These are 2 logs from the IRC channel #bolo taken on Sep 29, 2000. The issue was whether WinBolo (WB) is a true clone of the original Mac Bolo, i.e., is it close enough of a copy to be enjoyed and played interchangeably by Mac and Windows users alike? We ended up delving into issues of the past design and future potential of the games. The text is slightly edited to be more readable.
Note that these comments pertain to Mac Bolo 0.99.7 vs. WinBolo 1.08. WB has since been updated and may address some of these concerns already.
Here are the people involved, user@hostnames are NOT valid email addresses:
C++ is C--@63.127.46.233 (Chris) (part two only)
Canuck is andrew@foo.slnt1.on.wave.home.com (2 andrew)
Jolo is jyl@foo.mc.duke.edu (0 Think different.)
palp is coel@foo.moline1.il.home.com (Coelacanth)
vert is csh@foo.hottub.org (2 jai guru de va om)
Both vert and palp are Mac Bolo vets going back at least to 1994, C++ is also a pretty old vet, I'd guess maybe he started around 1995? Canuck is a more recent player but has contributed a lot to WB such as by designing the WB game tracker and setting up the WB map archive. I (Jolo) used to play Bolo and now run the Bolo home page.
TIME: Friday September 29 2000 -- 23:30 -04:00
<Jolo> i'd sure like to get to the bottom of the whole "it's not really bolo"
accusation
<Jolo> hey palp, what's your take on how close winbolo is to real bolo
<palp> i find it gets out of sync a lot
<Jolo> you mean networking problems? how about if you were just driving around
playing solo, taking pills and stuff
<palp> it's pretty close in general
<Canuck> it's the point jolo that the bolo vets say it's definitely different
but can't pinpoint anything
<palp> there are minor things that make it different enough for a veteran to
notice
<Jolo> e.g.?
<palp> some collision points are different, and lining up pill takes is tougher
<Jolo> do these minor things affect the 'essence' of the game - what makes it
bolo? or is it just a matter of adjustment
<Canuck> more a matter of adjustment
<Jolo> do you agree, palp?
<palp> the way lag affects things is vastly different. It's bolo, sure; it's
just not mac bolo
<Jolo> right, but that i would expect, it is after all different even if stu
were to write a server/client bolo for mac os, it'd be different under lag. That
i take as a given.
<Canuck> there are a few things that i think bolo vets would agree should
still be changed though, but this list is getting shorter. dogfighting is the #1
difference imo
<Canuck> against mel playing from europe, he can drive around in front of me,
waiting for a good time to spike
<Jolo> of course i'm sure it could be improved and it will. server/client is not
a panacea for really bad lag
<palp> well, i don't disagree, but given the topology you would think it would
be better. the pills will appear alive and they are actually dead. this happens
somewhat frequently
<Jolo> it should allow for occasional freak errors, more dealing with net errors
than big roundtrip delays. if the lag is really bad, there really isn't any
magical solution that i can think of, not for an interactive game. all theory of
relativity
<Canuck> on the other hand jolo, 4x4 is nothing unusual which is nice, that's
the nice thing about server/client
<palp> i think having the host name appear after the player name would help.
it's almost impossible to identify players. you can turn long sender names on,
but i don't want to wait for that shit to scroll
<Canuck> I agree with you there. and reverse dns would be nice too
<palp> one thing i have a problem with is hitting the pills. you can't nick them
the same way
<Canuck> yeah. you have to go for safer angles
<Jolo> that kinda affects things. although i'm not a purist i guess. hell i'm
not a player at all
<Canuck> heh
<palp> the "phallus in wonderland" take is notably more difficult
<Canuck> 3 isn't worth it for the few times you get it lined up
<Jolo> imho bolo isn't about trick takes. in time people will probably find
different trick takes for wb. or maybe it just won't be as easy
<palp> these aren't trick takes
<Canuck> they're the basic takes
<Jolo> well, trick in the sense that stu didn't neces. intend any take other
than hardline
<palp> i think he lacked vision there
<Jolo> well he allowed off-angle shooting and hitting, i guess that opened up
all the possibilities. so in that sense he was quite visionary
<Jolo> what's phallus in wonderland, 3+ blocks lined up next to pill?
