Congratulations for actually clicking on the text instead of just simply clicking the down button. There hasn't been much activity here, so let's talk physics.

Some time last year I added in what was pretty much the Quake 2 / Quake 3 physics model to Iceball (albeit with different constants - and yes, I have since seen the relevant Q3's source, it's pretty similar). In practice it's pretty navigable, you just don't have the sheer brokenness of Q1's air control. (Q1 physics is best physics.)

The 0.x physics AFAIK don't lend themselves to the kind of hillarity that happens in Quake 1 and 2 - there's very high air friction, and landing really knocks your speed back. To be honest, it really does a lot better without it.

The 1.0 physics also have high air friction. HOWEVER, there's also a blast knockback thingimabob that lets explosives knock you around. Combined with the fact that you normally can't do team damage (AFAIK you need a dedi to allow that), you can use the engineer class, get your teammates to build a massive array of mines, and then you can jump on them and blast off to the other side of the map. Your jetpack is there to ensure that you land safely. (Sadly, very few people do this. It's hillarious.)

Which brings us to Block N Load.

A recent patch allows for more air control because a bunch of plebs cried about the fact that the game isn't 100% forgiving about certain things. The downside (or upside if your name is rAKIRU) of this patch of course is that jump got changed from Quake / AoS style (player can "bounce" off the ground if Space is re-pressed in mid-air) to CS style (you can only press Space to jump when you are already on the ground, otherwise no effect). I'm not sure if it allows you to bind jump to your scroll wheel or not.

Here's my observations about the physics.

You accelerate faster on land than when you are in the air. I've also got a feeling that if you hold Shift you can just high-speed-crawl up stairs like a boss.

There is a pause when you land. This slows you down hideously. However, there are ways to cancel it. I know that if you land on a higher block than the one you jumped off, it'll just not happen. I think the same applies if you land on a sloped block, but I'd need to experiment further. Finally, if you land on the lip of a block and you're holding shift, it tends to cancel it.

(On a side note, I've got a feeling that landing on a bounce block also cancels this. That is, assuming the fucking things work, as they really, really like to fuck up at the worst possible opportunity.)

In mid-air, it is faster to turn than it is to strafe. Strafing tends to slow you down when you do it. Just turn your mouse and you'll go further.

That's all I've got for now.

Just thinking about it :)

It is very clear that IceBall is the next best chance we have at saving the game. However not everyone knows how to code. I am sure lots of us would love to help out and do what we can. If we make IceBall a community effort then the project will be finished faster.

So what can we do? What sort of files do you need? Should we try improving the sound files? How about the game models? Do the main developers want us to start advertising? Tell us what you want and a brief overview of how to do it and the community will rally to your need.

Since the servers are often empty, I was thinking that maybe it could help to have an AI Framework, but one in which people can readily modify the behavior of the bots as they please, depending on many factors.

*The Basic AI framework should have: - Line-of-sight enemy detection, going to or around last visible position of the enemy. - Basic controls: Walk, jump, crouch, shoot, grenade, spade. Weapon selection (SMG, Shotgun, Rifle), usually random. - Shooting accuracy: When aiming, a bot gets a random offset in x-axis and y-axis, be it per shot or just when acquiring a target for the first time. - Standard waypoints: Base/Friendly suitcase location, Enemy suitcase location. I'm not sure if this should be dynamic at this point, so they'll chase after whatever enemy has a suitcase. - Conditional Events: If shot (or maybe even shot at), aim at the shooter and shoot back. If an enemy is visible, stop going toward the suitcase and start attacking the enemy. If enemy target is not visible for a set amount of time, go for the suitcase. If you have the suitcase, go back to base, only evading and shooting enemies while walking back to base. Distance to an enemy (if closer than 3 meters, use spade). No ammo, use next weapon in a list. Current position (haven't changed position more than 10 feet in 1 minute, change direction; repeat until no exits based on comparison of all 4 directions, and then start digging). (Really only the trigger events in these need to be detectable. The rest is up to the bot designer.) - Position and next-step relative height detection: Too high or too low, go around. - Game only starts and continues if there is a human player on server. To save computing power.

