News: zbattle Dead Again. Time for Z-Net's Rebirth?

Thursday, March 29, 2012

An old friend/Z-Net regular/mod (Sferics) dropped by the comments and informed me that zbattle is dead again, in regard to the website and program servers being down. I've decided and stated before that if that were ever to happen, I'd consider releasing the 2010 stand-alone/spoof client I made, at the very least as a zbattle alternative/replacement so those zbattle users have a new home. I don't know what happened to zbattle. While I certainly expected at some point to see zbattle down here and there from maybe a couple days to a week, I didn't expect a month or possibly permanent downtime. Veeborg seemed on the ball in recent years when it came to getting zbattle back up and running. So I never expected to actually be considering releasing my thus far, private project. But here I am, now doing so.

My consideration on this matter is based mostly on users desire being sufficient to be worth my time and effort of polishing it up and maintaining it. So to see how those users desire stands, I've created a poll. I listed 6 options to select from. None of those options are a "no" as, if you don't want it or don't care, you can simply not vote. This poll isn't meant to see how much of a percentage of users want it, it's just to see if there is a sufficient amount of users interested in general. I just chose to add these choices so that if/when it meets the requirements for moving forward, I can be better prepared for a more optimal direction with the project. The most popular result wouldn't necessarily be used, but rather just help guide the project on whats best for the users. I'm going to give it about a 1 month cut-off date. After which, if there's a significant amount of attention on the poll, I'll go from there. Perhaps sooner with enough interest.

I personally won't be spreading word of this poll to try and catch the attention of former zbattle users. Advertizing my past projects when they were alive was involving enough, and doing so for a project in this state, even if its a poll requiring votes as a direct result from hits to this blog, is beyond the amount of involvement I'd want to invest in it at this point. If you want this project released, want a new home for zbattle users, and feel like spreading the word to others who might share that desire, go ahead and link to this blog, directing people to the poll.

For reference, I'll include a link at the end of this post to a new page I've created for my this potential 3rd installment of the Z-Net project/zbattle clone/spoof/alternative, in case you have never been to this blog before and/or don't know what this all is about. Also below I'll include a short quotable that sums all this up for anyone you may share this with.

In my boredom a couple years ago I created a 100% working clone of zbattle that I have never released. Now that zbattle seems to be dead, the criteria for me to actually release it has been half met. The other half requiring enough interest from players. Simply, if you want it, show your interest by voting on the poll on my blog and/or spreading the word to others who may be interested as well.

-- DarkAkuma

• Z-Net 3.0 (development codename)/zbattle alternative