strace shows bzflag attempting to open files starting with "${prefix}". I suspect that's because the new version was built with newer autoconf which requires an updated AC_DEFINE_DIR. Same thing happened to me today with a local build of the X server. Here's the newer version of AC_DEFINE_DIR (note lovely comment in the middle):
AC_DEFUN([AC_DEFINE_DIR], [ prefix_NONE= exec_prefix_NONE= test "x$prefix" = xNONE && prefix_NONE=yes && prefix= $ac_default_prefix test "x$exec_prefix" = xNONE && exec_prefix_NONE=yes && exec_prefix= $prefix dnl In Autoconf 2.60, ${datadir} refers to ${datarootdir}, which in turn dnl refers to ${prefix}. Thus we have to use `eval' twice. eval ac_define_dir="\"[$]$2\"" eval ac_define_dir="\"$ac_define_dir\"" AC_SUBST($1, "$ac_define_dir") AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED($1, "$ac_define_dir", [$3]) test "$prefix_NONE" && prefix=NONE test "$exec_prefix_NONE" && exec_prefix=NONE ]) -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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