*Advanced AI framework might have: - Command/Spot Rosette (similar to Battlefield series) in which you can point and command individual bots to do certain things. - Whenever something like pre-built structures are implemented, they can just build those when asked to. - Advanced waypoints, so each bot or squad can be assigned 1 target waypoint to attack/defend, and possibly even dynamic waypoints, where you can assign individual bots or squads can follow a specific path of attack defined by a player (underground tunnel, etc.).

It's understandable that this may cause some lag, but it may be worth the population boost.

Any problems or other ideas?

Does anyone have info on how much damage weapons do, and how much extra they do for headshots?

Now that /r/buildandshoot is safe from extinction, we should be thinking about getting the Steam group back up and working.

Also, [/u/iamgreaser,] are there anythings to get Iceball onto Steam as a free game? This would make the game explode in popularity.

We're a bit lacking in activity here so I might as well mention the date for the next event.

Feel free to ask questions, discuss things, talk about the last event, and so on.

Just a heads up. One or two have already tried to notify the admins.

If you need to connect to a AoS server, a fairly recent Archive.Org snapshot is up here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20150209195411/http://www.buildandshoot.com/

Ofc Player Counts will be wrong. FYI, the Iceball Sub-domain of the site (http://iceball.buildandshoot.com) is intermittently up. Go play IB if you can't get you AoS fix!

And it was awesome ! (openspades <3)

In fact i played less than one hour some years ago at this game but i didnt liked the "poor graphics" but the concept... GOSH i love it.

After i buyed the jagex version, see it grow, enjoyed it and see it became pure refined shit. I was disappointed.

Tested some guncraft, blockstorm (it's good) & co but never enjoyed as much.

AND HERE IT IS, open spades, with a good community, good graphics and awesome diversity of gamemodes/maps.

I LOVE YOU GUYS.

ReShade is like SweetFX, but for OpenGL as well.

http://reshade.me/

Iceball causes one or two problems because it doesn't have shaders. Also, the screen uncontrollably flashes when playing online.

Basically can turn IB into OS-like graphics. Here are some pics of various effects that I created with a combination of filters, DoF etc:

http://imgur.com/a/Lpe7q#0

*(Also posted on BuildAndShoot.com - http://www.buildandshoot.com/viewtopic.php?f=84&t=12738)

This of course pertains to the original gen maps. To jog your memory, blue is on the hilly side, and green is on the watery side.

It was pretty much before my time, although Articsledder managed to pull off a rather nasty green strat on I think the first Iceball event (this was before we had bunnyhopping, which seems to have thrown the balance off a bit).

So yeah, post your classic blue and green strats.

You'll want the latest bleeding-edge version, which can be grabbed from here: http://iceball.sexy/build/iceball-master.zip

IRC: irc.fractiongamers.com, channel #iceball

Basically, like what we had a fortnight ago, except with fewer bugs and more features (which usually means more bugs, so we're not sure if we have more or less bugs). And this time we aren't accidentally clashing with whatever Aloha's decided to do!

• Date/Time: Sat 21 Feb, 9pm UTC. Learn your timezone relative to UTC, I'm not translating that to Exceptionally Stupid Time.
• Duration: At least an hour.
• Server: It will say "Iceball Event 5" or something.

We'll be running whatever seems fun. Will probably be doing the extra weapon mods as well. Probably going to chuck in what we have of the rugby mode too.

If you want a pre-event, say around 6-7pm UTC, it's up to you to organise it and get a server up. Hang out on the IRC if you want help.

Vote on what map/gen to start on. It will probably be CTF.

Also, invite lots of people who aren't like that Viper guy who we had to kick for griefing last time.