<story><title>BZFlag</title><url>https://www.bzflag.org/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Uehreka</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve made a couple of comments like this on HN before, but whenever you make a homepage for a project, whether it&amp;#x27;s a game, game engine, software library, command line tool or anything--please start by describing what the thing is in one or two sentences.&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s what I thought when I clicked this link:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; BZFlag? Does this have something to do with zipping files? Meh, I&amp;#x27;ll click and see what it is.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; A picture of some 3D rendered stuff, and download links for a bunch of platforms... Is this a game engine? A physics simulator? Maybe if I scroll down I&amp;#x27;ll find out&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Hmm, the project news doesn&amp;#x27;t tell me much... &amp;quot;A Flying tank&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Tanks with Superpowers&amp;quot;... I guess this is a game where you drive tanks? I&amp;#x27;ll take a look at the comments.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Ohhhhhh, I see.&lt;p&gt;This could&amp;#x27;ve been fixed by just having an h2 and a paragraph at the top saying &amp;quot;BZFlag&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;An open source tank-based warfare game with online multiplayer, going strong since 2008!&amp;quot; (or whenever the project started)&lt;p&gt;You don&amp;#x27;t necessarily need to have a tagline like that on every release page or documentation page, but if I end up on your site and delete everything from the URL except &amp;quot;projectname.org&amp;quot;, I should be 2 seconds away from a simple description of what your project is.&lt;p&gt;With all that said, people seem to like this game, I may check it out later!&lt;p&gt;Edit: Looks like they added a tagline to the page. It’s clear, it’s obvious, it makes sense. Thanks!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>97b683f8</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s a FPS with jumping tanks. Grab flags on the ground and get special abilities.&lt;p&gt;The main gameplay element is that when a tank is in the air it keeps its rotational momentum and you have no way to correct the trajectory mid air. Sometimes you have to jump and aim on the right or even backwards and this all gets down to injecting the exact quantity of movement prior to the jump with the mouse (a nice addition beyond the classical pointing mechanics of FPS).&lt;p&gt;Tanks can&amp;#x27;t tilt, but hopefully they can jump, so another saillent part of the gameplay are mid-air duels, when two tanks facing each other start firing, jump to avoid the slow-moving orbs, and carry the fight into the air.&lt;p&gt;It looks like a caricature, but it has great mechanics that could make a good basis for an e-sport. If e-sports are introduced into the Olympic Games and they decide to look for an open-source game, BZFlag would be a good contender.</text></comment>
<story><title>BZFlag</title><url>https://www.bzflag.org/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Uehreka</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve made a couple of comments like this on HN before, but whenever you make a homepage for a project, whether it&amp;#x27;s a game, game engine, software library, command line tool or anything--please start by describing what the thing is in one or two sentences.&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s what I thought when I clicked this link:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; BZFlag? Does this have something to do with zipping files? Meh, I&amp;#x27;ll click and see what it is.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; A picture of some 3D rendered stuff, and download links for a bunch of platforms... Is this a game engine? A physics simulator? Maybe if I scroll down I&amp;#x27;ll find out&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Hmm, the project news doesn&amp;#x27;t tell me much... &amp;quot;A Flying tank&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Tanks with Superpowers&amp;quot;... I guess this is a game where you drive tanks? I&amp;#x27;ll take a look at the comments.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Ohhhhhh, I see.&lt;p&gt;This could&amp;#x27;ve been fixed by just having an h2 and a paragraph at the top saying &amp;quot;BZFlag&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;An open source tank-based warfare game with online multiplayer, going strong since 2008!&amp;quot; (or whenever the project started)&lt;p&gt;You don&amp;#x27;t necessarily need to have a tagline like that on every release page or documentation page, but if I end up on your site and delete everything from the URL except &amp;quot;projectname.org&amp;quot;, I should be 2 seconds away from a simple description of what your project is.&lt;p&gt;With all that said, people seem to like this game, I may check it out later!&lt;p&gt;Edit: Looks like they added a tagline to the page. It’s clear, it’s obvious, it makes sense. Thanks!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>twic</author><text>Web pages? Those&amp;#x27;ll never catch on if you ask me. The package info seems clear enough:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  $ dnf info bzflag | sed &amp;#x27;s&amp;#x2F;^&amp;#x2F;  &amp;#x2F;&amp;#x27;
  Last metadata expiration check: 0:00:29 ago on Thu 31 Oct 2019 22:24:31 GMT.
  Available Packages
  Name         : bzflag
  Version      : 2.4.18
  Release      : 3.fc30
  Architecture : x86_64
  Size         : 11 M
  Source       : bzflag-2.4.18-3.fc30.src.rpm
  Repository   : fedora
  Summary      : 3D multi-player tank battle game
  URL          : http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;bzflag.org
  License      : LGPLv2
  Description  : BZFlag is a 3D multi-player tank battle game  that  allows users
               : to play against each other in a networked environment.  There are
               : five teams: red, green, blue, purple and rogue (rogue tanks are
               : black).  Destroying a player on another team  scores a win, while
               : being destroyed or destroying a teammate scores a loss.  Rogues
               : have no teammates (not even other rogues), so they cannot shoot
               : teammates and they do not have a team score. There are two main
               : styles of play: capture-the-flag and free-for-all.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;</text></comment>