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Aug 22
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No more mailto: tags. By popular demand, the Bolo News will no
longer use mailto: links to show email addresses, since email spammers
are apparently using web crawlers to get addresses off web pages. You
can always try to look up people in the Bolo Rolodex which lists email
addresses of many active players in plain text format which is immune to
web crawlers so far. Message Speaker Brain update. Darth Vader has released a new version of his brain which reads news wire messages out loud. Network outage. There was a temporary interruption of services to both the OBHP and FTP archives. A major ATM switch in the hospital blew up. That's the toy that normally gets us connected to the world at 155 megabytes per second. The replacement part which had been ordered for it wasn't available right away because it was shipped by UPS - d'oh! Anyway everything is working again. If you think we had problems, imagine if you were a radiologist who couldn't get a CT scan to print out so you can decide whether or not a car crash victim lying in the ER was bleeding to death. FTP archive submissions. A recent thread on rec.games.bolo revived the discussion of appropriate use of rgb for binary postings. Let me just remind people again that we have an FTP archive where you can upload your Bolo binaries of any type or reasonable size. This includes maps (single or collections), brains, and even silly pictures. As long as it's something that most people will find amusing or useful, we'll be happy to accomodate it somewhere. We have yet to turn down any serious submissions. One request though - don't go advertising temporary FTP URLs in the /incoming directory, because that becomes dead as soon as we move the file to its proper, permanent place. Please email wharf rat for map submissions and me for other submissions so that we can process your files as soon as possible. OBHP new setup. The change will be transparent to you probably, but I've changed the way the official Bolo home page is served, so the whole site should be a little faster and more stable than before.
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Aug 14
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Berserkir maps. Andrew Welch aka
Berserkir updated his Bolo map page,
deleting 2 maps and adding a new one, and including star ratings for
each map. His maps have rapidly become among the most popular maps played.
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Aug 12
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Michigan Bolofest cancelled. The following was posted to rgb by
slymouse, the organizer of the
UM fest.Well, there was going to be a bolofest on the 16th, but it appears that everyone has got something going on or are afraid to face me in person. But there will be no bolofest since I feel that six people isn't really large enough for a fest. Maybe in Dec. or may 1998 or something we umich people can host one. Duke Bolofest pictures! Sorry for the long delay, but thanks to Pins, we finally scanned in pictures from the Duke Bolofest! Clicking on that link will load a page with 8 pictures totaling 260 K. Message Speaker Brain. Ever wish the news wire messages could be read aloud to you so you don't have to take your eyes off the action? Jochen Lippert aka Darth Vader created this new brain which speaks messages using Apple's Text-to-Speech software. Soxmas lives! The Comedy Channel is now broadcasting a cartoon South Park based on the hilariously obscene cartoon 'Spirit of Christmas' better known as soxmas among Bolo aficionados. Catch it this Wednesday at 10 PM, 9 central. Tristan & Tony's Excellent Adventure. These two guys, well mostly Tony, created this Bolo page with a lot of graphics but as yet not much content. There is an amusing AA rant which really reinforces my feeling of wonder at how Bolo can inspire such envy from PC users.
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Jul 30
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Bunny Hop Movie. Living up to his namesake, somebunny created this amusing
movie illustrating his patented bunny hop. This is not a hack. The movie
is reasonably small at 470 KB by FTP
or a whopping 3.7 MB on WWW. Michigan Bolofest. If you can make it to Ann Arbor, Michigan on August 16, you can participate in one of Bolo's most hallowed traditions - the Bolofest! Typically good players drive in from hundreds of miles away to partake in some socialization, golden beverages (for those who are of age), and of course hours of Bolo. This current Bolofest is being organized by slymouse. So far confirmed participants are all local Michigan players. (If you didn't know, Michigan is arguably the best Bolo school, consistently winning or placing high in recent team tournaments, for example see Mar 4 Bolo News for Red Cup outcomes.) Out of town folks are welcome to show up anytime after 4 PM on Aug 15, and the games will take place on Aug 16 at a Univ of Michigan computer lab to be determined later. For more information, email slymouse.
