Frequently Asked Questions for the Rec.Games.Bolo Newsgroup

last updated Nov 1, 2000

This official rec.games.bolo FAQ and introductory guide to Bolo is primarily maintained as a WWW document featuring nearly 400 hyperlinks and may be viewed using a web browser such as Netscape at http://www.lgm.com/bolo/guides/longfaq.html. This FAQ may also be accessed via FTP as a plain text file. This FAQ is copyrighted 1996, 1997 by Joseph Lo and may not be redistributed for profit or incorporated in commercial documents without the written permission of the copyright holder.

If you are new to Bolo, you should first check out the Short Bolo FAQ at http://www.lgm.com/bolo/guides/bolofaq.html which covers the 8 most frequently asked questions for the Mac network tank battle game of Bolo, then come back here for more detailed information.

See the Contents below for how the FAQ is laid out, or else jump right to the sections dealing with:

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Table of Contents

1. Bolo Basics

1.1. What is Bolo?
1.2. How do you play Bolo?
1.2.1. Getting started
1.2.2. What kind of stuff do I need to play Bolo?
1.2.3. Elements of the game
1.3. What's the current version of Bolo?
1.4. What's going to be in the new/commercial version of Bolo and when will it be out?
1.5. Is there Bolo for PC or other platforms?
1.6. Bolo Internet Resources
1.6.1. Where can I download Bolo?
1.6.2. Bolo Web Pages
1.6.3. Usenet Newsgroup rec.games.bolo
1.6.4. Internet Relay Chat Channel #bolo
1.6.5. Bolo player registry
1.7. How can I optimize Bolo performance on my computer?
1.8. Shareware Fee

2. NETWORK BOLO

2.1. What is network Bolo?
2.2. How does network Bolo work?
2.3. Playing Bolo by AppleTalk
2.4. Playing Bolo on the Internet
2.4.1. How to set up an Internet Bolo game
2.4.2. What happened to the noproblem or gwis tracker sites?
2.4.3. Which game should I join on the Internet?
2.4.4. Can I play Bolo through a firewall?
2.5. Playing Bolo by Modem
2.6. Playing Bolo via ARA
2.7. Network Bolo Etiquette

3. ADVANCED BOLO INFORMATION

3.1. Bolo Factoids
3.1.1. Natural Born Killers
3.1.2. Trees
3.1.3. Pillboxes
3.1.4. Bases
3.1.5. Dangerous Liaisons
3.1.6. The Need for Speed
3.1.7. Weird Miscellaneous Stuff
3.2. Maps
3.2.1. What are Bolo maps?
3.2.2. History of Bolo map making
3.2.3. How do I make new maps, or look at old ones?
3.3. Brains
3.3.1. What is a brain?
3.3.2. How do I play against bots?
3.3.3. Which is the best bot?
3.3.4. Where can I get brains?
3.3.5. Where can I find more information on brains?
3.4. Bolo Strategy
3.4.1. Where are good strategy guides?
3.4.2. Introduction to Bolo Strategy
3.5. Troubleshooting Guide

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1. BOLO BASICS

1.1. What is Bolo?
1.2. How do you play Bolo?
1.2.1. Getting started
1.2.2. What kind of stuff do I need to play Bolo?
1.2.3. Elements of the game
1.3. What's the current version of Bolo?
1.4. What's going to be in the new/commercial version of Bolo and when will it be out?
1.5. Is there Bolo for PC or other platforms?
1.6. Bolo Internet Resources
1.6.1. Where can I download Bolo?
1.6.2. Bolo Web Pages
1.6.3. Usenet Newsgroup rec.games.bolo
1.6.4. Internet Relay Chat Channel #bolo
1.6.5. Bolo player registry
1.7. How can I optimize Bolo performance on my computer?
1.8. Shareware Fee

1.1. What is Bolo?

In the words of Bolo's author:

"Bolo is a 16 player graphical networked real-time multi-player tank battle game. It has elements of arcade-style shoot-em-up action, but for the serious players who play 12 hour games with 16 players working in teams in different networked computer clusters around an office or university campus, it becomes more of a strategy game." --Stuart Cheshire

For an excellent introduction to the game, be sure to check out the Official Bolo Home Page at its new, faster location, http://www.lgm.com/bolo/.

1.2. How do you play Bolo?

1.2.1. Getting started

It is relatively easy to start playing Bolo. Simply download the game, launch it, and go through the built-in tutorial which will introduce you to the basics of the game. If you have any further questions, check out these sources of help:

1.2.2. What kind of stuff do I need to play Bolo?

The original Bolo can only be played on a Mac. There are now also clones for the Linux/Intel and Windows/Intel platforms, see the PC Bolo section. The remainder of this document deals with Mac Bolo, but most of this applies to the clones as well. Bolo's preferred memory size is 1,500 K. A color monitor is recommended. Using a PowerPC Mac with its faster graphics and sound may enhance your own enjoyment of the game, but it will not reduce network lag or give you a speed advantage over an opponent on a Quadra or older Mac. Be sure to check out the section on optimizing your Mac for Bolo.

Unless you want to practice by yourself or against automated brains, you need to be connected to some kind of network. Your main networking options are modem, direct ethernet, or AppleTalk. Your Mac must have MacTCP or OpenTransport installed to permit it to communicate with a network. The better your network connection, the more players you will be able to play against and the smoother your game will be. For more details, see the main section below on playing network Bolo.

1.2.3. Elements of the game

To play Bolo, you control a tank and maneuver around a map made up of many types of terrain such as roads, grass, swamps, water, deep water, trees, rubble, and walls. The map has two important types of resources: refueling bases and automated pillboxes. The objective of the game is fight against enemy tanks controlled by other players, in order to conquer all the bases and pills.

