coolpickoftheday

The sense of nostalgia over took me this morning. For some reason I had a moment of reminicing and thought of a game I used to spend hours playing against a coworker. The Cool Pick Of The Day is about that game- Bolo.

What is Bolo?

The Bolo version which became so popular (the Mac version) was created by Stuart Cheshire. It is a real-time multi-player tank game for up to 16 players in which you get unlimited lives. The official site is http://www.lgm.com/bolo/ The original MacOS version is still available but for MacOS X you will need to use either xbolo or nubolo. The Mac versions don't communicate with the Windows and Linux versions. The Windows and Linux version communicate with each other.

The objectives of Bolo are simple: destroy the other players (or team up with them and blow up the other-other players); capture and create pillboxes (kind of like machine gun nests); take control of all the bases (all your base are belong to us); and have fun!

In Bolo your tank holds 4 types of supplies: bullets, armor, mines, and trees. When you start out (each time you enter the game field) you start out with bullets equal to 2x the amount of unclaimed bases. If there are none, you start with no bullets... this is important to remember so you want to capture as many bases as possible. You can replenish your supplies at your bases. When you run out of bullets, you can't shoot until you dock at a friendly base. If you have no bases and no bullets you better have a friend! You also have a little green man (LGM) that can jump out of your tank and build pillboxes, roads, bridges, walls, boats, etc. but you need trees to do this. So you send your LGM out to harvest the trees and bring them to the tank. He can also lay covert mines that can't be seen by your opponents (unlike the ones you can drop out the back of your tank). The covert mines explode when something runs over them or when there is an explosion next to them... until then, they lay silently awaiting a victim.

Pillboxes are powerful weapons that you want to capture and rebuild as your own to protect your bases. Laying strategically placed invisible mines and well positioning pillboxes are a total nightmare for the opposing players. Another thing the LGM can do for you is repair your pillboxes as long as you have trees in supply.

What also makes Bolo so fun is the ability to have different playing fields or as they are called maps. There are different terrains and obstacles each with a different aspect to them. There are:
trees, grass, rocks, rubble, craters, shallow water, deep water, swamps, walls and roads.

Strategy Guide

http://www.lgm.com/bolo/guides/pbg/

Obtaining Bolo

Bolo for MacOS (7??)
http://www.lgm.com/bolo/archive/

For Windows and Lindows
http://www.winbolo.us/downloads.asp
http://www.winbolo.com/
http://www.winbolo.net/

For the Macintosh (MacOSX)
http://www.nubolo.net/
http://www.xbolo.net/


Installing Bolo

Your installation for Linux may be slightly different since your installation may not have certain things installed. The basic requirements for linbolo are:
1) x86 Linux 2.2+
2) 8Mb of RAM
3) Glib 2.2+
4) SDL 1.2

I have Redhat Enterprise AS 4 so I needed to do the following:

I downloaded LinBolo 1.13 from http://www.winbolo.us/downloads.asp
wget http://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_mixer/release/SDL_mixer-1.2.6-1.i386.rpm
wget http://www.libsdl.org/projects/SDL_ttf/release/SDL_ttf-2.0.7-1.i386.rpm
wget http://www.libsdl.org/release/SDL-1.2.9-1.i386.rpm
ln -s /usr/lib/libSDL_ttf-2.0.so.0 /usr/lib/libSDL_ttf-1.2.so.0
up2date fonts-xorg-truetype
cp /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/luxirb.ttf cour.ttf

The game requires /usr/lib/libSDL_ttf-1.2.so.0 and since that is very hard to find, SDL_ttf-2.0.7-1 is fine as long as you make the proper soft link. The game also needs a courier TrueType font. I did not want to take if off my Mac or my windows box since I wanted a total Linux solution. So I got the xorg TrueType font package and just renamed the luxirb.ttf font to cour.ttf. Using one of the TTF fonts from OpenOffice also worked but the fonts where not as clear for this specific instance.

If you wish to set up your own bolo server, you can do so by downloading the(Dedicated Server, LinBoloDS 1.14 available at http://www.winbolo.us/downloads.asp
Using the Dedicated Server you can even have LAN parties!!

The trick to Bolo is to balance repair and capture duties with Hunting/Killing duties. You must learn to multi-task while still keeping a good strategic plan in your head. Keep your armor topped up, lay mines, capture bases, capture and rebuild pillboxes, and blow the sense out of your enemy Without a doubt this game is SUPER ADDICTIVE! It is very fun to play. With Skype or Voice IM clients, your allies and you can talk to one another and coordinate attacks. It is a great multi-player Internet game. Simple, fun, addictive. The perfect blend of all the components characteristic of a successful video game!

# posted by TheGuardian : 5:59 PM