Battlezone 1

We need a general MP guide for those new guys who come Online right after SP and for those eternal noobs like Xtreme and Oddball who enter the game and say: "no pups", then rejoin to "fix" it.

I can't think of all those questions and answers myself and maybe I don't know all the answers, so let's work together on this and later "admin" will repost it as a single post/guide.

You can ask question here and wait for someone else to answer it or you can ask a question and answer it yourself.

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Q: Why sometimes when I join MP game I can't see all the power ups? How do I fix that?

A: Sometimes, when the game is lagged out (old or with high ping in the game) new joiners can't see all power ups. It's a normal thing. There are 2 solutions for this problem:

1. Launch the game and step a side for a minute or two, until other players in the game pick up the powerups for you. After pup is picked up, while you were in the game, you will see every next respawn normally.

2. If you don't wanna wait and you know where the powerup is located, you can shoot few rounds on the place where power up should be. You will destroy it, although you can't see it and it willl soon respawn. After that every next respawn will be normal.

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Q: How I drop a nav beacon without Armory?

A: Check Bz keys here.

Q: Sometimes my hits don't do any damage. Why is this?

A: There are a few reasons why this happens:

1. Lag. You missed even though it's a hit on your screen. Give more lead when aiming.

2. East-West bug.

3. Opponent lost connection and appears to be driving in circles.

4. MDM bug makes your weapons weaker. Have you used MDM at all? Try not to use it in multiplayer, it can mess up the game a lot.


Q: How can I fire/use 2 or more weapons at once?

A: For linking similar weapons, you must press a key. By default it is the "L" key. For linking other types of weapons together, you will need to press CTRL and the proper hardpoint key at the same time. By default, the keys for the hardpoints are as follows:

F8: 1st Hardpoint
F9: 2nd Hardpoint
F10: 3rd Hardpoint
F11: 4th Hardpoint
F12: 5th Hardpoint (unused, because no ship in the game has 5 weapon hardpoints)

If you press the keys without CTRL, it will simply switch to that weapon.

Q: I spin when I eject/vehicle explosions knock me around. It was not like this in original BZ. Is there anyway to get rid of it?

A: Yes.

1. Go into your Battlezone installation directory.

2. Find render.cfg.

3. Open it in notepad.

4. Change largeAssets=1 to largeAssets=0 and save changes.

Q: Why I sometimes can't rejoin my own game or join other people's games? All I see is a lot of dots............................

A: In 90% when host abandons the game no one is able to join anymore.
But if you are sure that original host is still in the game (and he hasn't banned you), then the game is "old" so it takes longer to create you. You shoud rejoin server, wait for pings in the lobby to show up, then join the game and wait for the host's "Y" to show up in "green" (if the game is sync off) before hitting "launch".

Q: How to copy-paste lobby line?

A: BZ has invisible highlight but everything else works normally. While holding left mouse button, highlight (pretend it's visible) text you need, right click on "highlighted" part and copy-paste it somewhere (URL to your Interent browser for example). If you need the whole text (chat), right click on the lobby, select all, open Notepad (or any similar program) and copy-paste into it.

Q: How do I make sure that my FPS speed is legal? To be honest I am not sure how to check it, and don't want to be a cheater. I like to play fair.

A: When you are in the game, FPS counter should be in top right corner. If you don't see it do next:

If you have BZ Config Utility under Rendering Settings check Show Statistics. If you change render.cfg with Notepad be sure that it writes TrackFPS=1, without semicolon ( ; ) in front.

Only FPS up to 60 is legal and, unlike in other games, more than 60 won't improve antyhing, it will only make a cheater out of you. In fact, more than 60 FPS creates extra lag, so it actually decreases your performance. In other games FPS is local, in BZ is shared. Bad coding, that creates FPS bug.

To keep it under 60 you have to run BZ in full screen and have 3D card turned on. You also have to do 1 more thing outside BZ, you have to turn vertycal sync on in your graphic card control panel.

Control panel procedure is explained in FAQ, #4.

If you have to run BZ in Window mode or in Software mode due techincal problems you should increase visibility (Visibility Scale to, let's say, 250 in Config Utility or VisibilityScale=250 in render.cfg) and/or increase resolution (software mode only, cause Window mode works only in 640x480). High visibility and resolution should decrease your FPS to something acceptable.