All refueling bases start out neutral and can be claimed easily simply by driving over them, thus providing you with the ability to refuel your tank's supply of bullets, mines, and armor. You may steal an opponent's base by shooting it until you have depleted it, then claiming it as your own. All automated pillboxes also start out neutral and shoot at any tank within their range with deadly speed and accuracy. Unlike bases which do not shoot back, pillboxes will definitely defend themselves. If you kill a pillbox, however, you may then pick it up and rebuild or plant it elsewhere on the map, whereupon it will shoot at only your enemies. You can therefore use pills offensively to threaten an enemy's bases and defensively to protect your own.

Your tank carries a builder (also called little green man or "lgm"). This lgm can be sent outside your tank to farm trees, lay mines, build roads to facilitate your travels, build walls, and plant or repair pillboxes. If your lgm gets killed, you cannot do those things until a new lgm is sent to you after a delay.

The game can get hectic when multiple players travel around the map, fighting for control of the pills and bases and shooting each other. Some people relish the challenge of 1 vs. 1 (often denoted as 1x1) game play. Other players think Bolo is most exciting when players form alliances or teams, pitting their shared resources against those of the opposing team, moving as a coordinated strike force or helping each other in times of trouble.

1.3. What's the current version of Bolo?

The current version of Bolo is 0.99.7. Because the various versions are not compatible with each other, if you are using an older version, you should download the new version immediately from our web archive or FTP archive.

1.4. What's going to be in the new/commercial version of Bolo and when will it be out?

Disclaimer: The following statements are based on the most reliable sources of information available, but they do not necessarily represent the official positions of Stuart Cheshire or any other party.

Stuart Cheshire, He Who Made Bolo, had been busy the last few years finishing his Ph.D. (he just graduated summer of 1997) and many other Mac software projects, so he has not been able to support Bolo actively in its current shareware status. In the fall of 1995, news leaked that Stuart was negotiating with ThoughtPort Authority Inc. to commercialize Bolo. ThoughtPort in fact sponsored the official Bolo home page and FTP archive for many months. Unfortunately, nothing ever came of that effort, and as far as I know there are no on-going negotiations with other companies. What's at stake, anyway? Rumors at various times claimed that Bolo will be completely rewritten to include some or all of the following: a brand new modem-friendly networking scheme, support for multiple platforms such as Bolo for PC, and many changes to the "look and feel" of the game. Even if the business hurdles can be cleared, these changes will obviously take some time. For now and into the foreseeable future, people will happily continue to play the most recent shareware version (0.99.7) of Bolo, which can be downloaded at http://www.lgm.com/bolo/intro/starter.html.

1.5. Is there Bolo for PC or other platforms?

For years, the answer was no, but this has changed dramatically with the development of multiple Bolo Clones, culminating in the recent release of WinBolo/LinBolo for the Windows/Intel and Linux/Intel platforms.

1.6. Bolo Internet Resources

1.6.1. Where can I download Bolo?

You can get Bolo by using anonymous FTP (such as Fetch), gopher (TurboGopher), archie (Anarchie), or WWW (Netscape) from:

The Official Bolo Web Archive
http://www.lgm.com/bolo/archive/
Everything you need to get started with Bolo. This is the preferred source.
Official Bolo FTP Archive
ftp://ftp.lgm.com/bolo/
This site contains everything under the Bolo sun.
InfoMac Archive
http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/HyperArchive.html
Searchable source of all Mac software, but the Bolo stuff is out of date and incomplete.
Obtaining StuffIt Expander
http://www.aladdinsys.com/consumer/expander2.html
You may need this to uncompress and decode these ".hqx" files.

1.6.2. Bolo Web Pages

Official Bolo home page
http://www.lgm.com/bolo/
The official source of all Bolo information, including:
Links - the most up to date and complete Bolo links.
News column by Jolo, updated weekly or better.
Guides covering strategy, tactics, map editors, brains, etc.
Modem Organized Bolo (MOB)
http://www.shore.net/~tdubro/mob.html
Modem playing FAQ and league.
Bolo links by Stuart Cheshire
http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/Bolo.html
Another very complete list by He Who Made Bolo.

1.6.3. Usenet Newsgroup rec.games.bolo

This FAQ serves as a general introduction to Bolo, but originally it was meant to be just the FAQ for the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.bolo, or "rgb" for short. The charter for rgb is as follows:

rec.games.bolo The networked strategy war game Bolo

To allow the discussion of topics and posting of software related to the game "Bolo," by Stuart Cheshire, originally for the Macintosh.

You can read and post to this newsgroup using a news client such as YA-NewsWatcher for the Mac or "tin" for UNIX. As is true of any newsgroup, before posting for the first time, you should read the FAQ or at least lurk for a few days and just observe. Much of the traffic on rgb consists of the same few questions repeated almost daily, such as:

These and many other interesting issues are all addressed in detail within this FAQ. Once you've read the FAQ, feel free to post any other questions or comments relevant to Bolo.

Binaries in rec.games.bolo

You may also post small binaries which are relevant to Bolo, likely to be of interest to a wide variety of people, and best distributed via Usenet. A small but vocal minority of news administrators consider rgb to be a "stealth binary group" because we permit binaries without having "binaries" in our group name. To avoid unnecessarily irking these admins to the point of not carrying rgb entirely and also to help conserve valuable space on news servers, please be sure binaries you post are appropriate. Consider alternatives such as uploading the binaries to our Official Bolo FTP Archive or posting it on your WWW or FTP server, and then simply announcing the URL on rgb. Examples of appropriate binaries for rgb include: Bolo maps or screen shots which are humorous and/or educational ("How to wall in Jolo in 3 minutes or less"). Examples of inappropriate binaries for rgb include: pretty much anything >200K except important Bolo executables. When in doubt, ask.

The Mac binary must first be archived and compressed (.sit suffix), then Binhex encoded into text (.sit.hqx) before posting to rgb. You may do this manually using DropStuff, or just let a Mac client such as YA-NewsWatcher take care of it. First time posters should be careful not to repost over and over. Just test the waters with a single post, wait a few hours/days to see if it turns out OK, then take any corrective action if necessary.

