Talk:Bolo (1987 video game)

Other Bolo titles

This was an Apple II game before it was a Mac game...I'll probably try to work in a brief comment about that, though someone else with more info would be welcome to do it.Beska Miltar 16:09, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I remember that one. This was, in fact, based on Keith Laumer's Bolo series. You played a tank in a large maze, and enemy craft would emerge from four bases. Destroy all four bases and you win. The first level of difficulty is OK, but each level adds another type of enemy craft, which is diabolical even on level 2. Afalbrig 07:50, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

There is another computer game with that name by "[Dongleware]", having the follower "Dia-Bolo" see http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=3313

Either a section on each Bolo game or a separate article. Either way, Bolo (disambiguation) needs to include these other titles. Cburnett June 29, 2005 23:50 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure this is the Bolo... :-) Evercat 30 June 2005 01:25 (UTC)

Regardless, they should be included in some form. Cburnett June 30, 2005 04:28 (UTC)

I'd argue strongly that the Mac bolo was clearly inspired by the Apple ][ Bolo. it has the same core gameplay, the same scale, the same control system, and the same name. The "original" Bolo stories described a very different sort of tank. So I think it's an uphill battle to say that the Mac Bolo isn't, at its heart, Apple ][ Bolo with multiplay. Nandesuka 14:34, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

The origin of the game should be described under a "history" section heading. The game as it is currently known (the one pictured in screen shot etc), is the mutiplayer version by Stuart Cheshire. The current version should be the focus of the opening spiel... not what it was based on. Flimsyq 03:03, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Remove "early" Bolo?

This page is basically about the Mac Bolo and the games that developed from it. Yet the infobar merges that version along with the earlier, and generally forgotten, BBB version. The platform list is similarly confusing. I suggest we remove this. Maury 19:03, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

There are multiple notable computer games named "Bolo", and so this page needs to be a disambig page pointing to the different versions. Tempshill (talk) 07:01, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Real-time tactics?

Is this really a real-time tactics game? It seems you only control one tank, which would make it a shooter, possibly even a tactical shooter. SharkD 14:06, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Depends on where you draw the line. The game supports multiple users, such that players can form teams to carry out objectives in-game that go beyond your typical shooter (waypoint control in the form of "bases", resource acquisition and deployment in the form of "pillboxes"). That each player controls a single tank seems immaterial when considering multiplay. D. Brodale 19:28, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Compare:

Tactical shooter: "In multiplayer games, the term can have a different meaning. A multiplayer tactical shooter focuses on team cooperation to achieve objectives, rather than simply eliminating the enemy (as in traditional deathmatch games). The tactical emphasis is thus on joint goals and assisting team members, rather than on overcoming realistic individual limitations, for example, in games such as Counter-Strike or Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory."

MMORTS: "Massively multiplayer online real-time strategy (MMORTS) is a genre of online computer game that combines real-time strategy (RTS) with a large number of simultaneous players over the Internet. Players will often assume the role of a general, king or figurehead of some kind, leading an army into battle, while at the sametime maintaining the resources needed for such warfare."

RTT games are more closely related to RTS games than shooters, hence why I use them as an example.

SharkD 21:15, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Like I said, it depends on where the line is drawn. The game is clearly not a simple shooter, nor is it an MMORTS. Given the above sample catgorizations, you seem correct to place it in the "Tactical Shooter" camp at the present time. D. Brodale 21:27, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

OK, I changed the genre. SharkD 21:37, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Free Open Source Release

John Morrison recently release winbolo under the GPLv2. See http://winbolo.org for more details. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.141.74.218 (talk) 16:17, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

BBC?

I don't know this game, so can't be sure, but the article reads like: "this was a BBC game first. End of BBC section. Entire rest of article about Mac (and to an extent Windows) version". I don't have any problem with the Mac game being dominant, since it was much more significant historically... but it would be nice to have a *little* bit specifically about the original BBC incarnation, if anyone can provide that. 86.132.142.153 (talk) 09:24, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

December 2009?

"In December 2009, 9 years after the projects initial release and 10 years from inception, Morrison released the source code to...." This cannot possibly be correct as written; it's April 2009 now. However, I tried to follow the link and it takes me to the front page of the WinBolo Wiki, so I'm not sure where this particular bit of information is being sourced from, so I don't know how to correct it.

--James-Chin (talk) 05:45, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Massive historical inaccuracy

Just a warning to any newbies, this article is fantastically confused regarding almost every point of the game's development and release history. Just from my firsthand recollection:

• Bolo wasn't written on the BBC Micro, that was basically just a testbed, I'm not even sure if significant (or any) BBC Micro source code was actually "ported" to the Mac. In particular, the BBC Micro version was never publicly released, and I'm pretty sure no copy of it is known to survive today. Using this prerelease software for the date in the infobox is somewhat misleading.
• The Windows/Linux/OS X/etc versions aren't ports, but clones. They share little or no source code or compatibility (even with each other, in many cases,) and zero involvement from Cheshire. Listing these in the infobox is HIGHLY misleading.
• Bolo was one of the most popular netgames in the world during the late '80s to the middle '90s. By the time these (disorganized and abortive) clones started appearing in the early '00s, Bolo's community was already pretty dormant, so they landed with a dull thud, and the OS X transition starting around the same time killed anything left.
• It's true that Bolo wasn't designed for anything other than LAN play, but that didn't stop it from becoming wildly popular online through various pieces of tunneling software. Sure, lag was bad over the 9.6kbps modems of the day, especially with more than a couple players, but it was still fun to play. Also, by the time the internet (yeah, those last two sentences were talking about BBSs and payed private services) became popular outside institutions, native TCP/IP had been added to Bolo and 36.6kbps or better modems to most Macs, so online play (if you can wrangle some players) is now basically lag-free.

I'll probably come back and fix the article up after I find some sources online (in particular, a dated version history would resolve most of its problems,) but unless somebody else deals with this, don't trust anything the article says other than the gameplay description. 72.130.58.85 (talk) 05:48, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Poorly written sections

Entire sections of this article are seemingly written in first-person narrative. WikiPedia is not a review site. Planning on rewriting most of it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Courtneymorris95 (talk • contribs) 03:06, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Sources

• https://archive.org/details/powerplaymagazine-1995-04/page/n95/mode/2up?q=bolo
• https://archive.org/stream/ElectronicEntertainment20Aug1995/Electronic_Entertainment_20_Aug_1995#page/n67/mode/2up/search/bolo
• https://web.archive.org/web/20020202020758/http://bishop.mc.duke.edu/bolo/intro/

1. MacHome Journal September 1999