WinBolo
- Home Page
- http://members.xoom.com/jamorrison/winbolo.html
- Author
- John Morrison
- Status
- Public release scheduled Real Soon Now<tm>.
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this page revised Dec 7, 1999 by Jolo
latest version: Pre Public Beta 5 (Nov 21, 1999)
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WinBolo
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No, you can't download it yet. Now settle down and read on.
During November, John fixed many bugs found in intensive private testing by Bolo vets. As of late November, the game is free of major bugs, complete with all single-player and networking features, and ready for play. At that time, I contacted Stuart Cheshire, the author of Mac Bolo, and we had a very constructive discussion regarding the future of Bolo (more on that later). I then put John and Stuart in touch with each other, and they quickly agreed on terms for public release of WB as shareware. They are now just ploughing through the inevitable paperwork. This process could take days or weeks, please be patient and stop clamoring. When everything is worked out, WB will be readily available from multiple sources, it'll be hard to miss. All emails on this subject will be summarily ignored.
A bug report form has been established so that constructive feedback can get through and be acted upon promptly. Effort is now underway to develop some basic documentation to support the game when it is released.
WinBolo (WB) by John Morrison is the most recent and also most complete Bolo clone project. Public release is imminent. WinBolo was renamed from its original name of pcBolo to avoid confusion with PC Bolo (the precursor to Armoured Alliance) as well as countless wannabes with similar names. John is a 4th year student at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia, working his way towards a Bachelor of Engineering in Software Engineering.
How does WB stack up against the other clones, Tank Assault (TA) and Armoured Alliance (AA)? John started the project in early 1999, and in less than a year he's really put together a very impressive project. WinBolo is the most complete and perfect clone of Bolo that I have ever seen (although it's been a while since I've seen the original PC Bolo). There are times when I forget I'm not playing on a Mac! Unlike TA and AA, WinBolo unabashedly copies Bolo's look and feel. WinBolo is written in two parts, a generic C back-end that is very cross-platform compatible, and a specific Windows front-end that relies on Win32 API and Microsoft DirectX. John is focusing on just the Windows port for now, please don't clamor for other platforms yet.
WinBolo's networking uses a server/client approach, which is probably the best way when Internet and/or modem players are involved. There is a mix of UDP and TCP protocols, with lots of provisions for networking failure of the server or clients. The first Internet WinBolo game was played on Nov 7, 1999, between Damon Taaffe aka Kax and myself, followed by an hour-long epic battle between Kax and Alan Baydush aka Max.
