Shaders and Shadows Release
Eye-candy and navigation enhancements
The online mapviewer has been updated to support the new shader and shadow features.
[Read More]
What is it?
BZ-Next is an experimental fork of BZFlag that redoes the rendering engine from the ground-up, using modern OpenGL, and the Magnum graphics library.
See the about the project page for more information!
And check out the awesomely cross-platform Magnum Graphics Library!
What does it currently look like?
Map: Urban Jungle by Army of One
Map: Rats Nest by Winny
Map: Fairground by Ian
Where can I get a copy?
BZ-Next is still in heavy development, so releases are expected to be buggy. Windows releases will be made available for download on the Releases page. Linux users, please build from source. Instructions are found on the Building page.
What version of OpenGL do I need?
The current goal is to aim for support for OpenGL >=2.1 and WebGL 2. Some features might only be supported on more capable platforms. Currently, the development build may not function on all platforms. Help us test it out!
Follow development on GitHub!
You can follow development progress at BZ-Next on GitHub. Contributions, issue reports, etc are welcome!
Development updates:
-
-
Shaders and Shadows
Flexible rendering pipeline
The client now supports a more flexible render pipeline, which can incorporate arbitrary shaders. [Read More] -
Tank Rendering and Animation
Drawing player tanks in new renderer
The client can now render animated player tanks. Tread and wheel animation, explosions, and resizing (squish factor, flags like tiny/narrow/thief etc) are supported. [Read More] -
Viewer Update and Map Archive
Making BZFlag Maps More Accessible
The map viewer / editor now has a built-in map archive. [Read More] -
ImGUI Docking and More Widgets
Improving Debug UI
The app now has a pretty well-rounded assortment of debug widgets to inspect the state of map objects, materials, and so on. [Read More] -
Windows Map Editor Build Available
Windows Map Editor / Viewer
A windows build of the map editor is now available. It is in sync with the current prototype at https://bz-next.github.io/mapviewer3/mapviewer.html [Read More] -
WebGL2 Map Editor Prototype Online
WebGL2 Map Editor / Viewer
A fairly full-featured map viewer/editor is now online at https://bz-next.github.io/mapviewer3/mapviewer.html [Read More] -
WebGL Mapviewer Demo Online
Supporting WebGL in BZ-Next
A WebGL map viewer demo app is online at https://bz-next.github.io/mapviewer/mapviewer.html [Read More] -
Emscripten WebGL Support
Supporting WebGL in BZ-Next
A new WebGL-enabled target for an online map viewer has been added, along with support for Emscripten in the build system. [Read More] -
BZ-Next Running on Librem 5 phone
Supporting embedded OpenGL
blast007 was able to build and run the BZ-Next client on a Librem 5, a linux phone with GLES2 support. [Read More] -
GLES2 support added to development branch
Supporting embedded OpenGL
GLES2 is now supported in the main development branch. This should help with support for embedded devices (phones, raspberry pi, etc). [Read More] -
MinGW support added to development branch
Cross-compiling works
MinGW64 cross compiling is now supported in the main development branch. [Read More] -
Mesh generation cleaned up
Memory and CPU reduction
The world mesh generation code was cleaned up a bit, yielding significant memory savings, and a speedup as well. [Read More] -
BZ-Next Site Created
Towards the future!
Welcome to the site for BZ-Next. This will mostly be a place for development notes, build instructions, dev releases, and updates.