Bitfighter

Bitfighter is a fast-paced, out-in-space, team-based, multiplayer retro arcade shooter.

The game features customizable ships, multiple game types, full-featured level editor, Lua scripting, and solid network play.

Games can have a strategic flavour, or players can just enjoy blasting one another.

Games are fast, fun, and frenetic.

What is new in this release:

• Major features include new badges, integration with the gaming site GameJolt, simplified bot management, and highlighting of local servers.
• Editor key bindings can now be assigned in the INI.
• The team definition menu now has an interactive color picker, and you can enter colors using either RGB or HTML hex notation.
• Finally, Pleiades (the online level database) has been upgraded: it now handles larger levels and shows better screenshots.
• Upload your levels and start rating as you play.
• This release also includes the ability to record and play back games.

What is new in version 018a:

• This version adds many new features and gameplay elements.
• The highlights include a new weapon (Seeker), the ability to engineer teleports, a new fast energy recharge mode, new music, enhancements to the sensor module, and more badges.

What is new in version 017a:

• Cores altered significantly
• First achievement implemented (25 flags)
• High scores menu
• Pulse addition to Boost module
• Music!
• Voice chat mute (/vmute)
• Lot of other fixes and rounding of the rough edges of 016

What is new in version 016:

• Headline Changes:
• New game type: Core
• Weapon and module changes and upgrades
• Better voice chat for all platforms
• Screen shots fixed
• Soccer pick-up dropped and soccer ball inertia added
• Gameplay:
• Added Core game type. Destroy enemy cores to win. Core health can be set in the editor.
• Added loadout presets. Players can save loadouts with Ctrl-1/2/3 and load them with Alt-1/2/3. Loadouts are saved via INI and can be viewed with the /showpresets command.
• Upgraded Sensor increases passive viewing range and allows spybug placement without using a weapon slot. Spybugs are now placed with double-click
• Added spawn shield. Protects newly spawned players for several seconds until they move, activate a module, or fire a weapon
• Energy recharge rate increases while idle and doubles while idle in a loadout zone. Hostile loadout zones drain energy.
• Removed soccer ball pick-up. The ball is now "heavier", and other objects, like TestItems, are heavier as well.
• Triples consume about 20% less energy than in the 015 series
• Bouncers are more effective against the Armor module
• Loadouts no longer carry over from level to level -- now you start a new level with the default loadout
• Added top scores in single-team games like Rabbit and Bitmatch to lower right corner
• Player ratings are determined by kill/death ratio. If you die more, your rating is negative
• Forcefield engineer abuse has been greatly reduced. Note: Original forcefield behavior can be accessed through 'EngineerUnrestricted' instead of 'Engineer' in Specials
• Team bitmatch suicides no longer hurt team score
• Teleporting onto a loadout zone triggers loadout change, just like flying onto one
• Client:
• Added music sub-system. Plays Ogg Vorbis music files. You can test it by placing files in the 'music' sub-directory
• Fixed screenshots; now use PNG format
• 64-bit Intel Mac build available now
• Fixed voice chat for all operating systems, with improved quality
• Reduced leave/join spamming in lobby
• Allow /mute in server lobby
• Fixed some game lobby bugs with leaving/joining being out of sync
• Added scoreboard marks for admins (@) and level changers (+)
• Joystick profiles are now kept in a separate INI, joystick_presets.ini, that can be adjusted and added to for your joystick
• Smaller text should look crisper throughout the game
• Line smoothing is now officially part of the game
• Removed -jsave and -jplay cmd line options. It's been ages since they worked, and it's unlikely they ever will
• -help cmd line option now displays meaningful help
• Added engineer to help screen
• Added Bitfighter icon for the taskbar
• Diagnostics work a little better and will not show joystick info if none is attached
• Allow for more than 32 different types of game objects for future expansion
• Reduced CPU usage on diagnostics screen
• Reduced CPU usage for overlapping asteroids
• Migrated from GLUT to the SDL framework. This brings several improvements like faster rendering on Mac and nicer Input programming.
• Fixed message rendering problem with disabled loadout indicators
• Multi-line chat is now indented to prevent spoofing
• Prevent impersonations with spaces in a username
• Editor:
• Added mouse wheel zooming in the editor
• Implemented 2-tier snapping in editor -- hold space to disable grid snap, but still snap to wall corners and other items; hold shift-space to completely disable snapping
• Added plugin system for the editor -- users can write scripts to generate items in the editor and bind them to hot keys. Includes simple curve generation tool as a sample.
• Added editor option to disallow robots
• Added 'tab' filename completion in editor levelname entry screen
• Added mouse wheel scrolling for existing level names on levelname entry screen
• Removed dedicated wall-editing mode (Ctrl-A)
• Game statistics not recorded when testing a level from the editor
• Hosting:
• Added /leveldir admin command to change folder where levels are read. Change affects current session only, and will not be saved in the INI.
• Added /ban and /banip for persistent server ban lists.
• Added /resetscore command
• Added /shuffle command for admins
• Removed optional hostAddr cmd line parameter for -dedicated . Specify host address (only rarely needed) with the existing -hostAddr option
• Removed -server cmd line parameter; not sure it really ever worked at all
• Incorrect admin and levelchange password entries are now logged in server log
• Fixed rare crash with bot zone generation
• Console command history now working in a sane manner
• Bots & Scripting:
• Robots are smarter with forcefields
• Robot team messages now only go to the team
• Robots only spawn if a valid script is detected
• Removed deprecated getMove() method -- if your bot still relies on this, it will no longer work
• Migrated onTick() to a standard event -- this will let bots unsubscribe to onTick events if they like (bot start out subscribed to onTick by default). See wiki for how to use this to make the bot sleep for a time.
• Added nexusOpened and nexusClosed events. See wiki for details.
• Lua added copyMoveFromObject, Lua getCurrLoadout and getReqLoadout can now be used for ships
• LUA scripts print to the OGLconsole