<palp> any variation of pills or blocks along a horizontal or vertical axis
<palp> jolo, i means even this take: P-BB
<palp> that's tougher to do. but PBBB is almost impossible
<Jolo> i wonder if the differences are due to some obscure bolo trick that is
hard to reverse engineer, or something much more fundamental
<Canuck> where the shells go is sometimes a pixel or two off the crosshairs
<Jolo> why is that? if shells are off, i can imagine everything is harder
<palp> the collision geometry is just different
<Canuck> it's weird though, it seems only on the sharp angles
<palp> slight differences in the way it was coded i imagine, especially on the
edges
<Canuck> and it's only like a pixel, so on the PB you can still do quite
consistently. this is the problem though, nobody can be more specific than that.
you literally have to do testing, where you take screenshots zoomed
16x and show where it's off
<palp> i don't think the control is as fine as it is on mac bolo
<Jolo> again i wonder, is that coding or OS
<palp> i can't imagine that it's the OS
<Jolo> maybe the mac is just more precise in the sense that the keyboard is more
sensitive, i mean that fine tapping to adjust the crosshairs by a pixel at a
time
<palp> you can do it in mac bolo
<Jolo> right, but can you in wb?
<palp> i've not had much success doing it
<Jolo> ok that's interesting, that to me is a big difference, it'd make wb much
sloppier and imprecise
<palp> but then again, it's not noticeable to a newbie player
<Jolo> right, but to anybody who is a mac bolo vet or has seen one play, that
pinpoint precision is awesome
<Canuck> i think winbolo actually has code to detect if they are trying to
tap, but i think it should be even more sensitive
<palp> jolo: it's not awesome, it's necessary
<Jolo> it's frightening to see vert line up the xhairs on a lgm
<vert> my thought is that.... any reverse engineered effort will be
significantly different
<Jolo> right, it's in fact remarkable it's as close as it is
<vert> even if they take some number of circumstances, and can match it
identically, it won't be based on the same "formula"
<vert> the analogy i would make here is taking some set of points on a plot, and
deriving some approximate equation. it's not the right formula, but it could
pass for it
<palp> well, think about one oddity in mac bolo... the diagonal angle takes,
how on one side the pill hits on the the other it does not, it's not symmetric
<Jolo> i guess my question is, does it matter. if wb were just subtly different,
it will evolve into a diff game, but it was going to do that anyway w/ diff
players, diff time, etc.
<Jolo> if it's close enough to pass, so that people can enjoy playing, that's
what matters
<vert> i think the enjoyment factor is without question, people are playing. the
question you are exploring is will macbolo vets cross over? and better yet...
can they?
<Jolo> the purists are only purists b/c they are hopeless macphiles, or b/c we
perceive mac bolo as having "done it right" by virtue of its pass success, so
the best future for wb would be a clone that mimics that, at least initially
<Jolo> altho i don't really care about the 3 remaining mac bolo players
<vert> heh, i don't think many people would argue that bolo was "done right". in
fact, i believe the majority believe otherwise
<Jolo> mhm, so in a sense, maybe jm should stop trying so hard. this energy
could/should be spent changing the game in a revolutionary way for
the better?
<vert> i'm not so sure...
<Canuck> I dunno..
<vert> every great game has balance, bolo has it, i'm not sure if winbolo will
get there
<Jolo> true, lose the balance and you lose the spirit of the game, then it's
just a shoot 'em up with boring 2d gphx
<vert> right, i mean... take some little variable in bolo and change it, like
instead of 15 shots to kill, it takes 21. then the game changes in more
significant ways than we can realize without years of play, kinda like the
butterfly theory
<Canuck> bolo seems remarkably balance, perhaps by accident
<palp> it's amazing that what wasn't intended originally turned out to be pretty
good otherwise (and by jinx!)
<palp> heh
<Jolo> well i think stu deserves credit, i don't think it was dumb luck. he kept
things very simple and flexible, yet at the same time thought through a lot of
scenarios, and imposed the kinds of restrictions that made sense
<Canuck> playing winbolo and bolo I have come to appreciate stu's work more
actually, he seems very perfectionist. imho, everything made sense in bolo,
nothing i saw and went wtf?! like when i first started playing bolo, even the
dialog boxes and texts are perfectly lined. maybe i am the minority but these
subtle things were one of the things that kept my interest in bolo
<Jolo> the same can be said of jm too, whatever effort stu expended writing the
game, jm certainly put in lots of hours too to clone it. look at how many people
tried and failed. you've gotta be pretty damn stubborn to reverse engineer it as
well as jm did
<vert> it takes different kinds of people to do those 2 different things
<vert> one person started from nothing, the other had a working item. different
kinds of thinking
<Jolo> it's different types of effort, yes
This discussion followed a few months later.
