Project History

History of B3

The first draft of B3 was designed by Thorn (Michael Thornton) in 2005. The design concept Thorn introduced was new for the game administration field:

Make an ingame administration tool, make it game independant and OS independant. Make it so that plugins can extend functionality.

This design concept is simple, yet strong. B3 is designed to control game servers automatically and by admins from within the game. No need to alt-tab out of the game to switch to a GUI, but control everything by giving commands in game chat. Python was chosen because it is a powerfull and effective language and it runs on Windows, Linux/Unix and Mac OS X. Python also comes with an built-in interpreter keeping the sourcecode easy to use and friendly for new developers.

Call of Duty

The first version was developed for one specific game community Austin Servers, tagged [AS] for their Call of Duty servers. After first release of B3, xlr8or got involved, being one of the first game admins using B3 in 2005 and seeing it's full potential. xlr8or dragged in ttlogic who created the first version of xlrstats plugin. In this period we are still only supporting Call of Duty, the vanilla version. When the Call of Duty series expanded, B3 supported the new games creating new parsers. In the next cpl. of years the community starts creating plugins and new features for B3 are born. Xlr8or gets involved in the B3 core and B3 slowly evolves.

Urban Terror

One of the developers of Urban Terror game version 4.1 is woekele, and back in 2008 he is just like xlr8or in the SNT GamesCom group of Twente University in the Netherlands. This leads to xlr8or creating the first version of the iourt41 parser for Urban Terror. This opens a new group of admins and gamers learning about B3 and it's potential. This new parser was added in December 2007. This new parser also brings Courgette to B3 and soon he becomes an enthusiast developer of the URT parser. He creates plugins and becomes one of the core developers quickly.

Other Q3A based Games

In the period 2007 - 2009 a series of Q3A based games are added to B3. WOP in 2008, ETPRO in 2009, SMG in 2009. In that period (2008) Bakes joins the dev. group with some astonishing plugins and fresh ideas such as remote connectivity, reading game logfiles over FTP.

Frostbite Engine -> BattleField Bad Company 2

Early 2010 Courgette creates a whole new parser. Assisted by Bakes and Spacepig (joining B3 dev team in 2010) he makes the first BFBC2 parser. This parser is no longer depending on a game logfile, but interacts directly with the game server. The parser is then torn in two, a frostbite parser and a bfbc2 parser. In this period (2010) Durzo joins the dev team and also Grosbedo joins in. Grosbedo adds new debug tools for the devs and helps out improving performance of the B3 core by 25%. An impressive entrance.

Medal of Honor

Bakes creates the new MOH parser based on the frostbite parser which is released in October 2010.

HomeFront 2011

Early 2011 KAOS studios HomeFront producer contacts the B3 group asking if we are interested in supporting HomeFront. HomeFront is a new game based on the Drama engine, which is a modified Unreal 3 engine. Although communication with this engine is limited, we do start developing for this game, the community pushes the dev group to expand B3 to this game. KAOS is responsive to our requests for rcon and protocol improvements, hopefully HomeFront will be another long term venture for B3. Version 1.6.0 supports HomeFront since the serverpatch (1.0.4x) introduces Private Messaging to HomeFront.

Altitude and Brink? 2011

Also intoduced in B3 v1.6.0 is first draft of a parser for Altitude, a small 2D game. Yet Courgette is feeling confident that B3 can, be it limited, provide valuable admin functionality to the game. Another enthousiast candidate for support would be Brink (2011). Sadly the game provides no information in a game logfile or connection facility to 'read' what happens. Here's where game developers need to open their hearts to B3 and provide good means of communication for B3 so it can read the events happening on the servers. Brink support is for that reason up to now not realistic.