What is new in version 015a:

• New Features and Enhancements:
• Players can now see cloaked teammates.
• Added Robot:dropItem()
• Fixed selecting loadout that is same as ship after selecting new loadout, now avoids changing ships loadout when canceled.
• Can now choose one of multiple joysticks. If there is no joystick, then you cannot change input from keyboard to joystick.
• Indicator now shows which team possesses the flag in CTF, ZC, and rabbit in team mode.
• Rabbit and Nexus no longer always spawn with current loadout where there is loadout zone.
• Added support for PS3 joystick.
• Tab-expansion when typing a /command has been much improved.
• Added /pausebots and /stepbots commands, also mapped alt-] to /stepbots, and ctrl-] to /stepbots 10
• Added /addbot, /addbots, /kickbot, /kickbots commands
• Added /mute to mute a noisy player
• Added /gmute to globally mute a noisy player (Admins only)
• Increased rendering speed for most game objects
• Improved edge rendering for barriers in-game and in the editor
• Vastly improved performance for auto-generated bot nav zones
• Bot nav zones now auto generated for all levels at load time; no further need to manually create zones; manual zone creation will be removed in future version
• PolyWall item added to editor -- works just like a wall, but is edited like a loadout zone or other polygon item. Note that this replaces the undocumented item "BarrierMakerS" which is now deprecated.
• Chat/Command box now in lower-left of screen. Chats now appear immediately above it.
• Multi-line chat in game lobby
• Game statistics are kept in a local SQLite database
• Robots are smarter now; they avoid running into walls, turrets, and forcefield projectors
• Robots can use teleporters now
• Robots paths are cached - can speed up performance on large maps with many bots
• Primordial voting system added; disabled by default; will improve upon it in the future
• Add level option to allow soccer ball pickup
• S_bot is the default robot when adding a robot
• Admins can upload local .level files to a server
• Bug Fixes:
• Fixed bug with crossing forcefields when using engineer module
• Fixed bug letting some players pick heat seeker when the weapon doesn't yet exist
• Fixed a possible server crash when client sends invalid weapon or module in loadout
• Fixed Robot:getReqLoadout that returns invalid third weapon.
• Fix problem where kicking a player will lag, delay disconnect other players at the same IP address or same computer
• Some minor adjustment to SpeedZone to avoid any possibility to get through one way SpeedZone path, reduce lag while using SpeedZone.
• Can add or remove joysticks while in the options menu; no longer requires restart
• Fixed giant memory leak with editor and /showzones
• Fix editor crash if all teams were deleted
• Fix missing sound on some Intel sound chips
• Fix missing sound when using /suspend
• Linux joystick fixes
• Fix CPU timing issues
• Fix broken rating sort - teams should sort better at start of rounds now
• Fix large scores being chopped off of the display

What is new in version 015:

• It now features two new modules, Engineer and Armor.
• The backend features a new statistics framework that supports a new game results reporting page.
• There are TONS of fixes and enhancements throughout, including fixes to some long standing bugs, and some great tools for remote server management, so please check out the full release notes on the downloads page.

What is new in version 12a:

• Fixed crashing issue during connect to remote server.