TIME: Sat Feb 10 2001, 10:28 - 10:44 AM CT
<C++> [ mentions Winbolo ]
<palp> if that game were fixed up. little differences make that game hard for me to play
<C++> really? I haven't played it recently. What kinds of differences? Anything quantifiable?
<palp> well, the way the builder moves laterally against objects is really problematic for me
<palp> the refueling rates for tanks seem faster, and replenish rates for bases are slower, it doesn't seem to be proportional. the bases don't gain armor/shots/mines faster when there are more players
<C++> Stuart published all that info, I'm pretty sure. I wonder why the WinBolo guy didn't follow those guidelines?
[Ed. note - Certain well known facts like how many shots it takes to kill a tank etc. are in the Bolo FAQ, while other more obscure facts are in Stuart's original dissertation. WB's author followed all of these, but unfortunately it seems Stuart's dissertation does not describe the Bolo we now play. That's what has made reverse engineering Bolo so difficult. -Jolo]
<palp> guess not. also, the builder dies more easily
<C++> aiiee, they got me.
<palp> for example, he is prone to get killed when near a block or pill that is shot. by near i mean right next to. he walks slower over rubble/swamp type terrain. the tank is also slower on those
<palp> lining up pill takes is different too
<C++> ohh, there's a cardinal sin
<palp> in bolo, getting P-BBB isn't too hard, but in winbolo P-BBB is nearly impossible
<palp> but P--BBB works much more easily
<C++> That other stuff you could get used to. Pillbox lineups are critical for people to go back and forth between the systems easily.
<palp> and i think there is bug that allows the man to get killed when the pillbox he is repairing is firing
<palp> the pill seems to have an explosion arc on it when firing in some situations, particularly if the bullets are hitting another tank
<palp> also, you know how bolo handles 'build-ahead'
<C++> yes
<palp> you click twice, you can't change what the builder does on the second build. in winbolo you can change your second build
<C++> I actually approve of that change.
<palp> which is handy, particularly if you are going to get your man toasted
<C++> Yeah, once he gets back in the tank, you should be able to remand his orders.
<palp> the tank also slows more slowly, i.e. i tend to overrun the bases in winbolo
<palp> the hitting areas seem to be slightly different on pills, that is probably why pilltakes are different
<palp> and dog fighting is ridiculous
<palp> it's almost always a bad idea to chase someone down, and even if you murder them and they were full, you won't always kill them
<palp> dropping mines behind you is pretty risky, too. you know how vert and i like to use that tactic. well in winbolo, you gotta be damn careful. what i call the 'aerosol can effect'
<palp> and another thing: the hitting area on tanks vs tanks, particularly in situations where you are shooting diagonally or your tank aiming diagonally (and you are being shot at), the shots will sometimes pass through the tank
<palp> the little differences basically force one to play more defensively imho, cuz you can easily bleed someone out
<palp> since the bases refuel so slowly, it's almost impossible to mount a comeback when your bases were killed
<C++> Interesting. Have you sent the author any of this feedback?
<palp> well, i think he knows, and a discussion about some of these differences has been placed on the bolo home page. some of what i said here today might not have been previously posted to a forum like that
<palp> i should have jolo add it to the prev. disc. i haven't paid my winbolo share$ yet, so i don't feel as though i am warranted in complaining that
<C++> I'd imagine that WinBlo doesn't have pill massaging.
[Ed. note: This refers to a Bolo bug/feature described here and amply illustrated by several movies (look for names containing massage). -Jolo]
<palp> no that does not work
<C++> Is that a good thing? I'm torn about pill massaging. It's neat, and it's not simple to pull off, but it doesn't make sense logically. If I were reproducing Bolo, I dont' know if I'd reproduce that.
<palp> well, you saw vert and i use it in a game we were in last week. it was useful, but still didn't save our asses. it's a trick, i don't care either way. but i admit that i do it unconsciously now if i drive next to a pill
<palp> rub a dub