be an uncertain game design, as in much of the "apparent" effort going towards the "graphical" end of the product, while being it being simply meant as a prototype. (This is a bit of a guess and assumption on my part based on a few factors.)

You are not wrong, this version is more or less a proof of concept. It's based on old version of the used game engine, it's not very cleanly coded and it doesn't look much like the game I had in mind when I started out, so I wanna get this version out of the way ASAP. I still love it.

Networking was untested or rather "unknown" state of working. (Within testing/preview releases provide better debug info, as it will make a game testers job easier when filling reports on issues.)

That's my bad for making a last minute change then releasing without testing

Networking should work after updating the game.

In order to update the code, you should:

run update.cmd

Enter "yes" when prompted. This is done only once

Enter "pub" as password when prompted (note that it will appear as if you are not typing anything. That's normal)

After updating, networking should work again. You can test it by running the game twice, once as host and another as client connecting to it on local server.

[trpted]

While using Wine, this is the error that I got back.

Please tell me if you need the debug log(s) or not.

[etigah]

trpted, what graphics card do you have installed on your computer?

It appears that your card or the installed drivers do not support OpenGL 2

Try this command as root to find the card model:

lspci | grep -i --color 'vga\|3d\|2d'

[blast]

Couldn't Godot just run natively on Linux?

[etigah]

Couldn't Godot just run natively on Linux?

Yes it could. The problem is I'm working with an old version of Godot, and it expects old versions of system libs installed, so it didn't work on some newer distros. Wine on the other hand just works where I tested.

[etigah]

I posted a new (fairly long) video, check it out below:

Unedited game play footage - Playing against bots

[trpted]

trpted, what graphics card do you have installed on your computer?

It appears that your card or the installed drivers do not support OpenGL 2

Try this command as root to find the card model:

lspci | grep -i --color 'vga\|3d\|2d'

You asked for it, you got it.

Code: Select all

user@user-pc:~$ sudo lspci | grep -i --color 'vga\|3d\|2d'
[sudo] password for user: 
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82865G Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)
user@user-pc:~$ 

^^

[etigah]

Thanks for providing that info.

From what I could find, your graphics card can support OpenGL up to version 1.3, so the game may not run on it.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en ... ivers.html

[blast]

That likely refers to what the Windows drivers support. On Linux, you might get support of a slightly higher version of OpenGL, though I suppose Mesa might fill in some of the gaps with software emulation. Going forward, though, that chipset is going to be a problem even for BZFlag. We're aiming for OpenGL 2.0 (or possibly even something newer) for future major releases.

[JeffM]

it's a 16 year old chipset, you would have to know it's going to be de-supported at some point.....