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Jul 21
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Flag's Player Profiles. El Flaggo decided to undertake the noble
task of compiling a review of current
players - their styles, strengths, weaknesses, etc. He's waiting for
your contributions and comments. It's a really good way to learn how to
play better, both for the reviewer and reviewee. The last time anybody
tried to do this was Tempest's Observations
on the Skills and Techniques of Various Players. Athena's Bolo Page. #bolo's latest spokesmodel and all-around friendly gal Athena aka Stormy has developed Athena's Bolo Dreamland with some player profiles and copious comments on the game's tactics and strategy from a diary she keeps of every game she plays. Cool Fool's latest movie. More weird pill take movies from OBHP's resident QuickTime director, this time an ammo-less take on CT96. If you haven't visited our movie gallery, be sure to check it out.
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Jul 13
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Lin and Fermat live! For those of you young'uns, these are two
old-time Bolo Gods from Delaware. They got married a while back and
retired a few years ago. I just heard from Fermat who sent me his new email address which I've put in the Bolo Rolodex. Here's what he
said:
We're doing good. Enjoying life quite a bit. (Though not as much as we would if we had a high speed connection for our mac!) Both of us are working now, making good money, looking for a house, and planning trips, children, etc. Bolofest anyone? There is an on-going discussion on rec.games.bolo about a possible Bolofest. If you live anywhere near Chicago, Atlanta, Durham, or Middlebury, you might want to check out the newsgroup.
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Jul 11
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State of the Union. I was answering an rgb question from Cyrano
and ended up compiling a lot of facts and statistics pertaining to the
state of Bolo today. Cyrano asked:
Would anyone venture to guess how many people play Bolo occasionally, how many seriously (more than once a week) ? Just curious what the estimates might be.I'd say there are at least 10 who play once a *day*, and that's just on the Internet. Just in the Duke/UNC area, there are several players who play almost daily, such as pins, Max, Black Flag, and during the school year Nutz. Don't forget there are also lots of people out there we've never heard of who play on AppleTalk or modem, such as the various high school computer clubs. Overall I think there are a few hundred registered players. IMHO about 25 of those play at least once a week, or have played long enough that they can be considered serious players. And then there's me. :) Here are some other interesting stats relevant to Bolo's health... Nix's tracker statistics page shows average games being played, number of people checking the tracker, etc. as a function of the time of day. The rec.games.bolo newsgroup is estimated to be read by 7700 people (!) according to the Newsgroup Info Center. If you're curious, you can read this explanation of how NIC calculates readership and other newsgroup stats. The official Bolo home page (OBHP) front page receives about 3000 visits per month (that's not 'hits' which counts each separate GIF loaded on a page separately, but number of real visits). You may wonder how many copies of Bolo exist out there? The OBHP has distributed over 600 copies of the Bolo Jolopak alone every month, and the official Bolo FTP archive has distributed over 1000 copies since its inception a few months ago. Check out the current month's OBHP httpd access statistics which is automatically updated daily. On the email front, there are now 218 people registered in the Bolo Rolodex of email addresses. The MOB registry of modem players also numbered in the hundreds last I checked. I get several queries from PC Bolo wannabes every week. As annoying as these people may be, ironically they are probably also among the more enthusiastic Mac Bolo players, because they wouldn't be clamoring for PC Bolo unless they were already hooked on the Mac version. Now having shared all these numbers, we should also be realistic. If I did the same analysis for a more current, actively supported game such as Avara or even That Game Guy Plays, Bolo would probably pale in comparison. There is no question that Bolo in its current form is dwindling away. The amount of effort expended by those of us in the Bolo community to keep it going is staggeringly disproportional to the number of people who play. People hang out on rgb and #bolo and travel hundreds of miles to participate in Bolofests, partly because they love the simple, classic game, but probably mostly because of social ties that were established years ago and fostered by countless taunts and cheers on many a verdant battlefield.
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Jul 10
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We're baaaack. Sorry for the long absence, I've finally turned in
all the grants and my house is still bare but at least the new surround
sound stereo works. I'll be updating the Bolo News semi-regularly
again. Rolodex now over 200! The Bolo Rolodex of player email addresses now stands at 218 entries. I'm sorry but I wasn't able to figure out who was the 200th due to a big rush of entries right around then. Bolo map page. Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer who hails from the Leiden University Classics Department in The Netherlands submitted the following 'modest' Bolo page: Ilja's Bolo Maps & Links. It includes original topographical maps with GIF-overviews and statistics. Rumors. The latest rumors are that He Who Made Bolo is allegedly back working on version 0.99.8 which should be released any day now. Of course that's what he also said more than half a year ago. We'll just have to keep on waiting.
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