1.6.4. Internet Relay Chat Channel #bolo

Internet Relay Chat lets you communicate simultaneously with multiple people over the Internet. You need to download an IRC client or program such as ircII for shell (UNIX/VMS) or Ircle for Macintosh. For help getting started, check out the Beginner's Guide to IRC. Choose a server by typing the command /server irc.ais.net, then /join #bolo to join our channel. You can chat about Bolo, set up games when the tracker is dead, or ask any channel operator for help/advice. Be patient, people are often temporarily away to deal with their real lives, but if you hang out on the channel, somebody will get back to you.

1.6.5. Bolo player registry?

The email addresses of hundreds of active Bolo players may be found at the Bolo Rolodex or the Modem Organized Bolo (MOB) Player Registry.

1.7. How can I optimize Bolo performance on my computer?

If Bolo seems jumpy or laggy even when you're playing in single- player mode, or if you seem to have more network problems than somebody else with a similar network setup, then make sure you have properly optimized your game:

1.8. Shareware Fee

Bolo is shareware, which means it isn't free. If you play Bolo more than a month and like it, you should pay the $25 registration fee. You may quite reasonably have concerns about whether there will ever be new or commercial versions of Bolo. Nevertheless, your shareware fee pays for the author's past work in developing this brilliant game, and it may encourage him to support and improve upon it in the future. U.S. players can send $25 to: 

	Stuart Cheshire
	P.O. Box 8323
	Stanford, CA 94309
After you register, you will receive a special surprise from Stuart.

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2. NETWORK BOLO

2.1. What is network Bolo?
2.2. How does network Bolo work?
2.3. Playing Bolo by AppleTalk
2.4. Playing Bolo on the Internet
2.4.1. How to set up an Internet Bolo game
2.4.2. What happened to the noproblem or gwis tracker sites?
2.4.3. Which game should I join on the Internet?
2.4.4. Can I play Bolo through a firewall?
2.5. Playing Bolo by Modem
2.6. Playing Bolo via ARA
2.7. Network Bolo Etiquette

2.1. What is network Bolo?

Bolo was meant to be played by multiple people over a network. Unlike other games where you predictably conquer the game sooner or later, or repeatedly beat up on your best friend or little brother, Bolo can be played against total strangers on the Net. You must have a Macintosh computer with MacTCP or OpenTransport installed, and have access to one of the following connections: modem, direct ethernet, or AppleTalk. Each type of networking is described briefly below, then again later in more detail.

AppleTalk allows nearly lag-free games for up to 16 players within one school or company's AppleTalk network. Computer labs everywhere have been taken over by hordes of Bolo fans, sometimes in one of many legendary Bolofest parties. In comparison, direct ethernet allows you to play virtually anybody anywhere. AppleTalk players are usually astonished by the high level of skill and exciting new styles that exist on the Internet. Lag among direct ethernet players is usually caused only by routing problems, and 3x3 or bigger games are quite common ("3x3" denotes 3 allied players versus 3 other allied players). Finally, the number of modem players has increased dramatically since 1995. You can play lag-free against another modemer within your local calling area via a direct modem-to-modem connection. You can also play laggy 1x1 or 2x2 games against people from further away by connecting to the Internet indirectly through an internet service provider (ISP).

2.2. How does network Bolo work?

[Peter Lewis, Mac network guru and author of Bolo Finder, contributed to this pseudo-technical explanation. If you just want to know how to play, skip ahead to the sections on Boloing over Appletalk or the Internet.]

Unlike most other network games, Bolo is not a client-server system. Bolo forms a network of Macs by linking them in a ring where one player sends packets of game information to a neighbor, who in turn sends packets to the next neighbor on the ring, and so on. These packets are either DDP on AppleTalk or UDP over the Internet. When a new player joins, he sends a packet to each machine in the ring to figure out the delay between it and all Macs, then it adds itself into the ring in such a way as to minimize the total time around the ring. The advantage of a ring is its flexibility: nobody needs to maintain a server, and anybody can start or join any game. The disadvantage is that everybody is limited by the slowest connection in the ring. This is why it's a very bad idea for a modem player to join a game with direct ethernet players, because they must then continuously wait on the slow modem connection, resulting in lag which is characterized by jerky, unresponsive play or outright errors when the ring is broken and the game is frozen.

2.3. Playing Bolo by AppleTalk

For lag-free games with the most players in the same game, Bolo is optimally played over a AppleTalk network. Most good Internet players first learned their craft in AppleTalk games with schoolmates or colleagues, where people can concentrate on exploring tactical and strategic nuances in the game, rather than getting bogged down by the unknown lag or behavior of strangers on the Internet.

Here is how you can find out about games on an AppleTalk network. When you launch Bolo, select the AppleTalk button, and wait a few seconds. Bolo will search all AppleTalk zones for existing players, and use filled blobs to mark zones with players and empty blobs to mark zones without players. Simply select the appropriate zone, then select a player in that zone, and click join to join their game.

2.4. Playing Bolo on the Internet

There are various Bolo trackers maintained by Don Thompson (nix) and Matt Slot (Black Lightning) in the U.S. and Kevin Whitty (KevDog) in Europe. These keep track of Internet games in progress. After a one-time setup of each new copy of Bolo to register itself with a tracker, whenever you start a new game, Bolo sends the following information to that tracker: the map's name, whether the game is open or tournament or strict tournament, whether it is passworded, number of neutral bases and pills left, the number of players, and the IP addresses of you and all the other players. This information is updated automatically throughout the game and made publicly available. See below for more details.

