Cloaked Shots

Make suggestions for improving one of the best games on the net!
Post Reply
User avatar
Loymdayddaud
Survey Champion 2024
Survey Champion 2024
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Oct 15, 2023 2:55 pm
Location: Saudi Arabia

Cloaked Shots

Post by Loymdayddaud »

I noticed on the wiki that there was a new flag implemented for 2.99 that made shots invisible out of the window, but not on the radar. It's not in the game as of 2.4.26 though.
Are there any plans to add it to BZ soon, or would that be for a more major release like 2.6?
The best flag is Stealth.
User avatar
blast
General
General
Posts: 4942
Joined: Fri Mar 21, 2003 3:49 pm
Location: playing.cxx
Contact:

Re: Cloaked Shots

Post by blast »

New flags like that would have to be added to a new major version of the game.
"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
Zehra
Survey Champion 2024
Survey Champion 2024
Posts: 957
Joined: Sun Oct 18, 2015 3:36 pm
Location: Within the BZFS API and Beyond it
Contact:

Re: Cloaked Shots

Post by Zehra »

It's possible to somewhat "simulate" it, but it requires quite a bit of trickery and it only works in very short maps like grassroots/babel while looking quite a bit inconsistent with radar settings.

It involves deleting the "normal" shot and faking it on radar by firing another shot outside the "playing field", but not the world. Some version of server side hit detection is used alongside it. (It mimics it, but very crudely and it behaves too differently from normal bullets to make it useful/playable.)

-Zehra
Some useful references:
Map editor and tool list (summary)
Prefab and BZW help threads index
Map releases index
Some of my BZFlag related stuff.
BZList.net Modern HTML5 server stats site.

BZFlag has a cycle every 1-3 years. Activity drops/stops and resumes some time after. It returns to 90% of what it was.
We see late in 2013, the following thread: Why are there only like 30 people playing BZFLAG at one time.
Let's say 2014 starts with 30 players:
With a cycle length of:
3 years: 2017=27 players, 2020=24 players...
2.5 years: mid-2016=27 players, 2019=24 players, mid-2021=22 players.
I think the cycles get shorter as time goes along, but the bigger issue is eventually that activity will not be able to sustain itself in the long run, as nobody waits an hour for people to show up.
Post Reply