It could be that this should be in the BA forum, if so, sorry & can it be moved?

I'm an ICT teacher in the UK and run a gaming club for students ages 11-16. All the students have permission letters signed by their parents allowing them to play the 17+ freeware multiplayer games (UrbanTerror, Spring, Wolfenstein etc). Occasionally we do a taster session for all students with games that are rated as safe for children like Trackmania etc.

We play Spring with Balanced Annihilation and BA Chickens. I would like to know what age certification this has. Will it be Teen (13+) as total annihilation is? I would like to be able to allow the 11+ students to play it without needing permission, but I don't know if they are allowed.

Thanks very much

total annihilation is older than the current ranking system for ratings.

I would say the game it's self is T for teen as there is no blood, gore or sexual themes. However, the community is NOT. I would put it as rated r to mature so you will want to have a private server. Which is easily possible as the server is up for download. The kids can register on it and play games!

Interesting...
what is the idea behind your club?
do you sneak in healthy food, so they would eat apples and fruit juice when gaming, instead of cola and pizza when gaming at home?
Is it to socialize geeks? Do you do sport before/afterwards? Is it so parents have more free time at home, without kids? :D

I would say that while the community is a tad acidic, you can make passworded games in the lobby and not be trolled. Setting up your own server may be a bit over the top.

The game itsself is harmless, only robots fighting after all, even the german rating agency would love it.

edit: I am not aware of a rating for BA, however it is safe to assume you can use TA's rating.

People can still pm his users etc. For children ESP when he is dealing liability which waivers don't really protect against tort.. He should run a local private server.

i agree with smoth here.

BA is not freeware. It is illegal to distribute and download. Consider the many other games on the spring engine that are legal and free.

We are behind a firewall so they can't get onto the Internet even if they wanted to. It's a pain. There are loads of great multiplayer games I'd like us to be able to use that we can't as they can't run a lan-only server. I run the TASServer_035 on the LAN.

If anyone can suggest any other 3D multiplayer LAN games that don't need any Internet connection at all I'd be really grateful. These are getting a bit stale:-

AlienArena2010
ArmagetronAdvanced
Atmosphir_1.8
Hedgewars
Legends
Nexuiz
openarena
RiseAndFall
SavageSFE
SmokinGuns
spring-0.82.6.1
stranded2
SWINE
teeworlds
TrackManiaNationsESWC
tremulous
UrbanTerror
warsow
WolfensteinEnemyTerritory
WorldofPadman


There are quite a few reasons to run it: to improve our relationships with the kids we teach, to give those who don't have Internet/Xbox live etc a chance to experience multiplayer gaming, to build teamwork skills, to socialise with like-minded people, to give them a "refuge" as a lot of the people who turn up don't have a great time at school as they are nerds! :) Loads more I probably can't think of. Also, many of them can't afford Xbox's (old or new) or computers, or they just have an old laptop shared between the rest of the family - we're not in the most affluent area here so I like to think that it's improving the quality of life for some of them too!

About Balanced Annihilation not being freeware, I hadn't thought of that. I do have a copy of TA at home and I can't imagine us getting tracked down, but I may install CA as well and see if the kids can be weaned over to it. it's more complex though and seeing as many of the 11-12 year olds find BA hard to get I think resistance could be high! Plus it brings back nice memories to me of my youth playing TA for hours.

Spring has many games try kp and spring tanks!

Actually we tried kernelpanic and some of them quite liked it. I didn't, but I didn't give it much of a chance as I preferred BA.

And OMG! Spring Tanks looks awesome! That is totally getting added on next time I update. It's a pain as I have to roll it out to 30 computers using self-extracting rar files so I don't update enough.

I'm going to put the cursed on too next time and see how they react.

you're a good guy. i wish such a club had been available to me when i was younger. allowing kids more than a passing relationship with computers is likely giving them skills they will find invaluable later in life (as i'm sure you've surmised yourself)

iirc SWINE has some cartoony gore; you won't find anything like that really in any spring game; although Cursed is quite horrific and does have bare breasts (you'll get a reaction, but maybe not the kind you had imagined)

i'm strongly opposed to -advertising- BA as it does use atari IP but you've got a closed environment there... pretty sure with TA you were allowed to do the "share a CD" for LAN purposes though so it seems you'll be fine. (also they would have to be heartless bastards to go against a childrens gaming club)

kudos; thanks for checking out spring, it was great to read about what you're up to and i hope you'll keep us updated!

For new games, one option is to check new games here yeah, but other than that how many people should a game be able to accomodate at once for you to take it?

And ratings... I'd say BA is pretty safe, as are most games here (Cursed might be more questionable due to the models looking so EVIL!, and S44 has real people instead of robots).

Make sure to Check out http://www.evolutionrts.info

Thanks very much. SWINE is one of the games that only the students after school are allowed to play and they have to get a permission slip signed by their parents before they attend saying they don't care that they're playing 5 yera old 17+ games. They've all got GTA IV etc at home anyway so it's all a bit stupid. But I'm covering myself in case a parent does complain.

Out of those only a few are available to students of any age with no permission letter: trackmania, armagetron, hedgewars, world of padman (although I'm not totally sure about that one), stranded2 and Atmosphir.

Shameless self promotion ftw!
http://code.google.com/p/conflictterra/wiki/Welcome

Also granted this is sort of going into off topic land but freeware games i've enjoyed that were not on your list.

Soldat http://soldat.thd.vg/en/ Semi Gory 2-D side scrolling multiplayer shooter

Teeworlds http://www.teeworlds.com/ is sort of the same premise but more cartoony and less gory, probably a bit simpler less guns and such.

oh and there's league of legends, I've never played it and have no clue if it works in a LAN environment but people make a big deal about it.\

EDIT Also 0 AD
http://wildfiregames.com/0ad/page.php?p=14437

I recommend checking out Scorched3D: http://www.scorched3d.co.uk/index.php

BZFlag is a fun freeware game, as well.


I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned yet, but Zero-K is a Spring game you may want to try. It is actively developed, and has a whole host of interesting features.
Huzzah for self-promotion!

I would highly recommend Teeworlds - there's gore-free violence but it's insanely easy to pick up, quite scalable in terms of player numbers and should run on just about anything, especially school computers.

EvoRTS and ZeroK would be good choices for RTS, although with ZeroK make sure that you select the 'unlock all units' option if you don't have internet access.

Yes, what lancer said, also, w/o internet access I might need to make a special installer for you (not a problem, I already have one that i could just modify for you). If you want, just contact me in this thread of via pm and I'll make it happen

Forb, how about you publicly release a 'LAN pack' for Evo that works internet-free with a couple of maps and TAAServer? It would certainly help spread the game, as not everyone is willing to have to install something like Desura* and make a separate internet download for the game every time. I would recommend that all Spring-based games do this too for situations just like the OPs.


*I love Steam, but there is a lot of irrational hate towards it - Desura is similar in this regard.