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IT REALLY IS A PAIN TO SORT THROUGH THINGS WHICH ARE NOT UPLOADED PROPERLY, SO PLEASE TAKE SOME TIME TO READ THIS OVER. IF YOU DON'T BOTHER TO FOLLOW THE GUIDELINES, WE WON'T BOTHER TRYING TO FIX YOUR MISTAKES AND WILL JUST THROW AWAY YOUR JUNK!

You can upload Bolo stuff to the 'maps' or 'other' directories within /pub/bolo/incoming, but not to 'incoming' itself. All files must be encoded in Binhex format (made into files with .sit.hqx suffix such as by using Dropstuff) and named like UNIX files - no spaces, punctuation (except . - _), or other weird characters. When in doubt, follow the naming convention for similar existing files. Then email [email address deleted later] with 'Bolo FTP submission' as the subject, and in the body list each file's Mac filename, UNIX filename (e.g. whatever-1.2.sit.hqx), the exact directory path where it should be moved to, and a short description.

When I get your email and if you followed all the rules, I will check out the file and put it in the archive within a few days. You will be notified by return email.

Further directions for uploading maps. Since maps are the most frequently uploaded files, this separate directory was created just for incoming maps. You must follow these rules or else your files will be discarded.

All maps must be uploaded in Binhex format (whatever.sit.hqx) and named according to these UNIX conventions. (The actual Mac filename can be anything, I'm talking about the .sit.hqx filename.) Use all lower case alphanumerics and no punctuation except underscores and periods. Do NOT use spaces, quotes, apostrophes, asterisks, and anything else UNIX can't handle. PLAY IT SAFE!!! Also, if it's a collection, put 'maps' in the name; if it's a training map, put 'train' in the name. If it's both, put 'trainmaps'. This will help us to place them in special folders for those purposes.

When done, email a description of the files to: [email address deleted later] or else I will just delete your stuff as unclaimed junk!!!

As part of the transition of the official Bolo archive from ThoughtPort to Duke University, the map portion of the archive has been reorganized and brought up to date. The archive now contains over 2800 maps (nearly 40% bigger even after the deletion of many redundant or corrupted maps) occupying 11.2 Mbytes.

Previously, all maps were sorted alphanumerically into a flat directory structure, with a few bundled collections on the side. The archive now uses an entirely new organization that emphasizes retaining links to the authors that created them. Thus, over 2/3 of all the maps in the archive are now located in two directories, "famous-makers" and "collections". Subdirectories inside these directories contain all the maps from a collection or author. For example, all the sluggo maps are available in the directory "famous-makers/sluggo/". Most of the larger collections also contain a file named ".all-files.sit.hqx", which allows all of the files in that directory to be downloaded at once.

Maps in the new archive have come from many sources, and four existing ftp sites were the primary sources. These servers were the ThoughPort archive as delivered to Duke (which was originally maintained by Aaron Bratcher [MegaWatt] and housed at the University of Chicago), the Info-Mac Macintosh archive, Stuart Cheshire's map archive on his personal ftp server, and the University of Michigan Macintosh archive. Another very useful source was the personal archive of Caine Schneider aka palpatine <caines@netexpress.net>. His archive became the foundation for the new archive.

Single maps and different collections were compared with the contents of the ThoughtPort archive and resorted back into collections. The original comments and information submitted by the authors have been preserved. Duplicates and corrupted files were removed, and old-style "resource format" maps were converted to the current Bolo map file format. Maps that did not fall into any collection were placed in the "miscellaneous" directory, which is sorted alphanumerically. Of these, maps that were huge or that would probably not make for enjoyable games were placed into the "miscellaneous/others" directory.

The "classics-popular" directory contains 40 maps that have been the most-played over the years. "game-themes" are maps intended for some type of specialized game, or are game playing fields such as baseball or chess. For example, the map and rules for "TixToxPillbox" are available here. "geographical" are maps modeled after actual locations (Japan, for example), and "jousts" are for games that are free-for-all and don't follow the normal goal of controlling all the refueling bases at the end. "map-tiles" are collections of tiles for the BMAPEdit tiled random map generator, and "training-practice" are maps mostly for practicing pillbox takes. Lastly, maps from a wide variety of other sources were obtained and placed into the archive. These sources included:

• private email
• Ulfilas' Bolo page
• The Aftershock page
• Jeff's Bolo page
• The Bremen Bolo page
• The Bolo Map Market
• The MOB page

To facilitate access the brain modules are broadly divided firstly into two categories, brains and borgs. The brains subdir contains brain modules that offer the ability of independent tank control. The borgs directory contains brain modules that offer assistance to a human tank controller. Note that some brains (in the strict sense of the word) also offer borg functionality which can be switched on and off.

There are two other top level subdirs, others and resources. The others subdir contains brain modules that offer neither independent tank control nor human controller assistance, e.g. Spielborg, which can make Quicktime moves of Bolo games. The resources subdir contains resources for developers of brain modules.

