BZFlag 2.4.0 "Wake the Dead"

Believe it or not, due to the reorganization of the development process and the countless hours the devs invested into it, the working pre release 2.3.x "Born Again" reached the point to become the final release 2.4.0 "Wake the Dead". Check www.bzflag.org for sources and binaries!

Enjoy playing!

It's pretty exciting - the closer we come to the first 2.4.x release the more test servers are running. At this moment, there are exactly 40 test servers of eight different domains. Download a client, put them to the acid test and report bugs!

Good news for 1vs1 League players because catay ported the 1vs1 plug-in for the new server version.

For the stats: There were seven different server query protocol / behaviour changes since the devs started working on 2.4.x (declared as 2.3.x on BZstats' pages).

The Xleague players and teams listing update problem has been solved since Sunday because Murielle was so kind and offered an plublicly available export script page.

Believe it or not but the new BZFlag release 2.4 is near. Now, all willing testers are welcome to check it for bugs. Windows binaries (32 and 64 bit) and source code packages are available: http://my.bzflag.org/bb/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=17459
If you find bugs or anything else that seems to be problematic, report them in the forums, please!

Since a little longer than one week it isn't possible to access Xleague's teams and players listing without special user authentication. Therefor, BZstats users have to live with a player name matching that bases on outdated Xleague data sets until I get access to the necessary information again.

Gah...
...as result of an untested modification of my server query code, there were no player information for the last 100 minutes. Fortunately, my faux pas didn't affect the data collection process during the most active time.

Well, hopefully there aren't further query code changes necessary since the BZFlag source fro 2.4.0 looks pretty much done (considering the official ToDo list). :o)

The rapid development on version 2.4 keeps me on the go. Until now, I had to implement 6 different query script versions to support the development builds.
If someone is doing the same and wonders about connection problems with protocol versions BZFS0203, BZFS0204 and early builds of BZFS0205 - don't care about that because a bug caused that. (Afaik it was JeffM who fixed it for later BZFS0205 builds.)
Something else which is important to know is the extremely decreased timeout limit for clients (to 2.5 seconds). In case of a "long" server query execution process it may happen the bzfs sends a "\r\n\r\n" to signalize a reconnect has to be done. The connection itself won't be closed by the bzfs. So, never forget to check for the timeout signal!

You might have noticed or not - the BZFlag developers decided to continue development via some kind of restart. In short: they snapped off the 2.99.x code branch, used the latest 2.0.x code and (actually) backport many features from 2.99.x into the 2.0.x code base. The new release will be incompatible to the 2.0.x servers/clients, called "Born Again" and released as version 2.4.

For further information about the backporting process read http://my.bzflag.org/w/BZFlag_2.3

Well, this backport has the funny side-effect that I can continue to blow my scripts with code to support the pre 2.4 releases. They'll show up as 2.3.x in the version column. In case you recognize "obscure" server or player information, feel free to send me a notice because it surely will be a bug in my code and/or a new and unsupported protocoll version.

Finally, a big thank-you to all the BZFlag developers for spending their resources (time, money, soul,...)!

Even the non-regular players might have noticed the websites of the Pillbox League and the BZSoccer League went offline a long time ago and never found a new home/host. As a result it was time to remove them from the BZstats league listing...finally.
These were the leagues eight and nine that left us...

As compensation the Xleague has been added. It isn't a league like all the others but since it has many active players (and three requests by different players to list it) I felt it's time to list the Xleague.

Well, eight months ago I started a short BZstats survey where I asked 40 active users about the possible future development direction of BZstats. The end of the survey was in February. Since others might be interested in the results too, I'll post the results here (with a delay 'cause of laziness ^^).

So, here is the result I sent back to all participants:

- 15 of 40 have gave a feedback.
My hope was to get 20 responses but 37.5 % is a good ratio for surveys, I guess.

- The majority liked the site as it is now (67 %).
That's good. :o)
Most of you made further suggestions which I assigned to the topics below too.

- Especially league players want to have a lower server query frequency.
It's not a big deal to reduce the query times as long as there's a fixed frequency/interval (or a multiple of it). That means I can query some very attractive servers every minute if necessary without changing the internal structure but with a script modification. My aim is to allow flexible intervals with no game-specific lossless internal data compression which (unfortunately) requires a completely new data structure. However, the new data structure and the a better query mechanism (higher query rate for attractive servers) are on top of my priority list.

- The Cross-Server-Chat would be a nice add-on (~ 30 %).
The few of you who would like to have that feature implemented would primarily use it for match arrangement. It's still an idea I personally like, so I will keep it in mind for sleepless nights.

- A few more "Web2.0" features are welcome (~ 40 %).
Most of you who voted for that idea gave suggestions for features they would like to see:
> a better integration into leagues and vice versa (overview of what happened in the users' leagues, allow a way to communicated BZstats users to arrange matches, more league-specific stats, supporting leagues with the additional information),
-> Some these suggestion are pretty hard/tricky to deal with. Let's see...
> an included web frontend for bzadmin,
-> I don't know if that's a good idea since you still have to enter your password again for each server connect. I'll have to think about that and set this item on a low priority level.
> RSS/Atom export for several information (server and player list [already available on request], my collection of BZBB account information,.. )
-> Well, why not. The RSS suggestion brought up the idea to create a collection of relevant BZFlag information sources (BZBB, wiki, player blogs, league sites) and to export them as RSS/Atom feeds. Since this sounds very interesting, I'll probably do that before I care for the new BZstats data structure for flexible bzfs query intervals. There are still some problems to deal with the data sources I mentioned but that's "only a question of time"...

- Extending the site to host other games too, isn't of interest.
That's something I can understand since the current site is if for BZFlag only (BZstats = BZFlag statistics). The idea to concentrate on smaller open-source games isn't helpful too because most of you won't play them anyway. There was only one of your who liked that idea. Well, I'll see if I'll find the time & motivation to implement more than just a simple online server browser for the games I already collect(ed) data for. It's at least not one of the top ToDo items.


Most of the functions/features listed above will take their time...a lot of time...

Further suggestions are always welcome, of course.

As a result of the BzWorldCup a new league has been created - the BzMatchBall League (bzmatchball.org).
The idea is to play on a football-field and in difference to all the other team-based BZFlag leagues you only have one flag to run for. If you took part in the BzWorldCup and liked it or are interested in that kind of matches or just want to see if you like it, feel free to give it a try.