Idea - the Anchorman

I_Died_Once · Post by **I_Died_Once** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 8:36 pm

Forget Ron Burgundy...

How's about a plugin that can display information gathered from a RSS newsfeed? You give it the RSS newsfeed address, and once a minute, it displays the latest headlines vie a server /say command

Server:
Death Toll rises in hurricane aftermath
Soldiers killed in roadside bombing in Iraq

You can get your news from inside a BZFlag game! Since the game loads information like this at startup, make it to where /reload is ran every two minutes or so to keep headlines fresh.

The plugin would depend on cURL (or whatever) and you would have to specify the RSS newsfeed somehow.

Perhaps if it takes off, future versions could have it to where you can whisper your zip code, or give a /weather $zipcode and it'll tell you

"It's 94 degrees and sunny in Savannah, Ga"

An informative plugin....

TD-Linux · Post by **TD-Linux** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 9:04 pm

Why do we care what is happening in the real world while playing in the artificial BZFlag world?

This idea looks neat, but getting RSS feeds is a bit hard. Artificial news would be cool, though. I tried something similar that would display random messages on a cap, but never got it to read files correctly. Imagine:
"An only partly innocent BZFlag tank was killed by an admin"
"I Died Once has been killed again!"
Cap messages could be targeted to the respective teams:
To red on red flag pickup by green:
"Red flag lost! Dial M if you see it!"
To green on same:
"GoGoGo!"
To green on capture:
"The victorious Red are victorious!"
To red on same:
"After the Green's flag was captured, seeing the color green caused Reds to uncontrollably laugh for months"

Rebel Chik0rita · Post by **Rebel Chik0rita** » Thu Sep 01, 2005 12:21 am

it might be nice to see real-time bz match score updates while playing on a different server ...

but then not every1 is into the league stuffs ...

RC cola: picked up Guided Laser flag
Server: DUB 59998 update : TeX vs. [TLZ] , 15 - 1
Gerbil: picked up Humilation flag
RC cola: go TeX go
Server: DUB 59998 update : TeX defeats [TLZ] 17-2 final
RC cola: yay TeX
Gerbil: killed by RC cola's guided laser
Gerbil: dropped Humilation flag
RC cola: ;)

RPG · Post by **RPG** » Thu Sep 01, 2005 1:20 am

RC Cola, that is a good idea. Post it in a new thread, so I'll see it each time I breeze by here.

Post by **DTRemenak** » Thu Sep 01, 2005 5:00 am

Collecting and displaying an RSS feed would be very cool. Not terribly difficult either, use one of the existing RSS libraries. Maybe sometime when I have some time (ha!) I'll work on it.

BTW...what's this Humiliation flag...I like the sound of that

I_Died_Once · Post by **I_Died_Once** » Thu Sep 01, 2005 11:02 am

Ha! See, it won't be long before I can check my stock quotes mid-game!

I_Died_Once · Post by **I_Died_Once** » Thu Sep 01, 2005 11:34 am

TD-Linux wrote:Why do we care what is happening in the real world while playing in the artificial BZFlag world?

This idea looks neat, but getting RSS feeds is a bit hard. Artificial news would be cool, though. I tried something similar that would display random messages on a cap, but never got it to read files correctly. Imagine:
"An only partly innocent BZFlag tank was killed by an admin"
"I Died Once has been killed again!"
Cap messages could be targeted to the respective teams:
To red on red flag pickup by green:
"Red flag lost! Dial M if you see it!"
To green on same:
"GoGoGo!"
To green on capture:
"The victorious Red are victorious!"
To red on same:
"After the Green's flag was captured, seeing the color green caused Reds to uncontrollably laugh for months"

Dude - thats exactly the kinf of stuff I had in mind for the Narrator idea.

Post by **DTRemenak** » Thu Sep 01, 2005 2:03 pm

Personally I think real world news (or match news, for that matter) would be much more valuable. After playing bzflag for 12 hours sometimes you just don't know what's going on. There might be a hurricane at your front door or something