Bolo Rolodex. Sign up now to try to be the 200th person on the Bolo Rolodex, our compilation of Bolo players' email addresses! It's not a mailing list because you don't get regular spam mails from me or anybody on the list. In fact use of the emails for spam is grounds for immediate removal from the list. The real purpose is to allow you to contact a Bolo buddy, such as after a game to discuss the stupid/brilliant maneuver he pulled, or to set up a game or meeting with a friend, etc.

In "Teach Your Old Modem New Tricks," the screen shot from the game Bolo (Mar/97, p55) should have included a credit for Chris Hwang. The screenshot was downloaded from his and Joseph Lo's site, Bolo Home Page, at <http://www.lgm.com/bolo>.

Web Traxer by IronMaiden. The 'UCI Guy' is now wrapping up grad school at Berkeley. He whipped up a WWW front end to the 3 main trackers which you can access at http://bmw.autobahn.org/~lgascoig/wtraxer.html.

Fan spray shot easter egg? I have no clue how KevDog managed to achieve this alleged easter egg, but it's too funny to pass up. Check out this picture which he posted to rec.games.bolo.

More silly pictures. Looks like Berserkir got very bored. He posted this game snapshot URL to rec.games.bolo.

Chicago Bolofest. I forgot to mention that Pins has been trying to set up a Chicago Bolofest, I think for this weekend. Talk to him for details.

Dear Bolo Player,

Thank you for your support of Bolo, whether by paying the shareware fee, or by giving your time to to support Bolo in other ways, like setting up Web pages abut Bolo or writing software like Brains, Map Editors, Cyborgs, Bolo Trackers, etc.

Look out for a new release of Bolo around Christmas time, on the normal Macintosh shareware sites or on my Mac at home, bolo.stanford.edu.

Version 0.99.8 will include a bunch of bug fixes, more information for the Internet game trackers, and a new double-size window option for people with big screeens.

In the new year, after I finish my Ph.D., I'll be working on a final few new features, like the ablility to record and play back games, a 3D view using QuickDraw 3D, more features for people writing Brains and Cyborgs, and after all that, the long-awaited version for the IBM PC.

Thanks again for your support,

Stuart Chesire

GET PAID TO PLAY BOLO. In case you still haven't heard yet, the Harvard Business School is running a study in which they pay people to play Bolo. The study takes 2 hours and pays an average of $20. They have expressed an interest in touring the country to seek out players. If you are at a site near Boston and can field a decent number of players, contact Liz Dunn <edunn@fas.harvard.edu>.

PC Bolo news. The Armoured Alliance / PC Bolo page has moved again. Nothing has changed on the page, but by moving the page from Mecca's asgna.com site to his own company's site, the author Joel Duerksen seems to confirm his intention to take charge of the project and finally go public with AA. In response to the most inordinately frequently asked Bolo question, the new page says "[AA] is not available yet, but stay tuned. I'm working on it, these things take time. I plan on resolving this question this year."

Spirit of Christmas. It's a 50 MB movie that is incredibly hilarious. No this has nothing to do with Bolo, except that it was found by vert and has since then greatly amused a large number of players, including Pins, DH, Magrathea, and many others. If you have a high bandwidth connection, it's a must see. Due to harsh language, I won't put the URL in a public place.

Omigod, it's the Stuart Cheshire! (That makes sense if you've seen 'soxmas' mentioned above.) I heard from He Who Made Bolo yet again today. He is apparently reading the Bolo News! Stop procrastinating, Stuart. :-)

BMAPEdit 3.1 released! The best Bolo map maker/viewer gets a major update (first in over a year) from wharf rat, also the resident map guru for this site. Here are the new features:

• All control, menu, and window definitions now PowerPC native
• Code now compiled with Metrowerks CodeWarrior 11
• Option added to automatically center map when saving
• Magnification increment or decrement with option key down now centers window on map data
• Preferences data now stored in data fork rather than resource fork
• Fixed display bug that occured when opening maps with illegal special squares
• Read/write map file code streamlined
• Desktop extent (monitor changes) now checked at every update event
• Increase/decrease magnification menu items now disabled when at limits
• Place start square utility added
• Visibility of pillboxes improved at 5x magification

Bolo Aftershock: cool Bolo page. This page was submitted by Benjamin "The Quake" Foley. It features some unusual graphics and music, a map collection, and the beginnings of a new fixed-team tournament league.

Stuart lives! I finally heard back from He Who Made Bolo regarding the joint letter we submitted a while ago, signed by 15 people from the Bolo community. Here is his response:

Hi Jolo,

Thanks for your mail.

> Hi, we heard that you were working on Bolo 0.99.8 - Bravo! You
> get a lot of suggestions about game features, so we won't even
> bother you with that now. Instead we were hoping you would
> consider these simple suggestions to the included documentation
> and utilities.

All your comments were good. I need to update the help files, and
now with the WWW being ubiquitous, there's much less need to
include lots of documentation with the package itself.

Take care. I hope you're well.

I'm in the final stages of trying to finish writing up my PhD
right now, which is why I was slow replying. I was not ignoring
you.

Stuart Cheshire

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