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The source code for our students' projects is available for download from here.

BZFlag is a free online multiplayer cross-platform open source 3D tank battle game that is maintained by an active community of individuals distributed all around the world. It is one of the most successful and sustained cross-platform open source games ever with an active developer, administrative, and player community. There have been more than a million downloads in the last five years alone and our user base presently consists of more than 200 players online at any time of day or night. The project has actually become more popular over the years as we continue to improve and enhance the game.

BZFlag has been under active development since 1992. Our organization is presently comprised of a rather disparate group of individuals that work on BZFlag because they love the game and the community that surrounds it. Our developer base presently consists of core developers that have made extensive contributions to the game and remained active over many years, along with many apprentice-level developers that are coming up in the ranks, and various peripheral/casual developers, extension developers, and web integration programmers. Additionally, there are trusted staffers, server operators, and graphic artists that assist in the day-to-day operations needed by the game for keeping servers up and running, providing server list services, designing artwork, providing network statistics, image hosting, web hosting, and much more.

All of our project developers almost exclusively collaborate on the #bzflag Freenode IRC channel, which is the central hub for most of our development discussions, decision planning meetings, game operations, and network infrastructure administration. We operate via a benevolent dictatorship combined with a meritocracy that strives for consensus between the core developers and other involved community members.

Extensive discussions are held for any changes to BZFlag that affect the game's traditional spirit, mood of gameplay, tone of the user environment, and types of interactions possible in the game. These discussions also include considerations whenever there are new features being added such as new flags, enhanced graphics, or changes to the gameplay. We also serve as a support arm to our user community assisting them with anything from how to get started playing to providing assistance with setting up their own server or even helping them write their own new extensions to the game.

From IRC, we administer network operations across more than 250 public servers. As we are a globally distributed network-oriented game, we also maintain the public server listings, provide player tracking, network statistics, global authentication, user and group management, abuse and ban controls, player conflict resolution, competitive league management, and user community support.