2.4.1. How to set up an Internet Bolo game

Follow these five easy steps (each seems long in order to be clear, but it's really very simple):
  1. Your Mac must have either a direct ethernet connection or an indirect one by modem/ISDN, and it must have MacTCP or OpenTransport installed. If your Mac has its own IP address and can telnet or browse the web directly, you are all set.
  2. The various versions of Bolo are not compatible. Make sure you download version 0.99.7 which is what everybody else is playing.
  3. All Internet players must register each copy of Bolo once with a game tracker so that they can find each other's games. After you launch Bolo, click the UDP/IP button, then on the next screen click on the BoloTracker button and type in a tracker from the list below, with port number 50000. From now on, whenever you launch a new game, it will show up on that tracker so that others may join you.
  4. To find games on the tracker to join, telnet to the tracker/port you selected above. Alternatively, get the small Mac utility Internet Bolo Buddy (not BoloWeb or Internet Tracker). Launch it to see the IP addresses of current games at the bolo.usu.edu official tracker. You may switch trackers using the popup menu, or join games by clicking on the IP address.
  5. Now you can wait for others to join your new game. Alternatively, you can join an existing game on the tracker. To do this: copy their IP address such as com999.oakcanyon.alpine.k12.ut.us from the tracker, launch Bolo, click UDP/IP, paste their IP into the blank for Machine name (or IP address), and click Join. An easier way is to just click on the IP address within Bolo Buddy, which will then launch Bolo and paste the IP for you so all you need to do is click Join. You should always observe the etiquette of joining games.

2.4.2. What happened to the noproblem or gwis tracker sites?

 They're all long gone. Unfortunately the latest official Bolo still tries to use noproblem.uchicago.edu as a tracker. Your best bet now is to use the Internet Bolo Buddy to find games. If you prefer to use telnet, the official tracker for North America is now bolo.usu.edu, port 50000. An alternate is avara.com (same port). You can check for games using the various web trackers, but they are slow, require you to keep a web browser open, and may not share game information with other trackers. If the trackers are down, see the IRC section in this FAQ for how to set up games using live Internet Relay Chat.

2.4.3. Which game should I join on the Internet?

Each tracker gives you a list of games. Only join games where you will be welcome, typically a relatively new tournament game that still has lots of neutral bases and not too many players, or any open games since those are usually intended as a free for all.

Now, before you start randomly joining games, THINK. If you're in Europe, and the other players are in California, by joining you will cause massive lag, destroying the game for everyone. In general, people will use passwords or locking the game to prevent unwelcome joiners, but there are always exceptions, so you must still be considerate when joining games. Please see the section on Bolo Network Etiquette for more specific rules.

2.4.4. Can I play Bolo through a firewall?

A firewall is a security feature used on computer networks to prevent outsiders from accessing or abusing the local network. It also has the unfortunate side effect of blocking Bolo network packets. According to Chopin, all he needs to do to play Bolo in spite of his company's firewall is to set his Bolo to port 53 instead of 50000. (All port numbers < 1024 are reserved for special purposes like FTP etc.) This fools the firewall into thinking that he's doing something useful instead of playing Bolo. Let's hope Chopin's boss is just as gullible.

There have been various rumored fixes for playing through proxies and other network security nasties, but in reality if your system administrator is watching over you that closely, you probably should check with him first. (Good luck trying to convince him that Bolo is a work-related activity essential for research or national security.)

2.5. Playing Bolo by Modem

If you do not have a direct ethernet or AppleTalk connection, but would like to play Bolo over a modem, you have two choices. First, you can play a reasonably lag-free 1x1 game by making a direct connection with another modem player in your local dialing area. Second, you can get an indirect connection to the Internet through an Internet Service Provider (ISP) or University dial-up service. More information follows in the next two sections.

All modem players should check out the Modem Organized Bolo (MOB) home page at http://www.shore.net/~tdubro/mob_faq.html#ch3 which addresses these issues of specific interest to modem players:

2.5.1. Direct Modem-to-Modem Bolo

Here are step by step directions for fast, 1x1 modem direct connections. Obviously this only makes sense with friends in the local calling area, and also it requires that you arrange to play the game previously.

  1. Player A runs Bolo and selects the srialport/modem option in the beggining dialogue screen when u start up bolo.
  2. Player A enters ATA as the modem init string (just ATA is all)
  3. Player A waits for player B to call. (player B should also click on serialport/modem)
  4. PLayer B (yer freind) enters ATD as the modem init string followed by *your* modem number.
  5. Player B then clicks on new and sets up the options for the game I.E map etc.
  6. When Player B clicks OK after setting the game up, it should dial player A's modem number.
  7. when player A sees some kind of light come on his modem then he clicks on Join and the modem should make that wierd connecting sound. Make sure you do not hear any more sound coming from the modem before u click on OK. Do not click OK too soon or the modem will hang up.
  8. Then player B clicks OK and both of you should appear in the game with a round total of about 160-190ms which is way better than 2 modems connecting over the Inet.

Another thing, when u are setting up the game, both players should set the port speed for tyheir modems at 14,400. And also have No Hardware Handshaking. Another important thing is that the player starting the game has to click OK first, the second player should wait about 5 seconds before clicking OK.

2.5.2. Internet Modem Bolo

Alternatively, you may connect indirectly to the Internet through an ISP or university offering one of the following services: PPP, SLIP, ARA, or ISDN. ISDN and ARA are rare, expensive, and usually let you play just like you were on direct ethernet. If you have at least a 28.8 kbaud modem, you can sometimes play 2x2 games via SLIP or PPP against 3 direct ethernet players with reasonable lag. With 14.4 kbaud, you will suffer extreme lag even for 1x1 games.

Some people with 28.8 kbaud modems still can't get a low lag game. While the speed of your modem is important, it isn't the only factor in determining whether or not you can have a playable game. The quality of the phone lines between yourself and your provider (ISP or university dial up) are one major determining factor. Another is the quality of your provider's connection to the rest of the world.

2.6. Playing Bolo via ARA

By Sam Huffman aka goob.

