Hi everyone! New to these forums.. long time BZer

[Shadow_Play]

Glad to have found this community. Battlezone has been one of my favorite games for over 11 years. I found this game when I was 12, and I'm turning 25 soon and I still get excited just thinking about it. I have a question though.. I've never successfully been able to play it online. I never see anybody on. Do you people play it? I've played through the single player missions more times than I can ever remember, so it would be great to fight it out with some real people for a change!

[Psychedelic Rhino]

You need to have an updated server file residing in your Battlezone root folder called, servers.dat or you will not see the latest servers.

There is also a mod many play called 'Battlezone Enhanced' or 'BZE' that fixes issues and bugs you may remember such as the ability to easily hack Battlezone, timing issues, nvidia card problems, etc. You may have noticed here at this forum there is also a former developer working on 'Battlezone 1.5', which has been in development for a couple years to utilize DirectX 9 and also to fix many of the issues. There are also tons of 'instant action' missions if you choose to play by yourself, but are burnt out playing the single player campaign.

If interested in them, PM me for more info.

[Ultraken]

The unofficial Battlezone 1.5 patch and Battlezone Enhanced share code and generally fix the same problems (though not always the same way). 1.5 sticks very close to the original game and include the original single-player campaign. BZE makes some gameplay changes and excludes the original single-player campaign. Choosing one or the other mostly comes down to personal taste, but the two don't have to be mutually exclusive. I strongly prefer 1.5 but I'm obviously biased.

There's an updated servers.dat in the common files topic that includes all Anet servers listed in Dan Kegel's master server list. Once I finish the game executable, I'll package everything into a single download for convenience.

Edit: Removed "(at Activision's request)" since I apparently misunderstood the explanation and the reason isn't actually important.

[Apollo]

Bz Enhanced i've been developing for an expansion for many years as a hobby, the reason i don't have stock single player in it is because one of my long range plans is to make new missions as i learn a bit about programming. Also i striped out sp assets to make a smaller installer and to have less files to work with while debugging the project since i do 95% of my own testing.

BzE sticks to the orginal physics, which Bz 1.5 does not, both versions actually change game play from the original in different ways. BzE adds new planets, models, graphics, weapons, animations, 3 more races for strat play online etc...

[Ultraken]

I've changed plenty of things in 1.5 but but for the most part vehicle physics aren't one of them. For a while, vehicles rebounded differently from terrain but I later changed it back due to negative feedback from players. Physics in 1.5 should now be indistinguishable from 1.4 with few exceptions:

• Empty units are less likely to stick to cliffs
• Units can't push through terrain or building geometry
• Large units (>5m radius) are less affected by bullet hits

[Apollo]

The most noticeable change is the twitchy mouse then the tank slide after hopping out.

[Ultraken]

The main input change in 1.5 is mouse sensitivity being the same at all resolutions instead of decreasing at higher resolutions. A given in-game movement previously required three times as much mouse movement at 1920x1200 as at 640x480.

The original "sticking" fix applied no force if the vehicle's origin went underground, so they would sometimes slide like they were on glass. I fixed that a while back so it should work about like it does in 1.4. (They'll slide a little further since they don't have as much friction on initial impact with the ground.)

[Apollo]

The tank is not sliding like in 1.4 it's far less than 1.4.

The mouse is way over sensitive at lower resolutions which completely changes gameplay.

[Ultraken]

These aren't deliberately different from 1.4. Unfortunately, it's hard to do a side-by-side comparison with 1.4 because stock 1.4 won't run on my current desktop or laptop. (I'll try on my old laptop which runs 32-bit Windows 7 and has less RAM.)

You might want to check your mouse sensitivity in play options since that did nothing until about 7 months ago. (It now applies a 50%, 65%, 80%, 100%, 125%, 160%, and 200% scale depending on the slider position.)

[Apollo]

1.4 mouse sensitivity maxed out seems to be close to 80% in 1.5 @ 640x480

[Ultraken]

I made a build from the non-D3D9 branch and found that the mouse sensitivity dropped precipitously at high frame rates (especially 300+). I fixed that in the D3D9 branch by sampling the mouse position at most 60 times per second. That might explain some of the discrepancy between 1.4 and 1.5.

[Ultraken]

With only a little prodding, 1.4 runs with hardware rendering on my Thinkpad R60. Huzzah!

Doing a quick side-by-side comparison with 1.4 at 640x480@60Hz:

• Mouse sensitivity seems equivalent
• Cockpit camera zoom speed seems equivalent
• Empty vehicles seem to slide similar distances, at least on flat ground

Many players run at higher resolutions with vsync off, and 1.4 behaves differently than 1.5 under those conditions. (1.5 consistently runs like 1.4 at 640x480@60Hz regardless of resolution and frame rate.)

[Zax]

The mouse fix is a long time coming. Bombers, and even scouts, were stupid slow in turning. Doing the always-fun "mouse airlift" in which you had to pick up, move over, slide, repeat to get any ship to turn was getting really old. Anything in BZ1 that improves mouse response is a welcome change.

[Apollo]

I had to retest in windows 98, vsync on or off didn't make a difference except the fps number, it had no effect otherwise that i could see. (in later OS's that changed)

I still see a difference in the slide, how i tested it, start coli, run the grizzly full speed and level pitch, hop out and let things come to a rest, rotate 180 and hit T, the tank in bz1.4/win98 is at a range of 40 meters, in 1.5 it's 20 meters.

[Psychedelic Rhino]

The mouse fix is a long time coming. Bombers, and even scouts, were stupid slow in turning. Doing the always-fun "mouse airlift" in which you had to pick up, move over, slide, repeat to get any ship to turn was getting really old. Anything in BZ1 that improves mouse response is a welcome change.

The new inputs are not going to help in bombers all that much with a standard, non-programmable mouse. You'll still have to do the 'cat-scratch' or have a large surface to maneuver the mouse.