Bolo Clone Projects
by Joseph Lo aka Jolo, last updated 1/23/2001
Introduction
Bolo is a Macintosh tank battle game developed by Stuart Cheshire. Bolo's popularity peaked in the mid 90's, and has since decayed into just a cult favorite, largely because Stuart never got around to implementing two important steps:
- port Bolo to other platforms, in particular the ubiquitous Windows, and
- improve upon Bolo's networking which currently allows only local games within a LAN or internet games via broadband Ethernet connections (such as DSL, cable, or better).
After many years of silence from Stuart, several cloning projects sprung up to fulfill these 2 needs. Without Stuart's consent or support, and using nothing but scarce public information, these clone authors essentially attempted to rewrite Bolo from scratch. This quest has finally ended with the release of WinBolo/LinBolo (described in the next section).
I am not officially affiliated with any project, and all statements at this site are my opinions.
Bolo Clone Projects
Not counting many abortive attempts and hoaxes, there are today three viable Bolo clone projects, as shown in the list below. (By viable I don't mean vaporware hype like "I HAVE PC BOLO AND I WILL RELEASE!!!" but rather game code that was actually played by myself or other reliable sources, publicly or privately. The game should have most single-player features, including the ability to drive on a real map, interacting with the terrain, taking pills and bases, refueling, getting killed, etc.)
- WinBolo
- WinBolo was originally called pcBolo, but renamed to avoid confusion with PC Bolo, the precursor to AA, not to mention the many other projects with similar names. WinBolo is the only Bolo clone now available publicly, after its much anticipated release in 2000. It now also has a Linux variant, LinBolo. Both were written by John Morrison and released as shareware with the consent of Stuart Cheshire. WinBolo/LinBolo now boasts an official home page, a very loyal group of players, a dedicated game tracker, IRC server for chatting, FTP server for maps and goodies like map editors, borgs, etc.
- Armoured Alliance
- Armoured Alliance (AA), originally called PC Bolo, was developed by Joel Duerksen starting back in the early 90s. PC Bolo originally copied the look and feel of Bolo to the PC as a DOS game, and later this was given a new look and renamed AA. After many years of development, AA is a finished product complete with all Bolo features and multi-player Internet play. Unfortunately Joel and Stuart could not agree on terms for releasing AA, so the project has languished in limbo for years now.
- Tank Assault
- Tank Assault (TA) started in early 1998 and has been under on-and-off development by Aaron Bratcher. It started out as a clone but now has a different look. It relies on the multi-platform Java environment, so in theory it will run on Macs, Windows, UNIX, etc. Aaron has a long history of contributing to Bolo. TA is still very rough as a single-player game, and Aaron has turned his attention for now to networking.