AppleTalk Remote Access (ARA) may allow you to play reasonably lag-free Bolo over a modem. You need an internet service provider that offers Internet Protocol (IP) over ARA and that has plenty of bandwidth. How is ARA different than the usual PPP modem connection? When you're hooked up via a modem and PPP, you are sending IP packets of about 1.5 kB each over the modem. Bolo packets are much smaller than this. So, and this is just a guess, either several Bolo packets are squashed into one IP packet causing delay on the host computer, or an IP packet goes out containing only one Bolo packet and this effectively causes lower bandwidth.

AppleTalk packets are about 500 bytes, or about 1/3 the size of IP packets. So your bandwidth is essentially tripled (again, this is just a guess based on very limited network knowledge). The key is, you need to get your IP from a router on the other side of the ARA line. IP packets destined for your machine go to this router and get split up and get sent to your machine as AppleTalk packets. Your machine in turn encapsulates its IP packets as AppleTalk packets and the router disassembles them and puts them back into IP form. Essentially you're sending and receiving AppleTalk packets and the router does the translation to and from IP.

Each zone in your network should have a router. Some may be configured to give out IP addresses and others may not be. Maybe none are. Maybe all are. I don't know. You figure it out. Ask people like your system administrator or janitor. They might know. They might not know. How the Hell should I know whether or not they know. I don't. So don't ask me.

To connect via ARA, go into TCP/IP (or MacTCP if you still haven't figured out how to use OpenTransport). Select AppleTalk for the connection method. Try all the zones one at a time until you find one that works. Voila.

2.7. Network Bolo Etiquette

Bolo is a network game played against other people, not just a computer, so you need to learn some commonly accepted rules of conduct when dealing with these people, or else you may soon find yourself in big trouble. There are 3 main areas of network etiquette or "netiquette": joining games, general Bolo rules, and some optional stuff.

If you consistently violate these rules of Bolo, you will be punished. The people who run the trackers may deny you access, your IP may be blacklisted so nobody else will join your games, or you may be reported to the administrators of your school, company, or network provider.

2.7.1 Netiquette of joining games

Each tracker gives you a list of games. Only join games where you will be welcome, typically a relatively new tournament game that still has lots of neutral bases and not too many players, or any open games since those are usually intended as a free for all.

If a lagger joins a game, the game can crawl to a halt due to high ring delay (unresponsive jerky play), errors (everything freezes), or worse yet a split (where some players get disconnected from each other, breaking the game into multiple disjoint games as if the others had quit). In general, people will use passwords or locking the game to prevent unwelcome joiners, but there are always exceptions, so you must still be considerate when joining games.

Follow these guidelines for joining games!

  1. If there are 6 or more players in a game... stay out. The lag probably won't support you, and they have more than enough people anyway.
  2. If there are no bases free and the game is more than a few minutes old... stay out. The game is already underway with set teams, and there is nothing you can do to contribute to the game.
  3. If there is anybody from a different country... stay out. Even if you manage to squeeze in, the lag will be horrendous for everybody.
  4. If you get the "network delay too long" error... stay out. Don't repeatedly try to join.
  5. Always keep Bolo's "Network Info" window open (look under File menu). If when you join, you see a lot of messages saying "Recovering", "Active/Passive Restart" or "Failed", or if the total ring delay is over 350, then quit immediately before you destroy the game for everybody else.
  6. Most importantly... if anybody asks you to leave, then it is common courtesy to do so immediately. Don't beg to be let in, or try to convince them you're not lagging. There is nothing that people despise more than an unwelcome interruption from a laggy player or odd man out.
Remember, if someone asks you to leave -- LEAVE. There are plenty of games out there. Join another one, or start your own game and wait for others to join you.

2.7.2 General rules of Bolo netiquette

  1. When you first join a game, don't start playing immediately. Message the others and ask if they are waiting for more players, or see if they want to set up teams. For tournament games, usually somebody calls "ready.....go" to ensure a fair start.
  2. If it's rather obvious you've lost a game, concede the game before leaving. Don't just quit.
  3. Cheating or hacking is not tolerated because Bolo is played against other people rather than a computer, so hacking would directly hurt another human player. If you cheat or hack, you will be identified very quickly, nobody will play with you, and your tracker access will be taken away. Do NOT ask for codes or hacks unless you enjoy being ridiculed. In the unlikely event that you do encounter hacking, confirm it with other players in the game and then report it to the rec.games.bolo newsgroup.
  4. Avoid excessively foul language or insults. We're all in the game to have fun, and many players these days are young children. Let's keep it clean.
  5. The use of ping attacks to disconnect or crash modem users is not only rude but illegal under denial of service laws. Don't get angry at annoying idiots, just restart the game with a password to lock them out.

2.7.3 Bolo netiquette: being extra nice!

While the above rules are universally accepted by all Bolo players, the following suggestions are more controversial. They involve tactics which are often an important part of Bolo, but when used inappropriately can turn an otherwise enjoyable game into a frustrating ordeal. As a new player trying to build a good reputation, you should be aware of these things that really annoy some people:
  1. Avoid moving or farming trees before the official "go" is given.
  2. Avoid carpet mining, which is the deliberate planting of large mine fields for no real purpose other than to annoy. It's time consuming and not really effective anyway. It is acceptable to spew mines to deter pursuing tanks or to create a defensive front.
  3. Base raping is the practice of repeatedly killing your enemy's bases. While base raping is very effective on small maps with few safe bases, be aware that it takes considerable talent and experience to win by base raping alone, and if you initiate a base rape, be prepared to be raped right back!

