[PC] BZFlag

[hemigod]

BZFlag

Who?

(forget his name) developed with friends on SGI workstations. Became a hit with anyone involved in the early days of 3d. Released as an open source project, and now with the widespread availability of 3d hardware, anyone can develop and get involved in the action.

What?

A game for Atari, called battlezone, featured wire mesh tanks in a futuristic 'Tron like' battle field. The mechanics of this game were reimplented in SGI GL.

BZflag was born.

You drive your tank, take aim, and fire your shell. The fun is in judging where to aim, as the target moves, and will often try to dodge.

Shells take some time to reload. Some servers alow multiple shots with independant reloading states.

A radar is provided in the corner of the screen to track aproaching friendlies, enemies, or their shots.

In one corner of the map is your teams base, and your top defense priority, the team flag. Your offensive goal is to venture to the other teams base in the opposite corner, take their flag, and make it all the way back to your own base without getting shot.

AI can be assigned in order to simulate a crowded tank battle.

New weapons, shields, and cloaks have been added to some variants of the game. Personally, I find such variants too hectic, but if you can keep up with fast paced action, you'd love it.

Where?

Anyone can run a BZflag server, just register with the master at (forgot adress). Servers are hosted all over the world. Infact, it's one of the classic LAN games.

Why?

This is about as basic a 3d game as you can get. The C++ source is extermely clean and easy to understand. If you're passionate about 3d games, this may be your chance to actually join the action. You can develop AI, and add new features to test with friends.

One of the most popular things to do is to make a targeting aid. The challenge is to predict the path of the target and cross it with the future trajectory of the bullet.

Predicting the motion of the target is difficult. The common dodging strategies are to pause, turn one way or the other, backup, etc. On servers with multiple shots, long range kills are accomplished by 'trapping' the target in a shot spread.

Almost any system can run this game, and newer systems can use their capacity to render sweeter eyecandy if desired.

The game mechanics are so simple that learning to play is almost instaneous, mastering as strategy is much more difficult than it seems. Tanks are usually slow, and shells take a while to reload, hence the game places emphasis on marksmanship, prediction, when shooting. When dodging emphasis is placed on clever bluffing, and avoiding the shot unpredictably. Like with all FPS, teamwork is rarely pushed to it's potential except in team tournament matches.

It's rather different than other FPSes, which seem to place emphasis on quick reflexes , raw experience, and moving erraticly.

Most of all though, you should try this game out because it's free. You have nothing to lose but your time.

[Saint Of M]

I remember playing that!