Wait one minute… what the heck is wRisk? How can taking over the world lead to an open source Battle City?

wRisk is a Java version of the classic game of world domination, Risk. Sounds cool! It is. But, don’t pat us loobles on the back, thank Yura.net, developers of the Open Source Domination project. Pay them a visit and shake their virtual hands. Yes, we stole their code and renamed it wRisk. This may make us evil blood sucking leeches, but that is the beauty of open source. Today we are villains, but tomorrow we are heroes when we give back to the project!

What does this have to do with Battle City? At this point, absolutely nothing! However, take note that we are far more than evil leeches; we are loobles. We think above, we go beyond, we scheme and we code. Enter Ggz.

Ggz is an online gaming center based on free open source software. It has an integrated player ranking system, spectator mode and a surrounding chat system. In a nutshell, it’s a portal, a metaserver. Our goal? If someone starts a multiplayer game of wRisk/Domination, that game is then listed in the central portal. That would be awesome wouldn’t it? Of course it would. Lonely nights playing by yourself would be a thing of the past.

How does this help Battle City? Think about it. If ggz works with wRisk, we can try it with Battle City. Anybody could host their own Battle City server with their own maps and customizations. All servers would talk back to the metaserver, stats would be kept in the central database. There could be a newbie server, classic server, duel server, league server. There could be maps with only two CC’s or maps where the Mayor drops the Command Center anywhere…

Why don’t we let people host their own Battle City servers now? Because it would fragment the already small community. With the portal, all players would remain connected. All servers would be listed in the portal. It would be like the meeting room, except instead of a city list, you would have a server list. Joining a server would be like joining a game, you would immediately enter as a spectator and have the option to join a team or start your own.

It’s a dream, it’s a big dream, but it starts right here, right now, taking over the world with wRisk.

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As of today, the Looble Network is no more! We’ve decided that in order to better serve our growing audience of fans we must focus on our strengths and continue to build in that direction. We’ve therefore decided to re-name ourselves from “The Looble Network” to “LOOBLE”!

After conducting several surveys it was discovered that many of our daily visitors were visiting our websites with no socks on! We found this strange so decided to look into the matter further. What we discovered was that our websites rock so much that they were actually knocking people right out of their socks! That’s why we felt an all capitalized name like LOOBLE would be more descriptive of the services we offer!

We also decided to take advantage of our new found ability to knock people out of their socks by making it our new LOOBLE slogan! We rock your socks! Some of the cooler folks have been writing it as, “we rox ur sox”, but alas I digress.

We decided to knock out the network part as well because most of our success has come from game development (Battle City) rather than web development. Instead of working on building a community of websites and helping others setup their own sites, we will shift focus to game and software development. Our core websites like Software Engineer Training and Open Game Development will continue to be updated since they serve as resources that chronicle the things we learn as we develop our games and software. Some of our other websites will go up for sale so you might have the opportunity to get your hands on a sock rockin’ website!

Thank you everyone who has been visiting LOOBLE! We could not have rocked your socks without you! Hope to see you again soon, and bring some sandals!

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One year ago, after a near shut-down of BattleCity, the Looble Network and Codemallet officially joined forces in attempt to bring a more stable and successful future to the game. Last week, Codemallet decided to drop out of this partnership in order to focus on other game development projects, leaving the Looble Network with full-rights to the game.

We plan to keep on hosting and developing BattleCity Classic and would like to apologize to all the players who were forced to endure a week of down-time when the server was closed unexpectedly! We’re also still waiting for Codemallet to fulfill it’s end of the partnership agreement and send us the latest version of the game as well as our share of profits raised over the last year so that we can invest this money into a new server!

If you’re having trouble getting online to play BattleCity Classic right now please download the latest version! The game is back up and running!

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After much feedback from the BattleCity Classic community, a slightly new website design has been released today!

The overall look and theme of the website remains the same, however the main page has received a huge makeover in order to give a better initial impression to first time visitors and make sure they immediately understand the website is for a free action and strategy multiplayer game! The main page now shows a screen shot and big download button as well as links to all of the resources available on the site. The majority of the community felt that this type of landing page would be received much better than displaying the most recent news articles!

Much thanks to everyone who shared input which led to the new look!

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The Looble Network has just added a new Arcade area to join BattleCity Classic in it’s games section!

The Arcade area currently features two games: Connect 4 and Bubble Puzzle.

What are you waiting for? Go try the games out now!

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BattleCity Classic has just received some significant updates today! Players who own different tank designs no longer need an administrator to make the switch for them. Players can now easily switch between their tanks themselves, even in the middle of battle! While this may be the change having brought the most joy to the players, there are a few other big changes in this update.

Player who have purchased a membership from the BattleCity Store can now send private messages to any other player! Yes, the ability to whisper has finally been added! Another huge change is the fact that once a city become orbable, it is now permanently orbable! This fixes the problem of players destroying their own base to prevent their attackers from gaining points destroying them!

If you haven’t already done so, start playing BattleCity Classic!

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Today some very good news has been announced for the BattleCity Community!

After 2 weeks of down-time, BattleCity will relaunch as BattleCity Classic! You can visit the new BattleCity Classic website for the full details!

The relaunch of BattleCity also brings some very big news to the Looble Network! Initially there were talks about shutting down the game or possibly putting it up for sale. After receiving much feedback from the community, it became apparent that there was much support for the continued development of BattleCity; so instead talks shifted towards the possibility of a relaunch.

In order for the relaunch to take place, both parties running BattleCity decided to sit down and work out any remaining issues in order to ensure the success and longevity of the game in the future.

The new terms and agreements officially create a co-ownership of BattleCity. Should the game ever become profitable, there would be a 50/50 split between Weebo & ReMoTe. Furthermore, should either Weebo or ReMoTe ever leave the project, both will have full rights to the last version of code created while in partnership. This ensure that the game will never be shut down unless both partners wish for such. Lastly, this agreement will carry over to the JAVA version of BattleCity so long as it be released while both partners are still working together.

In a nutshell, this means BattleCity still has a bright future ahead and Looble will continue to be a part of it! Be sure to update our bookmarks to the new official website at http://www.looble.com/bcc/!

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BattleCity has been offline for over one week now! Recent forum discussions on the BattleCity Command Center website are hinting on a possible shut-down of the game for various reasons!

If you are a fan of the game, now would be a good time to head on over to the BattleCity website to show some love! Help show that BattleCity is worth keeping around!

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For those BattleCity fans coming here for their latest updates, you will be very interested in knowing that a huge update has been released today which has made a very fundamental change to the game.

Previously, when a player would be destroyed during battle, they would be sent out of the game and would need to re-apply for a job at an available city location. Since getting blown up is a very common thing, people would constantly be ejected from the game during battle! While this was a traditional element of BattleCity, the staff decided it was difficult on new players and bad for gameplay.

Todays big update has put in place a re-spawn timer! Now, if you are blown up, you will re-spawn in your base after a short delay!

Go visit the BattleCity Command Center to check it out!

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The BattleCity Command Center has just announced the official development plans for the next version of BattleCity!

BattleCity is a free action and strategy multiplayer online game! Players build, defend and attack cities, all in real-time, against and with other people form around the world!

So the big question is, what will be new BattleCity 2.0? For those familiar with the game, many significant changes will be immediately noticeable. The entire interface will be updated, new default graphics will be put in place, a new inventory system will be added, and a new stats system will track much more than ever before!

For the full details, read the official BattleCity 2.0 Announcement over at the BattleCity Command Center!

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