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3. ADVANCED BOLO INFORMATION

3.1. Bolo Factoids
3.1.1. Natural Born Killers
3.1.2. Trees
3.1.3. Pillboxes
3.1.4. Bases
3.1.5. Dangerous Liaisons
3.1.6. The Need for Speed
3.1.7. Weird Miscellaneous Stuff
3.2. Maps
3.2.1. What are Bolo maps?
3.2.2. History of Bolo map making
3.2.3. How do I make new maps, or look at old ones?
3.3. Brains
3.3.1. What is a brain?
3.3.2. How do I play against bots?
3.3.3. Which is the best bot?
3.3.4. Where can I get brains?
3.3.5. Where can I find more information on brains?
3.4. Bolo Strategy
3.4.1. Where are good strategy guides?
3.4.2. Introduction to Bolo Strategy
3.5. Troubleshooting Guide
3.6. Index of Bolo Links

3.1. Bolo Factoids

3.1.2. Trees

3.1.3. Pillboxes

3.1.4. Bases

3.1.5. Dangerous Liaisons

3.1.6. The Need for Speed

3.1.7. Weird Miscellaneous Stuff

3.2. Maps

By Carl R. Osterwald aka wharf rat, author of BMAPedit and Iconz4Maps.

Also be sure to check out the illustrated table of map editors and the current list of most popular maps.

3.2.1. What are Bolo maps?

Maps are part of what make Bolo 20,000 games in one. There are literally thousands available free for downloading from the Official Bolo FTP Archive at ftp://ftp.lgm.com/bolo/. There are also smaller personal map collections maintained by the map authors themselves, such as Berserkir's Map Page and Palp's Map Page. Terrain and overall layout have such a huge effect on how Bolo is played that each one makes for a completely different game. Maps can range in size from just a handful of terrain squares to the huge maximum size allowed by Bolo--210x210 squares.

Currently, serious games played over the Internet tend to have smaller teams, especially 2x2 games. Because of this, maps that are very popular today are smallish, about 30x30 to 50x50, symmetrical, and have bases arranged in four groupings, one for each player. The majority of Internet Bolo League (IBL) games were played on such maps. Examples of these include the first popular one, Oil Rig, and the Chew Toy maps.

There are different kinds of specialty maps, such as training maps for learning pillbox takes. Doubles Barrage I and II are good examples of training maps. Jousting maps are intended for free-for-all or king- of-the-hill games that are fluid and fast. Most of these are intended to be played as open games, although Mine Free Joust!!!!!!!!!! is played in tournament mode. There are even maps that simulate sports such as basketball and hockey. Maps like these have rules that help force a game into the intended mold. Another example of a specialty map is Bridge Over The River Kwai, where the British team has to blow up the bridge, and the Japanese team tries to capture all the British into the prison camp.

3.2.2. History of Bolo map making

In the beginning, years before Internet play, Bolo had only one map, Everard Island. It is also called the built-in map because it is installed inside the Bolo application as a bit of data called a 'BMAP' resource. Everyone that played Bolo had this map completely memorized because they played on it so much. Later, some enterprising individuals (whose names are lost to time) hacked the BMAP resource format and learned to modify Everard Island. Voila! Suddenly Bolo was a new game! Players were amazed that it was now possible to play on something other than Everard. Because of this interest, Stuart Cheshire made the first map editor available, which ran as a HyperCard extension. It was difficult to use because one had to be able to cut and paste Macintosh resources inside Bolo using an application from Apple called ResEdit. Because of this, someone else wrote a plug in for ResEdit that at least let you edit maps directly, and was the first editor to show terrain as colors.

The first map editor that was a stand-alone application was Tom Barrett's BoloMapEditor. This was followed by BoloStar, written by Keith Fry and Dan Rudman. Although these programs were big improvements (ResEdit was no longer completely necessary), the resource map format was limited. Deep sea could only be in the same areas as Everard Island, and all other types of terrain were restricted to the 52x104 square center area. The starting squares were fixed in the Everard Island locations. The outer deep sea minefield did not exist, and traveling across the extreme map boundaries caused your tank to "wrap" around to the opposite edge. In spite of these limitations, many classic maps in this style were made and were very popular. A notable example is Wash. DC, which was the most frequently played map for a long time.

In early 1993 just prior to the advent of Internet Bolo, Stuart added support for a completely new map format that used regular Macintosh data files. The new format permitted deep sea at any location in the 256x256 square playing area, expanded the allowable area for non- deep sea terrain to 210x210 squares, and allowed free positioning of start squares. The outer minefield was added at the same time to prevent wraparound. He also provided example source code for reading and writing map files. BoloStar and BoloMapEditor were soon updated for the new format, and the variety of maps we have today resulted.

3.2.3. How do I make new maps, or look at old ones?

There are a wide variety of map editing programs. We prepared an illustrated table of map editors separately at http://www.lgm.com/bolo/guides/mapedit.html because it is rather graphics intensive. For useful tips and advice on making good maps, check out Jeff Reinecke aka Paploo's Map Maker's Guide.

3.3. Brains

3.3.1. What is a brain?

Brains are bits of code that allow the computer to control your tank for you. There are 2 types of brains: robots (or bots) which can completely control your game like a real human, or cyborgs (or borgs) which only control parts of the game while you manually control the rest.

Bots. The first bot was Stuart's autopilot. You can use bots in various ways. You can set a slew of brains to fight it out on a new map to determine its playability. You can use them as allies. If you don't have a good network connection, you can fight 1 or more bots for practice. This is how I like to spend my time on cross-country fights, so if you hear clanks, explosions, and "Ugh! They got me!" on your next flight, look over and you'll probably find me.

Borgs. Borgs are not fully independent. A borg might control your builder, so you don't have to mess with getting trees and building roads, but you are still in charge of driving, shooting, and building pills. Other borgs are used for navigation, showing you maps in a separate window so you don't get lost.

3.3.2. How do I play against bots?

If you are starting a game and want to play with brains (or other humans using brains), turn on "allow computer tanks" in the game setup dialog. Otherwise if you don't want brains in your game, simply turn off that option.

To play against brains, choose AppleTalk (even if the machine is isolated), and run three or more copies of the application, sharing one brains folder (which hold the different brain codes), and join in yourself. Ally the bots to make it more interesting.

Note that each brain controls one copy of Bolo, so if you want to play against 2 allied brains, that means you need to run 3 copies of Bolo on your Mac, which for the latest versions of Bolo is often too much of a drain on your memory and CPU. You will likely experience lag (jerkiness and splits) and the CPU-starved brains will just run the tanks around in circles.

3.3.3. Which is the best bot?

Against humans and other brains alike, aIndy has been the best since its introduction in 1995. Ladmo is catching up (no wonder since Will is writing it for his computer science Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University). Although bots are good sparring partners for newbies, most experienced players can beat 2 allied bots easily, even without taking unfair advantage of the bots' weaknesses. To maximize the bots' performance, use maps that are wide open without any mazes or weird swampy terrain. Bases should be safe rather than spiked initially. When starting the game, make sure to allow bots and also give them an advantage. Make sure the bots are allied with each other and that they have enough CPU resources.

Problems with Indy or aIndy

If you can't get (a)Indy to work, because when you select it from the menu nothing happens, it's because You haven't increased the memory size. (a)Indy takes memory form the bolo application heap. If there is not enough memory then Bolo will not load the brain. If you are playing Bolo 0.99.7 with sound and want to run Indy or aIndy, you may need to give your Bolo application as much as 3 MB of memory. To do so, in the Finder, select the Bolo application, select "Get Info" from the File menu, and in the "Preferred size" box at the lower right enter 3000.

3.3.4. Where can I get brains?

As with all Bolo software, check out the Official Bolo FTP Archive or the searchable InfoMac archive.

3.3.5. Where can I find more information on brains?

The authoritative source of information is the Bolo Brains Guide at http://www.lgm.com/bolo/guides/brains.html by Paul Joswig (author of aIndy) which helps you make sense of all the brains, borgs, and bots on the Bolo Archive's brains section. A slightly less up to date but still good source of information is the Bolo Brain Home Page at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~will/ bolo/brains.html by Will Uther aka Will (author of Ladmo). For a totally unique approach to teaching brains, also check out the Inducting Indy page.

3.4. Bolo Strategy

3.4.1. Where are good strategy guides?

The following strategy guides are available on the WWW:

Samhain's Strategy Guide: "I'm a team player, damnit!"
http://www.lgm.com/bolo/guides/samhain.html
Discussion on the finer points of strategy, very advanced but useful to all players.
Deadsy's Pillbox Taking Guide
http://www.lgm.com/bolo/guides/pbg/
Multimedia guide of pillbox taking techniques
Tigger's Bolo in a Nutshell
http://www.lgm.com/bolo/guides/nutshell.html
Good summary of tactics and strategy.
Puppy Love's Unofficial Bolo Tactics and Strategy Guide
http://www.lgm.com/bolo/guides/puppylove.html
Another long but thorough description of many basic elements of the game.
Tempest's Evil Bolo Pages
http://powered.cs.yale.edu:8000/~bayliss/bolo.html
Observations on the skills and techniques of various players.

All of the above guides (and a few more) may also be downloaded by FTP from the Official Bolo FTP Archive at ftp://ftp.lgm.com/bolo/guides.

3.4.2. Introduction to Bolo Strategy

[This will soon be replaced by a much better version by Black Lightning.]

By Joseph Lo aka Jolo

PREAMBLE. This is meant to be a general guide for a beginner. Unlike most other guides, I tried to cover both tactics and strategies, arranging them to correspond to the chronological order of events in a tournament game. Hopefully after reading this, you will be able to assemble your skills into a cogent game plan and start winning games.

READY.....GO! At the start of a tournament game, the base run is crucial, for it provides you with bases to refuel from later, and tournament games are won or lost on bases. Signal your allies to clarify who is starting where on the map, and which direction each person will go. Then race like a madman to grab as many bases as possible, particularly the safe bases near your starting point. Don't stop to farm trees, refuel for armor/bullets, or to pave roads, etc. Before your first death, especially if an ally is nearby to mop up after you, do a hardline suicide attack and dump all your remaining ammo into a neutral pill in the rear. This saves you precious time because either you or an ally can go back to finish off the pill quickly.

PILL KILLS. Now that the base run is complete, the tactical focus tends to be how to kill pillboxes fast. Newbies only know how to suicide or hardline a pill, driving up to it and dumping as many bullets into it as possible before dying, or perhaps turning around for a second pass after the damaged pill has cooled off somewhat. Hardlining a pill is usually a bad idea, because it takes so long and you take so many hits that an enemy could easily come by and swoop up the pill, rebuild it just in time to blow you away, or just blow you away himself. An experienced player can take down 2 neutral pills for every one that you hardline.

If not a hardline, then what? There are dozens of pill takes, most involving one or more blocking walls or pills, which allow you to hit the pill without taking too many hits yourself. Peruse Deadsy's Pillbox Taking Guide and work through some training maps such as Muff's Training Maps. You should learn one or two basic takes at first, and get pretty good at them so that you can take down single or even double neutral pills in a clean fashion.

SPIKING. Once you get your first 1 or 2 pills, the game starts shifting more to strategy. Before you plant any pill, think through the consequences of your action. For example, if you plant your first few pills in the rear to guard your safe bases, you set yourself up for a conservative, defensive battle over your home front. Sometimes this is necessary, such as when the enemy engages in base rape, i.e., coming around early in the game to steal all your bases. An alternative style that is popular these days is the immediate spike, that is once you get your first 1 or 2 pills, immediately go to the enemy's territory and plant your pills near their bases to prevent them from refueling, In so doing, you commit yourself to an offensive pace. Don't just wander away after a spike, because you know the enemy will likely concentrate on unspiking those pills, and they can definitely do so in the time it would take you to refuel and return. If you allow that to happen, you have essentially given those pills away. Stick around to support your spikes while your ally brings up more pills to advance or bolster the front, and steal the bases you just spiked.

TO DEC IS DIVINE. As the midgame settles in, team work becomes crucial. With the help of a partner, you can take advantage of the fastest way to kill a pill: the decoy. It is crucial for newbies to learn how to "dec" because this is an easy yet powerful way to contribute toward the partnership. Pills only shoot at the nearest enemy tank. One may take advantage of this by setting up protective walls near the pill, then while one tank hides behind and draws pill fire into those walls, a second tank positioned further away shoots and kills the pill, such that neither tank takes any hits. Decoying is an tactic of opportunity. Learn to do fast decs where the map provides walls near neutral pills already. If you are driving by and see that your partner has set up some walls next to a pill, get in position to dec without being asked. Often it's even worth it to sacrifice yourself to live dec with your unprotected tank. Bob and weave near the pill to draw the fire while taking minimal hits, then turn out just before your partner completely kills the pill, and you won't even be completely killed.

TEAMWORK. Usually in 2x2 games, either you and your partner work together offensively to take pills with decs, or you each take a quadrant and fight on 2 different fronts. In the latter case, when you are fighting a local 1x1, then it's important to understand your role in the game. Generally, one person plays defensively and tries to hold his ground, while the other partner plays offensively on the other front and tries to swing around the island and squeeze the enemy from the rear. As the weaker player on your team, if you are matched against the enemy's weak player, try to gain ground on him. If you're matched against the enemy's strong player, don't try fancy takes which you will likely regret, but instead try to hold your ground while your partner kicks the weaker enemy's butt.

PILL WAR, INC. A classic strategy for the midgame is to set up a front consisting of a line of pills, each separated by 3 or 4 spaces, close enough to cover each other without providing easy multiple take for the enemy. Typically the enemy will then commit a similar number of pills in an adjacent front, resulting in a classic pill war. Each side attempts to take the other's pills, or to defend against those takes. As the situation warrants, you may throw more pills into the war, either to reinforce or replace existing pills. There are several basic tenets to a pill war:

PILL WALK. As you gain pills in the pill war, "walk" them 4-5 squares forward in a line to increase your territory and force your enemy to retreat. Alternatively, if you prefer a blitzkrieg style attack, send the pills further forward and faster, but you'll have to take out newly conquered enemy bases and move up your rear pills very quickly to keep the enemy in a frantic retreat, or else they will take advantage of your overextended front and steal your spiking pills.

END GAME. If you're doing well with pill wars, spiking, and base raping, you'll be winning at this point. The end game is just as crucial. Many strong base and pill advantages have been lost due to weak end game strategy. Remember that in tournament games, bases win the game, so use your pill advantage to secure bases instead of focusing on the enemy's remaining few pills. The temptation is to spike too early. All my earlier warnings about spiking particularly apply at the end, when your enemy is likely backed up against a corner with very few bases left. Now if you send in a spike, he will have no choice but to try to take it out. Anticipate this and keep the spike alive. The enemy is then exhausting his few remaining bases trying to refuel and take out your spikes. Your partner can help by going behind the lines and messing up the enemy bases, or bringing in more spikes to tighten the noose.

CONCLUSION. If you read this far, you have a good general idea of the tactics and strategy underlying a game of Bolo, and also when to do what. Don't be discouraged if at first it seems that everybody you meet on the network crushes you. Some of these players have been working at it for many hours daily for over 3 years. After you lose a game, don't just quit, instead ask your enemy to give you a few pointers. Definitely study up on all the strategy and tactics guides, such as those in the previous section of this FAQ. With experience, practice, and a little talent, you too might join the ranks of the many who have kicked my butt.

3.5. Troubleshooting Guide

Q: Every game that I try to join says they are not allowing new players or are not running Bolo.

A: Either they really have locked up their game in order to play without interruptions, or else you probably aren't running the same version of Bolo. Be sure you are using version 0.99.7, because the various versions are not compatible with each other.

Q: Bolo is very jerky or laggy.

A: If this is true even when you are in single player mode, either you're playing on a Mac Classic or something wimpy like that, or you probably need to optimize your Mac better for Bolo play. If the jerkiness occurs only in network games, then you are experiencing the effects of network lag -- please see the next question.

Q: It always says the lag is too great for me to join, or when I join I just get a black screen and nothing happens, or the network status window says "ring broken", or people always tell me to leave as soon as I join.

A: You are experiencing network lag because you don't have a fast enough connection, probably because you are using a slow modem or going through an overloaded Internet Service Provider (ISP). If you have a direct ethernet connection, you may have very bad routing to the world. Quit immediately before you ruin the game you are trying to join! See the optimizing and modem sections in this FAQ for ways to try to reduce your lag.

Q: The tracker never responds or never shows any games.

A: Make sure you've set Bolo Finder to use the appropriate tracker site, such as bolo.usu.edu, port 50000 for North Americans. If you've done that correctly, you may simply be playing during unpopular times of the day. Try playing instead during lunch (for both the East and West coast of the U.S.) and also during the evening and weekends.

Q: My Mac crashes with "unimplemented trap error" when launching Bolo... wtf?

A: Make sure you download version 0.99.7 which fixes that bug. If that still crashes, you probably have some strange extension/INIT that is conflicting with Bolo. Try using Macsbug, a debugger that catches such crashes and allows you to resume without rebooting. Download Macsbug, uncompress it, put it in the top level of your System Folder, and restart. Next time you crash, hit command-g and hopefully you'll be able to resume. Failing that, try "es[return]" to quit Bolo and put you in the Finder, or "rb[return]" to reboot safely.

Also, when you're done with a game, don't try to launch a new game within Bolo itself. Always quit Bolo and relaunch the application.

The End

Still confused? Post your question(s) to the newsgroup rec.games.bolo, where you will likely get an answer the same day.

--Jolo

Version History for the FAQ:

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